W3C has begun work on an open standard exchange format for audio description and dubbing scripts and wants interested people to review the draft requirements first published on 2022-05-10.

This post is by one of the TTWG Chairs. It's about this work and why it is important, and why now is a good time to be doing it.

As a Chair not only of the W3C’s Audio Description Community Group (open to all) and the Timed Text Working Group, but also of the EBU’s Timed Text group, I’ve been privileged to see that there’s a growing interest in both audio description and dubbing. As well as the more established vendors, there is a growing cottage industry of small, you might almost say hand-made, web based authoring tools, that each seem to use its own bespoke proprietary format for saving and loading work.

From a client perspective, this means that these tools do not interoperate with each other, and it can be hard to move from one to another. This is a classic case where an open standard exchange format would solve real needs. From conversations I have had, I believe implementers would welcome an open standard format.

From a user perspective, anything that makes it more likely to get an accessible experience, especially for users who are watching videos without necessarily seeing the images, must be a good thing. Audio Description and Dubbing are both important in this area.

Audio Description helps explain what is happening in the video image directly, in case the video content does not describe it adequately in the audio.

Dubbing is an alternative to translation subtitles: traditionally it has seemed that some countries culturally prefer one or the other, but perhaps we can make it easier for content providers to offer both and allow the user to choose.

Finally, if we can provide the script data as text content to the player, this opens up alternative renderings that are neither visible nor audible, for example using Braille displays.

The W3C Timed Text Working Group has agreed to work on creating an open standard exchange format that supports both dubbing and audio description, and has just published a first public draft Note describing the requirements that such a format needs to support.

The DAPT Requirements Note first published earlier this week, on 2022-05-10, will be used to define the Recommendation track specification, which will be a profile of TTML2.

We have published this as a draft Note because getting the requirements right at the beginning is really important, and we want everyone who is interested to review it and tell us how they can be improved.

The way we derived the requirements was to consider firstly the production workflow, then the needs of each step in that workflow, and finally break that down into a granular set of requirements, against which we can check the resulting specification.

Please do review the requirements document and feed back - the header material at the beginning of the document says how to get in touch.

The IMSC Recommendation includes an Hypothetical Render Model (HRM) that constrains document complexity, allowing authors of subtitles and captions to know that they are not generating subtitles that will overload the players.

An open source implementation of the HRM for IMSC Text Profile documents has been made available.

IMSC users and implementers are invited to test their documents against this or another implementation, and are encouraged to report issues they believe exist with the HRM as specified in the IMSC Recommendation.

Background - what is an HRM?

Correct presentation of subtitles and captions against video media is complex.

Many people think first of the visual appearance: does it support all the script and layout features needed, the colours, positions, fonts, etc.? Getting those all implemented requires a high level of complexity, and that can mean that the processing time to present subtitles becomes significant, especially in the context of real time video playback - your web based player is already doing a lot of work playing back video and audio, before you ask it to render text or images at the same time, with frame accurate synchronisation.

Timing is also a crucial factor in correct presentation: late subtitles, subtitles that are not visible for long enough to read, or subtitles that never appear at all, are real audience-affecting problems.

Implementers of video players need their code to be performant enough to show the subtitles; for this they need to know what is the worst case complexity that they have to deal with.

Authors of subtitles and captions need to know that they are not generating subtitles that will overload the players.

The solution to this, within the IMSC Recommendation, is an algorithm that can be run on a document statically, i.e., without performing a full render, that establishes if the document’s complexity is okay, or too great. This mechanism is called the Hypothetical Render Model (HRM). It uses a double buffer model and requires that there is enough time after each change in display to render what will be displayed at the next change, using a rendering model and some predefined values for expected rendering performance.

W3C is delighted to be the recipient of a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. We are being recognized for worldwide media standard enabling a Full TV Experience on the Web.

Among the web technologies that the Web Consortium develops, HTML5 has brought videos to the Web, ending the era of plug-ins for media playback. A few W3C technologies are at the core of all web media applications today. They have turned the Web into an unprecedented media platform that mixes professional and user-generated content, available anywhere, anytime, on any device, at any resolution, and to anyone.

