Over many objections, W3C approves DRM for HTML5

(credit: Bart Maguire)

A system for providing DRM protection to Web-based content is now an official recommendation from W3C.

In 2013, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry body that oversees the development of Web standards, took the controversial decision to develop a system for integrating DRM into browsers. The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) would offer a way for content producers to encrypt and protect audio and video content from within their plugin-free HTML-and-JavaScript applications.

EME is not itself a DRM system. Rather, it is a specification that allows JavaScript applications to interact with DRM modules to handle things like encryption keys and decrypting the protected data. Microsoft, Google, and Adobe all have DRM modules that comply with the spec.

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