The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the movie industry's main copyright lobby, has joined the W3C, the group responsible for setting web standards.
The move has stirred controversy across the Internet, with users fearing an injection of more DRM into the HTML standards. This follows the
W3C's controversial move last May when it support the use of Encrypted Media Extensions (EMEs) as part of the HTML5 standards, which paves the way for DRM to be integrated into web videos.
Critics slammed the move at that time, accusing the W3C of pandering to movie studio interests and possible causing the fracturing of the HTML standard, the standardised code that is behind every webpage on the Internet. Open source advocates say that the implementation of Content Decryption Modules (CDMs) as within the EME interface discriminates against open source software developers, due to the difficulty of implementing Hollywood-compliant CDMs in an open source manner. It could also lead to incompatibility between browsers and operating systems, each with their own incompatible CDM implementation.
With the MPAA, a long time supporter DRM copy protection, now joining the W3C, Hollywood's interests may now receive even more attention, the same critics fear.
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