This prestigious Industry award recognizes and celebrates the long course of our work: our first W3C workshop on Web and TV was in 1998. That particular aspect of Entertainment on the Web was the subject of six W3C workshops in the past 20 years. Look how far video has spread on the web since then! We are bringing W3C's expertise and commitment to accessibility to help make video and TV on the Web accessible. The future is as exciting as the past. With the Immersive Web coming down the road, our work is not done.

Representatives from W3C staff attended the awards ceremony at the NAB Show on Sunday, April 7th, 2019 in Las Vegas, NV. "We are especially excited to be honoring these prestigious companies and presenting our gala again at the NAB Show where the intersection of innovation, technology and excitement in the future of television can be found," said NATAS President & CEO Adam Sharp.

"The Web has no boundaries. The potential audience for media on the Web exceeds 4 billion people across the world," stated Jun Murai, W3C Steering Committee Member, Professor of Keio University, and recently a Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour, who accepted the award on W3C's behalf. He added "I would like to thank the Academy for recognizing the work of the W3C. I would of course also like to thank W3C Members and individuals who contributed, some of whom are also being recognized by the Academy tonight, for their work in Standardization of a Full TV Experience."

This marks the second Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award that W3C has received. In 2016, W3C was awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for its work on Accessible Video Captioning and Subtitles.

W3C is grateful that the Emmy committee has honored us again. We take pride that millions of web users continue to enjoy a safer, more secure experience viewing video streaming on the web. We are grateful for our community, and all those who work to build standards and technologies for the web, laying out the foundation for future innovations on the Open Web Platform.

Media and Entertainment

(This post is part of a series recapping the October 2018 W3C Strategic Highlights. This post does not include significant updates since that report. For more recent news, please see the Media and Entertainment Interest Group home page.)

The Media and Entertainment Interest Group serves as a steering committee for media-related features that create immersive experiences on the Web and maintains the Media and Entertainment Road-map.

The group's current goals are to:

• Reinforce core media technologies:
  • Complete captioning profiles and other formats used for the representation of text synchronized with other timed media, like audio and video (TTML2, TTML-IMSC 1.1).
  • Better support linear content, notably ad-insertion in MSE. The incubation of a codec switching feature for MSE has started in the WICG.
  • Improve support for Media timed events.
  • Enhance color support (HDR, wide gamut).
• Reduce fragmentation:
  • Agree on a common and testable baseline for HTML5, in collaboration with CTA WAVE to help reduce the cost of producing content that works across a variety of devices. Since publication of the Web Media API last December, focus is on testing CE devices, and preparing a new annual release for the spec by the end of the year.
  • Improve Media Capabilities detection.
  • Improve capability detection for encrypted content.
• Create the future:
  • Bring XR headsets to the Web: the Immersive Web Community Group brought its WebXR Device API to the Recommendation track via the Immersive Web Working Group, launched late September.
  • Bring the power of GPUs to the Web, including in video processing. Also see discussions in the GPU for the Web Community Group.
  • Extend Media Capture for 3D cameras.

The Media and Entertainment Group was formed to provide a forum for media-related technical discussions to track progress of media features on the Web within W3C groups and use of Web technologies by external organizations, and to identify use cases and requirements that existing and/or new specifications need to meet to achieve a tighter support of media services on the Web.

If you are interested in the power of media and entertainment to become better on the web and to help create the future of technologies, please see the Media and Entertainment Interest Group page.

A brief history of media on the Web

Media on the Web has gone through three main stages until now. Before the release of HTML5, audio and video were essentially not on the Web, and only available through plug-ins. Plug-ins were widely available on desktop browsers, but smartphones were around the corner, and the Web slowly transitioned to a plug-in free platform.

Then HTML5, first published as a W3C Recommendation in 2014, came along. HTML5 brought media to the Web through the <audio> and <video> tags. Plugins were no longer needed, in theory at least. In practice though, the media industry was willing to stream content on the Web, which was not immediately possible with HTML5 in an interoperable way. HTTP-based adaptive streaming solutions, such as Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG DASH) or HTTP live Streaming (HLS), were developed to improve the user experience when streaming content on the Web, but most HTML5 browsers did not support these mechanisms out of the box. All in all, even though HTML5 brought support for media content, the Web platform remained impractical for professional media usage.

Media Source Extensions (MSE) and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), published as W3C Recommendations in 2016 and 2017, added the missing blocks to address video on demand (VoD) requirements on the Web, making it possible to implement adaptive streaming mechanisms and to control playback of encrypted content across browsers.

