Tell W3C We Don't Want DRM in HTML

The discussion about implement DRM in HTML has been ongoing on the W3C mailing lists for a while now. Sometimes it seems more of a flame war than others. Companies like Netflix, Microsoft and even Google are trying to push for a standard that would allow the content distributors to control the user's usage of the delivered content.

It's called Encrypted Media Extensions and it says this: This proposal extends HTMLMediaElement providing APIs to control playback of protected content.. They would like to have a standard method for controlling your usage of their content. This means things like restricting users from even being able to pause a video, fast forward/rewind and of course restricting users from recording the content to disk.

I don't see how it would be possible for a user to have a 100% Free and/or Open Source browser that can access a video but yet restrict the user from doing certain things. Or the browser could be Free but then the user would have to install some proprietary piece that will work with the HTML spec to then restrict themselves.

Currently these things are done via non-free plugins such as Flash or Silverlight, maybe also with Java but you really have to be made of hate to make a restricted video player in Java.

The problem that the "content" industry has is that these proprietary plugins are dying, they are limited in adoption, function and they are not optimised for performance. They are a pain in the class (programming joke, sorry). Hence the dream of making DRM part of the standard.

Anyway, I don't see why such a specification should be part of W3C's standard. Those that want to restrict the usage of user's computers could simply get together and create a communal plugin, like Flash or Silverlight, but better and standardised, if they want, even open-source. But in the HTML spec, there should be no effort made to help people restrict users. That's not the point.

Please sign the petition by Defective By Design against DRM in HTML. Indeed, this is defective by design, in so many ways.