Adopting HTML5 video tag hasn’t been without loss

Even though HTML5 has been here for a long time (since 2008), the process of adoption of HTML5 <video> is far from being over.

It effectively replaces video playback through Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) which was used before because it was the only suitable tool. There was a support for h264, ads, protection and it was fast. Disadvantages: horrible security like remote code executions. RCE patches every month. Also I heard it’s written partly in assembly language. And vendor lock-in from Adobe. They used to be very big pricks. Only after they were knocked down from their pedestal by Steve Jobs, they cooled down a bit.

I believe, until you still can download videos from YouTube with youtube-dl, it’s not over yet. Not even close. To fix this problem there is Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Specification which loads binary blobs as copy protection. Sounds…like…Flash.

This year I saw a couple of sites showing “Without enabled DRM you cannot play videos.” And I couldn’t. But I didn’t really care and surfed away to different places. Two or three sites somewhere on the internet. Of course Netflix and others are already using it in their players.

I’m not really agaist copy protection, but I’d like to buy music and movies without DRM. Can I? Movies - not a chance. Music - the largest catalogue - iTunes - is heavily propagating its streaming service and to buy music you need….fucking iTunes media player. And the whole Apple ecosystem is one big DRM. And I have only one life and I don’t to care enough. I loved 7digital…

YouTube for now? Even with lots of ads since last month it’s still the best shot. But that won’t last forever. From my point of view, YT has been already dying since new year. But as usual, it takes years to fall into oblivion.

And what’s our loss? Our freedom to develop our culture since we are connected together and we copy ourselves and build on the works of our ancestors - or just creating anime music videos from our favorite anime and music.