Communications of the ACM
Html5 Webpage Locks 'would Stifle Innovation'
The Electronic Freedom Foundation says the World Wide Web Consortium's plans to provide ways to lock HTML5 could change the open way in which the Web currently works.
Credit: World Wide Web Consortium
Innovation could be held back by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) plans to include ways to digitally lock media in the Web's core technology. These locks also could limit the ability to share images and videos, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which has formally objected to plans to include rights management in the HTML5 formatting language.
EFF says the proposed rights management system, Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), would create a "black box" that the entertainment industry could use to control what is done with media online. EFF's Danny O'Brien warns that accepting EME could change the free and open way the Web currently works, possibly generating a "Web where images and pages cannot be saved or searched, ads cannot be blocked, and innovative new browsers cannot compete without explicit permission from big content companies."
W3C CEO Jeffrey Jaffe says EME is necessary to provide users with a rich Web experience. "Without content protection, owners of premium video content, driven by both their economic goals and their responsibilities to others, will simply deprive the open web of key content," Jaffe says.
From BBC News
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