Dreamland

The comments, general tone and voting patterns on this article really make me wonder exactly who El Reg's reader-base really is, and what planet they come from. Apparently some planet where big companies don't shape the web, and content providers are simply going to magically give up on DRM because HTML5 doesn't support it yet.

Like it or not, content providers are big on DRM and that won't suddenly change due to HTML5 - it might change long term (I doubt it) but there is absolutely no way moving from Flash->HTML5 will cause a paradigm shift because the big bosses don't even understand the changes.

If MS, Google and Apple want it to happen - it's going to. It doesn't matter one jot if w3 approve, the big browser guys will either make their own proprietary solutions or work together on an unofficial standard.

It'll save your blood pressure if you simply realise this now and stop making fools of yourself bandying around words like 'unethical' and 'evil' (I mean, seriously?!) Nobody tells Google/Apple/MS what features they can put in their browsers, if those three agree on implementing DRM functionality everyone else will have to.