Media on the Web in 2018

A number of use cases, which were arguably of lower priority as long as the above core technologies had not been developed and implemented across browsers, are now moving to the forefront of standardization discussions around media.

Sticking to building blocks, given the heterogeneity of media content supported across platforms, one core technology that is still missing today is the ability for Web applications to tell the media capabilities of the underlying platform (decoding, encoding, and output capabilities for a given format) with enough details to make an optimal decision when picking media content for the user. A solution is being incubated in the Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG) with the Media Capabilities specification. That specification should make further progress in 2018.

TV displays, projectors and regular computer displays now support High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut content. How can these wider color spaces be supported on the Web platform? How to map luminance levels when mixing HDR and non-HDR content? The Color on the Web Community Group is exploring these questions. The CSS Working Group already started to address extensions to CSS to support other color spaces (CSS Colors Level 4 and CSS Media Queries Level 4).

All embedded media devices (TV sets, set-top boxes, HDMI dongles, smartphones, etc.) have now embraced Web technologies one way or the other, although with varying levels of support for key technologies. making it difficult for content providers to develop media Web applications that run smoothly across media devices. To reduce this fragmentation, the Web Media API Community Group maintains a baseline of Web APIs that are well supported across main Web browsers and that embedded devices should support as well. This effort, done in collaboration with the CTA Wave Project, led to publication of the Web Media API Snapshot 2017 in December 2017. This group may transition to a W3C Working Group this year to produce yearly snapshots of the Web platform for media applications.

Talking about media devices and displays, second screen scenarios are a space to watch in 2018. Users typically own and switch between multiple devices nowadays — for instance, they may discover media content on their smartphones but will want to play back that content on their large TV sets. The Second Screen Community Group incubates an Open Screen Protocol on top of which the Presentation API and the Remote Playback API could be implemented, with a view to providing full interoperability across devices in the longer term.

Last but not least, streaming live linear content on the Web remains a challenge. The first version of MSE and EME addressed Video on Demand needs, but provided only superficial support for live linear content scenarios. New requirements for these specs, such as the need to give Web applications some control over the internal buffering to prioritize low latency over continuity of media playback, are being discussed. They may trigger renewed work on these specifications down the line.

Tracking progress

The Roadmap of Media Technologies for the Web highlights the topics mentioned above, other identified gaps, as well as on-going developments, not mentioned here for brevity — for example, the thorough work on captioning with Timed Text Markup Language (TTML) and the Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT), or extensions needed to support 360° videos, discussed in the Immersive Web Community Group.

The Media & Entertainment Interest Group tracks progress of on-going activities at W3C and elsewhere, and assign priorities of possible standardization efforts at W3C. The group holds monthly calls, focused on a different technology each time. It serves as steering committee for the standardization of media-related features at W3C. Interested parties are welcome to join and help improve media support on the Web!

We are hearing a great deal of anger, concerns and disagreement –in the Press, in e-mail we've received, and in response on Social Media. We have been reading and hearing assertions that we made a mistake when we published Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) as a W3C Recommendation.

A lot has been written about EME in the many years the work has been conducted at the W3C, in more or less sourced and more or less unbiased articles. Among those writings are the materials we prepared, the stories we shared with the media, the Blog posts our Director Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeff Jaffe have written. So much has been written that I wonder how much, and what has been read and heard.

We hear furious feedback from some of our community and we are sorry about those who feel this way about this contentious topic and those we failed to convince, those whose trust we lost –trust that we hope and believe we have worked many years to earn and will work to gain again in the future, although we do know many viewpoints are unlikely to change. We also hear those eager to get back to their non-EME interactions with the W3C, whether they support or oppose EME.

Relevant materials

• Director's disposition of comments and decision to publish EME as a Recommendation
• Backgrounder on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• EME and Accessibility
• Reflections on the EME debate
• Press release: W3C Publishes Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) as a W3C Recommendation

The W3C leadership has been accused of overriding objections and of obstruction

At W3C all decisions are informed by discussions amongst the W3C membership and the general public. The recent vote was not a decision of the W3C management, but a voting of the W3C members themselves.

Our leaders have led, and facilitated a very divisive debate both among the W3C Membership and Web community, but that is one that touches on society at large. To quote from a blog post our CEO published Monday, "DRM has been used for decades prior to the EME debate. But in recent years it is a credit to the world wide web that the web has become the delivery vehicle for everything, including movies. Accordingly it was inevitable that we would face issues of conflicting values and the appropriate accommodations for commercial use of the web."

