The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) officially published its recommendation for a digital rights management (DRM) scheme. By doing so it put an end to its era of promoting an open web. After fighting the W3C on this matter and even proposing a very good compromise, which was rebuffed, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has resigned from the W3C:
We believe they will regret that choice. Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.
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Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C.
Since the W3C no longer serves its intended purpose I hope to see many other principled members resign from the organization as well.
While content creators are interested in restricting the distribution of their products, the proposal put forth by the W3C will return us to the dark days of ActiveX. Since the proposal is really an application programming interface (API), not a complete solution, content creators can require users to install any DRM scheme. These DRM schemes will be native code. If you remember the security horrors of arbitrary native code being required by websites using Active X, you have an idea of what users are in for with this new DRM scheme. At this point I hope that the W3C burns to the ground and a better organization rises from its ashes.