<story><title>YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video</title><url>http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pippy</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re referring to Encrypted Media Extensions it&amp;#x27;s not a DRM mechanism that requires proprietary software. It&amp;#x27;s a specification for a communication channel between a browser and Digital Rights Management agent software on the local machine. While it&amp;#x27;s not ideal, it&amp;#x27;s just some javascript functions that interact with the DRM on the computer. The DRM software itself is completely optional.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s much better than having plugins that do the same thing (if you use firefox you&amp;#x27;re used to Flash asking for trial Norton to be installed every time a security exploit is found in Flash). In the perfect world we wouldn&amp;#x27;t need it, but it leaves no excuse for media companies not to use HTML5.</text></item><item><author>schoen</author><text>Unfortunately (though it&amp;#x27;s considerably more compartmentalized and constrained than prior iterations), Google is trying to replace Flash with a DRM mechanism that also requires proprietary software.  So while you might think that the advent of HTML5 video means you no longer need proprietary software to interoperate with the services that use it, Google and its partners are working to ensure that that&amp;#x27;s not true.</text></item><item><author>shutupalready</author><text>What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.&lt;p&gt;For those that don&amp;#x27;t know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company&amp;#x27;s stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it&amp;#x27;s now worth $6.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation for RealPlayer&amp;#x27;s popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.&lt;p&gt;But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I&amp;#x27;m relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bzbarsky</author><text>Sorry, but there&amp;#x27;s an important distinction between what you said and what EME is.&lt;p&gt;EME is a spec for a communication channel between script in a web page and a browser, with the idea that the browser then talks to a DRM module.  It&amp;#x27;s not a spec for a communication channel between the browser and a DRM module.&lt;p&gt;This is important, because it means that you end up with DRM modules that are tied to a particular browser.&lt;p&gt;The NPAPI plugin situation is unfortunate in all sorts of ways, but the one good thing it had going for it was that there _was_ an API that multiple browsers all implemented, such that a single plugin binary woudl work in all of them (modulo the usual bugs and incompatibilities you have when there are multiple implementors of an API).&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, 3 of the 4 main browser vendors also happen to be DRM vendors, and were rather united in their opposition to the W3C creating a specification for the communication channel between the browser and the DRM module.</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video</title><url>http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pippy</author><text>If you&amp;#x27;re referring to Encrypted Media Extensions it&amp;#x27;s not a DRM mechanism that requires proprietary software. It&amp;#x27;s a specification for a communication channel between a browser and Digital Rights Management agent software on the local machine. While it&amp;#x27;s not ideal, it&amp;#x27;s just some javascript functions that interact with the DRM on the computer. The DRM software itself is completely optional.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s much better than having plugins that do the same thing (if you use firefox you&amp;#x27;re used to Flash asking for trial Norton to be installed every time a security exploit is found in Flash). In the perfect world we wouldn&amp;#x27;t need it, but it leaves no excuse for media companies not to use HTML5.</text></item><item><author>schoen</author><text>Unfortunately (though it&amp;#x27;s considerably more compartmentalized and constrained than prior iterations), Google is trying to replace Flash with a DRM mechanism that also requires proprietary software.  So while you might think that the advent of HTML5 video means you no longer need proprietary software to interoperate with the services that use it, Google and its partners are working to ensure that that&amp;#x27;s not true.</text></item><item><author>shutupalready</author><text>What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.&lt;p&gt;For those that don&amp;#x27;t know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company&amp;#x27;s stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it&amp;#x27;s now worth $6.&lt;p&gt;The only explanation for RealPlayer&amp;#x27;s popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.&lt;p&gt;But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I&amp;#x27;m relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>schoen</author><text>I agree that HTML5 is much better than Flash in every way, so in this sense I&amp;#x27;d just like to encourage our community to continue applying pressure at all levels and in all channels to ensure that Encrypted Media Extensions doesn&amp;#x27;t continue to be a part of HTML5 standards, UAs, or websites.</text></comment>