This issue, I think, concerns copyright and its effectively unlimited duration and scope as it does the technical issue of protecting the rights of copyright holders. The holders have the legal right to control distribution of the copyrighted material, as well as the right to use technical means to protect against its unlawful copying and distribution, for definitions of unlawful that vary from country to country.
Along the way, the copyright holders as a group have engaged in rent seeking activities that resulted in protection that extends far beyond the life of any author who might have been thought the intended beneficiary of the copyright law, and additional protection for the technical means of media protection as exemplified by the DMCA. They also have been tempted, too often successfully, to include in the technical means features that prevent lawful use of copyrighted material and to engage in extortionate lawsuits that demand wholly unreasonable punishment for relatively inconsequential infringements. They often have been a sorry lot indeed, and quite deserve to be brought to heel.
Failing to include digital restrictions management capability in web standards will not prevent the media corps from implementing their own any more than including it in the standards will prevent it. However, having a standard, even an inadequate one, often is preferable to having none, and in the case of EME may result in broader availability of copyrighted material than is the case now; and that probably is a good thing. A better thing might be its availability without such encumbrances, but that is unlikely. A better thing, almost for sure, would be to revise copyright law to reduce the term to something reasonable like the far older 14 years with an optional 14 year extension, and maybe reduce penaltie for infringement to an amount commensurate with the actual royalty payable for legal copies in the quantity infringed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
