Re:Tim Berners-Lee just gave us an opening to stop DRM in We...
by JoshTriplett on Friday October 07, 2016 @11:33PM
(#12665538)
> You can implement EME in open source (the part that W3C standardized), and then throw a closed source CDM module on top of it.
Which means the whole thing doesn't work in a fully Open Source browser. EME is non-functional without a proprietary CDM.
It's like standardizing the <object> or <applet> tags: yes, they're a standard, but they're a standard way to talk to completely non-standard bits. But worse, because you could use <object> or <applet> to talk to an Open Source plugin, but a CDM completely loses what little function it has if open.
(That includes hardware-backed CDMs, since signed software you can't replace isn't Open Source either.)
Which means the whole thing doesn't work in a fully Open Source browser. EME is non-functional without a proprietary CDM.
It's like standardizing the <object> or <applet> tags: yes, they're a standard, but they're a standard way to talk to completely non-standard bits. But worse, because you could use <object> or <applet> to talk to an Open Source plugin, but a CDM completely loses what little function it has if open.
(That includes hardware-backed CDMs, since signed software you can't replace isn't Open Source either.)