W3C is a technical standards body and thus, the debate helped improve the specification in areas of security, privacy, and accessibility.

The W3C is accused of disowning its mission statement and principles, even of greed

We take at heart our principles, and greed is far from being among those. W3C is a Membership organization, which means that Members pay a fee to contribute to setting the agenda of the Open Web Platform, to participate in W3C technical work and to send engineers to conduct that work, but our Process is built around community work and throughout the standardization track our Process ensures our work is reviewed.

Refer to section 6.2.3.1 “Wide Review” of the Process document in particular: "The objective is to ensure that the entire set of stakeholders of the Web community, including the general public, have had adequate notice of the progress of the Working Group, and were able to actually perform reviews of and provide comments on the specification. A second objective is to encourage groups to request reviews early enough that comments and suggested changes can still be reasonably incorporated in response to the review. Before approving transitions, the Director will consider who has been explicitly offered a reasonable opportunity to review the document, who has provided comments, the record of requests to and responses from reviewers, and seek evidence of clear communication to the general public about appropriate times and which content to review and whether such reviews actually occurred."

Wide Review is a requirement and such review needs to be demonstrated as part of W3C work to proceed through the various maturity levels.

The W3C is accused of keeping votes secret, and not being transparent

The W3C follows the W3C Process Document which describes the organizational structure of the W3C and the processes related to the responsibilities and functions they exercise to enable W3C to accomplish its mission to lead the Web to its full potential.

Futhermore, W3C has co-signed with IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and Internet Society, a statement affirming the importance of a jointly developed set of principles establishing a modern paradigm for global, open standards.

Also, W3C is a level playing field. No matter how much big companies at W3C are worth, they have exactly the same vote; exactly the same voice as a small start up, university or advocacy group – each member gets one vote.

Consider these two facts: our statutes provision member-confidentiality, and the process by which W3C Members can appeal certain decisions was used for the very first time and concluded last week.

In the case at hand, there were several milestones where the W3C Members expressed their preference on EME, through the following decision-making and voting:

• In March, to transition EME from Proposed Recommendation to Recommendation, we called for an Advisory Committee review. AC Reviews aren't votes. In reviews, W3C Members share comments which are considered and addressed by the W3C Director who engages as appropriate with all the parties (Working Group, Members, team, etc.). In July, the Director addressed the comment and made the decision to publish EME as a Recommendation. The key action of the Director was to listen to objections. All objections he considered and some caused changes to improve the spec - but the objection to stop the spec he did override.
• That decision was appealed by the EFF and at least 5% of the Membership supported the appeal request.
• In August, we called for vote on the Appeal of the Director's decision to advance EME to W3C Recommendation. That was a majority vote. It ended last Thursday with 108 who sustained the Director’s decision, 57 who rejected it, and 20 who abstained.

Review and voting last about 4 weeks by Process (although the Appeal process isn't yet very specific, so we followed the existing process for votes), reviews are governed by consensus while votes are governed by majority, and in both cases all W3C Members had the same options for visibility of their responses:

• Member-visible
• Member-visible and send email to w3c-ac-forum
• Public and send email to both w3c-ac-forum and public-new-work
• Team-only

Screenshot of the visibility options available to W3C Members responses

Those options regarding visibility of W3C Member responses have been available since December 2014, further to W3C Member request, for all calls for review of proposed work and proposed recommendations.

Lastly, although our practice had been to not share any numerical results, we informed our Members that we would share this information for the appeal vote that was about to end, given the controversy. Our long-standing practice has been to respect member-confidentiality, yet we still shared the vote totals, and while we did not expect any particular recognition, we never anticipated to be accused of abandoning consensus, or to be blamed because no member chose to make their responses publicly visible.

EME is a framework for DRM implementation, not DRM itself

Many have protested EME or W3C making a “DRM standard”. Implying that EME is DRM is false. EME is an API to DRM. EME is agnostic of the DRM. Using "DRM" in place of "EME" furthers the wrong assumption that W3C controls DRM. W3C does not create/standardize/mandate DRM directly. That is out of scope and is stated clearly in the specification itself, the charter of the working group that conducted the work, our public communication and material.

