Wrong. The Web already has DRM - Silverlight and other junk. The subject is about not dragging this garbage into the HTML standard.
> Now we can do this the easy way, with standards that are agreed upon across vendors -- or the hard way, with proprietary plug-ins that only work in Windows and Internet Explorer.
EME won't make DRM "easier" for users - it will still require closed source black box modules which will never work with open source browsers. It might make it easier for Netflix and co. who push this idiocy onto the web. But it's their problem, users and the Web should not oblige them with comfortable proliferation of unethical approaches. If anything it should be made harder, to give more incentives to avoid it.
You've hit it: standardization speeds proliferation, and there's no reason at all for the W3C to speed the proliferation of lock-in, effectively supporting a digital arms race.
There may be rationalizations for DRM by certain individuals or companies, just as there are "reasons" from warlords to expand their empires, but none of them necessarily benefit everyone justly. For that matter, there are straight-forward arguments that DRM cannot benefit everyone justly (for example, DRM prevents users from controlling their equipment, or it prevents innovation thereby distorting the market), and if it can't: why on earth is it worth promoting?
Saying DRM should be in HTML 5 is like saying the freedom to murder should be a human right. IMHO, both cross a line that make them (clearly) no longer objectively in the public interest.
The ability to embed plugins is as close to that line as necessary - and that has already been standardized. There is no reason to go farther than that and to proliferate a tool that is not in the public interest (for all intents and purposes a "weapon" against the public).
Wrong. The Web already has DRM - Silverlight and other junk. The subject is about not dragging this garbage into the HTML standard.
> Now we can do this the easy way, with standards that are agreed upon across vendors -- or the hard way, with proprietary plug-ins that only work in Windows and Internet Explorer.
EME won't make DRM "easier" for users - it will still require closed source black box modules which will never work with open source browsers. It might make it easier for Netflix and co. who push this idiocy onto the web. But it's their problem, users and the Web should not oblige them with comfortable proliferation of unethical approaches. If anything it should be made harder, to give more incentives to avoid it.