EME is an API to talk to a Content Decryption Module, I.e. a DRM system. EME is easy and free to implement, but entirely useless without a CDM. There is no specification for CDMs. If you want one, you need to license it from Adobe or some other Hollywood approved vendor (or become one your self by playing by their rules).

You cannot just implement the royalty free web standard specifications and expect the web to work. You also need some corporate agreements.

Arguably this isn't really worse than needing flash or silver light. But at the same time it looked like these were on their way out and that the battle for a 100% open standards web was being won. And Flash & friends could be installed by end users, while CDMs need to come bundled in the browser. Also, in web standards circles, flash and co were considered problems to be solved, while EME is presented as the solution.

So if you're a new browser vendor, and have an inovative (and legal) business model, either Hollywood likes it, or you will not be able to support the whole web.

Also, a must read about DRM, by hixie (main author of the HTML5 spec): https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2

If you've ever thought DRM made no sense at av the tech or crypto level, read that to see that you are right but focusing on the wrong aspect, and that strategically it makes perfect sense (and is even nastier).

> If you've ever thought DRM made no sense at av the tech or crypto level, read that to see that you are right but focusing on the wrong aspect, and that strategically it makes perfect sense (and is even nastier).

Everybody already knows that. But Hollywood can't actually admit to that because it's blatant cartoon villain-style robber baron behavior, so they keep insisting that the purpose of DRM is to "protect content" from "pirates." Which means we have to keep pointing out that it has never done that.

Their actual reason for pushing DRM is why we need to get rid of it.

There is nothing new in your link. See https://books.google.com.ua/books?id=m5wLgC546hMC&pg=PA24875...

Google wants to steal Web content by downloading (i.e. pirating) it, using automatic programs called "crawlers" which cause pages to be served but don't provide any revenue via ad views. That's theft, and it shouldn't be allowed.

They also want to use that content in unapproved ways, for example to extract keywords and links. They then serve this unlicensed information publically, with their own ads.

Thankfully, we can put a stop to such wholesale commercial piracy by encrypting our content using EME.

</sarcasm>

That's a really terrible analogy.

The web already has that kind of DRM and always did: robots.txt, enforced by social convention rather than encryption.

And yes some companies ban crawlers and try to get their content out of search engines for questionable reasons. More often, they try to strongarm Google so their content is still there, but they get paid for the privilege, which is not a reasonable approach and thus not supported by the robots.txt "DRM" protocol.

robots.txt is not DRM: it can be freely implemented by anyone without special knowledge – and ignoring it does not lead to a criminal investigation.

No proponent of the technology has ever claimed any of that in this context. A sarcasm tag doesn't automatically make it a useful comment.

I think what the parent comment really needs is the:

<sarcasm-against-strawman /> tag.

"EME-style rules" meaning similarly restrictive rules on the core browser functions of the time, not streaming video.

I understand the case that EME makes it more difficult to create a browser, but none of the biggest tech companies got their start by writing browsers.

Somewhat of a quip, but I suppose technically still true: Without the creation of new browsers, we'd still be in the Internet Explorer age, and we can all imagine how much potential revenue would have been lost for internet companies, if that was the case.

Perhaps it is building the backend that is considered to burdensome? A youtube competitor would need to serve DRMed video and thus be able to do EME.

No they wouldn't. YouTube doesn't use EME, at least for user-generated content.