Skip to main content

Electronic Frontier Foundation appeals web consortium’s DRM standards

digital rights management
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) decided to officially recommend the use of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for protecting copyrighted video on the internet. This will enable web surfers to watch media in a browser that requires Digital Rights Management copy protection without the need for browser-based plugins.

“It moves the responsibility for interaction from plugins to the browser,” the consortium states. “As such, EME offers a better user experience, bringing greater interoperability, privacy, security, and accessibility to viewing encrypted video on the web.”

Recommended Videos

The W3C is an international organization that enforces standards for the internet. It develops protocols and guidelines to bring balance to the World Wide Web, and to reach the full potential of the latest technologies. Its stated mission is to push for a safe, open platform that can be used on all hardware scattered across the globe.

The W3C first introduced EME in 2013 as a specification for linking a web browser to a web-based software module that handles Digital Rights Management. It doesn’t include a specific type of content control, but instead provides means for web developers to insert scripts into web pages that can select the appropriate content management mechanism. Scripts can also control license and key exchanges between the browser and the protected content’s host server.

“It supports a wide range of use cases without requiring client-side modifications in each user agent for each use case,” the W3C states. “This enables content providers to develop a single application solution for all devices.”

Digital Rights Management is a necessary component for all consumable media. For instance, it thwarts the process of recording copyrighted video and selling the content for profit. Software developers use DRM to authorize the installation of their products on PCs, such as Microsoft’s Genuine Windows initiative. But Digital Rights Management can be problematic, eating up unnecessary resources and causing software-related issues.

Adding to that, browser-based plugins have proven to be insecure. That is the big push behind HTML5: to move content management, playback control, games, video conferencing, and more into the internet itself so that hackers don’t have a specific software-based target. It eliminates the need for Microsoft’s Silverlight and Adobe Flash, the latter of which has proven to be a highly attractive attack vector for hackers.

However, the W3C’s recommendation of the EME standard doesn’t come without criticism. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said last week that the standard has “no safeguards whatsoever for accessibility, security research or competition.” Even more, the standard enables content providers to control how web surfers will watch video in their browsers by enforcing specific “rules.”

Of course, the Electronic Frontier Foundation specifically states that it doesn’t support Digital Rights Management because it gives content owners the right to treat PC owners “as an adversary to be controlled.”

On Wednesday, the EFF decided to formally appeal the W3C recommendation, Ars Technica reports, a process that has not yet been successfully utilized in changing a W3C decision. Cory Doctorow, who represents the EFF on the W3C Advisory Committee, outlined the appeal as such:

“1. That the supposed benefits of standardizing DRM at the W3C can’t be realized unless there [are] protections for people who engage in lawful activity that DRM gets in the way of; and

2. That the W3C’s membership were never polled on whether they wished to institute such protections as part of the W3C’s DRM standardization project.”

But even within the W3C itself, turmoil surrounds the EME, including the argument that it provides inadequate protection for end users. Regardless, the EME standard is now an official recommendation based on a decision made by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee and time will tell if the EFF appeal manages to achieve a first in the W3C’s history.

Updated: Noted that the EFF has officially appealed the W3C recommendation.

Kevin Parrish
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kevin started taking PCs apart in the 90s when Quake was on the way and his PC lacked the required components. Since then…
The M5 MacBook Pro may be another boring update
MacBook Pro with M4

The recently announced 2024 MacBook Pro lineup is not even on the market yet, but there is already buzz about the next two generations of the laptop series. Speculation suggests that there likely won’t be any exciting features on the Apple device until 2026.

There have already been rumors circulating, which indicate the MacBook Pro may upgrade from a mini-LED display to an OLED display in 2026, has been speculated for many months. Industry analysts, including Ming-Chi Kuo and Ross Young, have stated that the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models are set to remain as mini-LED displays in 2025.

Read more
Perplexity unveils an AI-powered ‘election information hub’
perplexity ai information hub 2024 elections harris trump screenshot 11 04 144125

As Americans turn out to the polls on Tuesday to vote, AI startup Perplexity is launching an election information hub, powered by data from the Associated Press, to provide live updates on the results.

"We want to do our part to support an informed electorate," the company announced Friday, "so we’ve built the election hub on Perplexity’s answer engine: an entry point for understanding key issues, voting intelligently, and tracking election results."

Read more
This Alienware gaming PC with RTX 4090 is almost $1,000 off
Alienware Aurora R16 sitting on a coffee table.

Is your current gaming PC on its last legs? If you need an upgrade, check out Dell's offer for the Alienware Aurora R16 gaming desktop with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. From its original price of $4,695, the machine is down to $3,700. It's still pretty expensive, but you won't always get the chance to buy such a powerful gaming PC with a nearly $1,000 discount. However, if you want to pocket the savings of $995, you're going to have to be quick with your purchase as there's no telling when this bargain expires.

Why you should buy the Alienware Aurora R16 gaming desktop
The Alienware Aurora R16, which received a rating of four out of five stars in our review, sits on top of our list of the best gaming PCs. Compared to the Alienware Aurora R15, this latest version of the gaming desktop is around half the size without compromising power or thermals, with upgraded internals for even better performance. In addition to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, this configuration of the Alienware Aurora R16 features the 14th-generation Intel Core i9 processor and 64GB of RAM, which our guide on how to buy a gaming desktop says would be useful for those who will use their machine for other purposes beyond gaming, such as editing videos.

Read more