DRM exists whether the W3C as a Consortium or a Team wants it or not.

It is equally wrong to assume that browsers would not implement DRM without EME, the alternatives are closed and dedicated applications, which media outlets would insist upon for access to their content.

What EME achieves is that by allowing the decryption to take place in the browser, users benefit from the security, privacy and accessibility that are built in the Open Web Platform.

Furthermore, all functionalities involved being provided by the HTML specification or some of its extensions, current and future security, privacy and accessibility enhancements of the Open Web Platform can be leveraged.

W3C is accused of betraying the free and open Web

EME is an extension of the Open Web Platform. 49 W3C groups contribute to grow and improve the Open Web Platform, enabling W3C to pursue its mission to lead the Web to its full potential through the creation of Web standards, guidelines, and supporting materials.

233 other specifications are under active development. You can see all the other areas W3C is actively involved in. We tackle every aspect of the Web. We ensure the long-term growth of the Web. We care to make the benefits of the Web available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.

We have heard from some that we have not listened to our community

The steps leading to EME becoming a recommendation involved several rounds through with W3C Members were consulted, culminating in a vote last week, but wide review and comments from the public are built-in the W3C Process. While, as our CEO Jeff Jaffe noted, we know that many people are not satisfied with the result, we feel we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the Web for its users.

We have heard your concerns and anger and so we have tried to clarify some misconceptions and explain the process and rationales in these decisions.

We understand and admire the passion we've seen about the open Web and the role of the W3C in the world, and while there may be points where not everyone always agrees on the methods, please know that we at the W3C also care deeply and passionately about the Web, about its users and about our community.

While this has been a time of some disappointment, passion and confusion, we continue to reach out to you, our community, to clarify and engage - to continue to have discussions and to hear from you on important issues that face the Web.

For the past several years we have engaged in one of the most divisive debates in the history of the W3C Community. This is the debate about whether W3C should release the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) Recommendation without requiring that vendors provide a covenant that protects security and interoperability researchers.

This debate is an offshoot of a larger debate in society – whether it is appropriate to protect content using Digital Rights Management (DRM) and whether it is appropriate for nations to pass law such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which impose penalties on those that attempt to break Digital Rights Management (DRM). Since EME is an interface to Content Decryption Modules (CDMs) that decrypt content protected by DRM, the larger debate in society came into our own halls.

The debate within W3C was passionate and well informed on both sides. Supporters of EME argued that watching movies (protected by DRM) was happening on the web – and providing a common, secure, private, accessible interface from W3C was well within our mission and hence an appropriate activity for W3C. Opponents insisted that such a spec must be accompanied by a covenant that protects researchers from the overreach of DMCA. The arguments on both sides were far deeper than what I summarized above – indeed there were an intricate set of arguments with good logic on all sides of the debate.

There is potential fallout from the debate. Some on both sides of the issue complained about the intensity of the arguments on the other side. Others told me that they felt that the overall intensity of the debate was harmful to W3C. Personally, I approach this with a high degree of equanimity. I don't think there was anything untoward in the debate itself. Only respectful passion from those who are passionate. And I feel that the intensity of the debate shows W3C in its best light. Here's why.

First of all, I don't think that this was a debate about W3C standards alone. This was part of a larger debate in society. W3C did not create DRM and we did not create DMCA. DRM has been used for decades prior to the EME debate. But in recent years it is a credit to the world wide web that the web has become the delivery vehicle for everything, including movies. Accordingly it was inevitable that we would face issues of conflicting values and the appropriate accommodations for commercial use of the web. I cannot envision a situation where this debate would not have erupted in our community given the larger trends that are happening in the world.

Secondly, we have had an incredibly respectful debate. The debate started years ago in the restricted-media W3C Community Group soon after EME was chartered. There were hundreds of posts with many points of view professionally stated on all sides of the issue. Each side contributed understanding to the other side. That doesn't mean that people with passionate viewpoints were swayed. But W3C played its role as the venue for an open debate in the public square.

Third, the existence of the debate improved the specification. Critics of early versions of the spec raised valid issues about security, privacy, and accessibility. The resultant work of the Working Group then improved the spec in those dimensions. Critics might not have achieved their ultimate goal of a covenant that protected security researchers – but they did help improve security on the web nonetheless.

