I disagree. The pains of DRM were growing. The usability wasn't bad enough yet, but it was getting worse. As people use more and more devices and they want their media in all places, the existing plugins were getting less suitable.

That's why there was a push for standardization anyways. Dealing with all the quirks of all the platforms was becoming difficult for the copyright owners.

There was no reason that the W3C should have made this easier for them. The only thing that the copyright owners want more than DRM is an audience. The browser vendors held the audience, and handed them over without even a fight.

That was the best opportunity we had. Sure we can try to get consumers to turn away from DRM, but that's just not going to happen, we already turned in our trump card.