14 DAY TRIAL // Google, Microsoft and Netflix have been trying to attract as little attention as possible to their proposal for HTML5 DRM and have actually done a good job so far.
The proposal ended up at the World Wide Web Consortium, the body that governs web standard, a couple of months back and, while some people commented, the move has mostly flown under the radar.
More recently, Google added support for HTML5 DRM, aka the Encrypted Media Extensions, to Chrome and very few people even noticed.
But the issue is starting to gain some visibility, notably, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has written about it and, perhaps more importantly, Google's own Ian Hickson has expressed his thoughts on the matter.
Google employees are fairly outspoken as it is, but they don't usually criticize Google outright. And Hickson is no regular employee, until recently, he was the editor of the HTML5 spec at W3C.
He's also one of the leading figures on web technology development, having been involved in the creation of CSS as well. His name and opinions carry weight. And his opinion on DRM couldn't be clearer.
"DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well," he concludes in a long post on Google+ on the subject of DRM.
In it, he argues that DRM is a lot more successful than people give it credit for. It's not successful in protecting against piracy, but he argues that this isn't DRM's actual purpose, it's just the guise under which it's perpetuated.
DRM is used by content makers as leverage against software and hardware makers, leverage they wouldn't have had were it not for DRM.
DRM is not designed to stop pirates, it's designed to keep other companies in line and control innovation. And at that, DRM has been hugely successful.
In his post, Hickson doesn't mention HTML5 DRM or Google, but there's no coincidence that he decided to write this just as Google is busy pushing HTML5 DRM.
Google may even get away with it, WebKit, the HTML engine in Chrome, is now the dominant player on the web, mobile and desktop. It's used by Chrome, Safari and Opera. HTML5 DRM is already a reality, Google and Microsoft need W3C's approval far less than they ever did.
But Google will end up paying for its new ideals, it will end up paying by losing valuable people like Ian Hickson and many others who will feel that the company they work for has little in common with their own ideals.