Finally, the deliberative process of W3C, which several times took a step back to look for suggestions and/or objections played itself out properly. At multiple places the debate caused the entire community to better scrutinize the work. All voices were heard. Not all contradictory voices could be simultaneously satisfied – but the debate was influential. And in the end, the inventor of the world wide web, the Director of W3C, Tim Berners-Lee, took in all of the diverse input and provided a thoughtful decision which addressed all objections in detail.

I know from my conversations that many people are not satisfied with the result. EME proponents wanted a faster decision with less drama. EME critics want a protective covenant. And there is reason to respect those who want a better result. But my personal reflection is that we took the appropriate time to have a respectful debate about a complex set of issues and provide a result that will improve the web for its users.

My main hope, though, is that whatever point-of-view people have on the EME covenant issue, that they recognize the value of the W3C community and process in arriving at a decision for an inherently contentious issue. We are in our best light when we are facilitating the debate on important issues that face the web.

On 14 July 2017, W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe (MIT '76) was featured as part of an MIT Alumni Association Panel "Fixing the Web" with Brewster Kahle, ('82) Founder and Digital Librarian, Internet Archive and Steven Gordon ('75), Professor of IT Management, Babson College.

When talking about the history of the Web and Tim Berners-Lee, Jeff noted that after its invention:

"He created a consortium called the W3C so that everyone who was interested in enhancing the web technology base can work together collaboratively."

Jeff added about W3C:

"Most of our work recently has been transforming the web from being a large database of static information to dynamic information; a web of application where people build web applications which work essentially as distributed applications across multiple systems, making sure that we address societal problems such as web accessibility for people that have challenges or security privacy issues."

The panel was moderated by science Journalist Barbara Moran, and the topics were wide ranging and interesting - from the Internet Archive, to government control of the Web, advertising, social media, innovation and more.

In the discussion, a question was raised from Twitter about the EME standard:

Jeff noted:

We’ve developed a new proposed standard called EME, Encrypted Media Extensions, that instead of displaying these movies to hundreds of millions of people in an insecure and privacy violating fashion, we've built it in a way that makes it secure for people to watch movies.

Please watch the video if you'd like to see more.

WWW2017is in less than a month! The 26th edition of the annual World Wide Web Conference will be held in Perth, Australia, from 2 to 7 April 2017.

This year again, W3C proposes a W3C track where conference attendees are invited to learn from, meet and discuss with W3C's members and team experts. During 2 days, on Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 April, the current state of the art and future developments in Web Accessibility, Web of Things, Spatial Data on the Web and Web privacy will be presented and demonstrated. Many thanks to our members and the W3C Australia Office for making this happen!

W3C also participates in the Festival of the Web (FoW). The conference organizers have created a bigger event which includes many different events including Web for All (W4A) (and its accessibility hack), co-organized by our colleague Vivienne Conway (Edith Cowan University). FoW's numerous activities run from 2 to 9 April 2017 all over the city with the people and for the people, bringing together entrepreneurs, academia, industry, government and the Perth community.

And for the attention of Web developers and designers who love to code and have fun, my colleagues and I have designed not one but three #webdev contests - see below for a short description each:

• [Contest 1] Web Audio Vizualization: Develop an application that will propose a real time 2D or 3D visualization of the music coming from a mp3 stream.
• [Contest 2] CSS Swan: Animate the WWW17 black swan.
• [Contest 3] HTML5 Game: Write a 2D shoot’em’up game, inspired by "shmups" of the 80’s/90’s.

Look for the contests' long descriptions, with accompanying tips and resources on the W3Cx's contests page.

The contests are open to anyone and we'll accept your projects until Friday 6 April (at 23h59 UTC) (see participation rules). The jury members of the competition are Michel Buffa (W3Cx trainer, University Côte d'Azur), Bert Bos (co-inventor of CSS) and myself.

We will deliberate on Friday 7 April 2017 -- on site in Perth. Looking forward to meeting you there!

Last week, the HTML Media Extensions Working Group published a W3C Recommendation of Media Source Extensions™. It is the first specification reaching the status of Recommendation that stems from the series of W3C workshops held by the Web and TV Interest Group since 2010, and was one of the main outcomes of the Second W3C Web and TV workshop in particular.

