14 DAY TRIAL // The World Wide Web Consortium, against wide criticism, has decided to go ahead with the process of standardizing HTML DRM, or rather, a technology to enable DRM in the browser, mainly for video content.
The proposition has been controversial for a number of reasons. For one, proponents of open technologies – and it doesn't get much more open than the web – don't like DRM out of principle.
While the technology being proposed by Microsoft and Google, two unlikely allies, doesn't actually implement a DRM scheme, it merely provides a standard way of loading a DRM plugin. Its end goal is to enable DRM on the web which is enough for some to dismiss it.
In fact, because it doesn't provide an encryption scheme but merely provides an avenue to load a DRM plugin, it goes against the very idea of standardization.
A standard is supposed to make a technology as widely available as possible. One that prohibits users from loading content from the web unless they have a specific plugin goes against the very notion.
What's more, there is very little chance of having all major browsers implement the feature. Chrome already supports it, IE will get it since Microsoft is behind the proposal, Apple is usually sympathetic to the plight of corporations and doesn't like "openness" all that much, so Safari will get it as well.
But Firefox will never support it. Granted, Firefox has a dwindling position on the desktop and is basically non-existent on mobile devices, so Mozilla's hand isn't a strong one.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as the Free Software Foundation, have asked the W3C to stop the proceedings, but to no avail.
In the end, the decision of whether the W3C standardizes the technology or not is largely symbolic. It's already used in the wild and will be implemented with or without W3C's support.