It isn’t a single entity per se, it is a consortium of many of the industries leading companies and experts, and hence reflects the will of larger industry over any one individual.
The entire point of any standard is to have a single agreed upon reference so that you don’t have a zillion fragmented implimentations. The W3C is literally what makes the web work and usable. They have done and continue to do a tremendous amount of good.
I get that the EFF wants DRM to go away altogether, but the W3C isn’t standardizing DRM, nor does the EME standard include any DRM. DRM is still imlimented via propritary binary blobs from the respective vendors (same as it always has been), the only difference is…
What EME Does:
- standardizes the discovery method, meaning that it is easier to find and use new third party blobs.
- it implements the decoding in a much safer container then the previous full browser plugin method, protecting web users security and privacy in a way that wasn’t possible before.
What EME Does NOT Do:
- Change the historical separation between third party DRM decryption and the browser that has always existed.
- Standardize the thrid party decryption blobs, it only standardizes their discovery.
- Include any 3rd party DRM into the browser.
That is 100% correct. This is the W3Cs statement as well.