Media Source Extensions fulfills a vital part of putting video on the Web; the API is the best option to guarantee a smooth user experience of media playback in fluctuating network conditions over a broad range of browsers and devices. As for other W3C Recommendations, the specification is provided under the W3C Royalty-Free (RF) licensing terms. The specification extends the HTML5 video capabilities by allowing JavaScript to generate media streams out of chunks and on the fly, and facilitates a variety of use cases like adaptive streaming which involves adjusting the quality of a media stream made available to a client depending upon their delivery bandwidth and CPU processing power to ensure continuous playback or to improve the experience. The open source reference implementation for the playback of MPEG-DASH content leverages the Media Source Extensions API (see the dash.js wiki).

Media Source Extensions is not only about facilitating adaptive streaming on the Web. Thanks to its design – based on a “low-level splicing and buffering model” – the door is open to other use-cases: time-shifting and video editing, and more innovative solutions such as 360° video players.

Flexible and powerful, Media Source Extensions is implemented by all major browsers and provides commercial quality IP streaming for Web applications, across different platforms and between unrelated companies. It is under the hood of today’s main video platforms and content providers, e.g. Netflix and Youtube, and is supported by main video players like JW Player.

Linux Weekly News published a recent story called "Encrypted Media Extensions and exit conditions", Cory Doctorow followed by publishing "W3C DRM working group chairman vetoes work on protecting security researchers and competition”. While the former is a more accurate account of the status, we feel obligated to offer corrections and clarifications to the latter, and to share a different perspective on security research protection, consensus at W3C, W3C's mission and the W3C Process, as well as the proposed Technology and Policy Interest Group.

There have been a number articles and blog posts about the W3C EME work but we've not been able to offer counterpoints to every public post, as we're focusing on shepherding and promoting the work of 40 Working Groups and 14 Interest Groups –all working on technologies important to the Web such as: HTML5, Web Security, Web Accessibility, Web Payments, Web of Things, Automotive, etc.

TAG statement on the Web’s security model

In his recent article, Cory wrote:

For a year or so, I've been working with the EFF to get the World Wide Web Consortium to take steps to protect security researchers and new market-entrants who run up against the DRM standard they're incorporating into HTML5, the next version of the key web standard.

First, the W3C is concerned about risks for security researchers. In November 2015 the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG), a special group within the W3C, chartered under the W3C Process with stewardship of the Web architecture, made a statement (after discussions with Cory on this topic) about the importance of security research. The TAG statement was:

The Web has been built through iteration and collaboration, and enjoys strong security because so many people are able to continually test and review its designs and implementations. As the Web gains interfaces to new device capabilities, we rely even more on broad participation, testing, and audit to keep users safe and the web’s security model intact. Therefore, W3C policy should assure that such broad testing and audit continues to be possible, as it is necessary to keep both design and implementation quality high.

W3C TAG statements have policy weight. The TAG is co-Chaired by the inventor of the Web and Director of W3C, Tim Berners-Lee. It has elected representatives from W3C members such as Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and others.

This TAG statement was reiterated in an EME Factsheet, published before the W3C Advisory Committee meeting in March 2016 as well as in the W3C blog post in April 2016 published when the EME work was allowed to continue.

Second, EME is not a DRM standard. W3C does not make DRM. The specification does not define a content protection or Digital Rights Management system. Rather, EME defines a common API that may be used to discover, select and interact with such systems as well as with simpler content encryption systems. We appreciate that to those who are opposed to DRM, any system which "touches" upon DRM is to be avoided, but the distinction is important. DRM is on the Web and has been for many years. We ask pragmatically what we can do for the good of the Web to both make sure a system which uses protected content insulates users as much as possible, and ensure that the work is done in an open, transparent and accessible way.

A several-month TF to assess EFF's proposed covenant

Cory further wrote, about the covenant:

As a compromise that lets the W3C continue the work without risking future web users and companies, we've proposed that the W3C members involved should agree on a mutually acceptable binding promise not to use the DMCA and laws like it to shut down these legitimate activities -- they could still use it in cases of copyright infringement, just not to shut down activity that's otherwise legal.

The W3C took the EFF covenant proposal extremely seriously. Made as part of EFF's formal objection to the Working Group's charter extension, the W3C leadership took extraordinary effort to resolve the objection and evaluate the EFF proposed covenant by convening a several month task force. Hundreds of emails were exchanged between W3C Members and presentations were made to the W3C Advisory Committee at the March 2016 Advisory Committee meeting.

While there was some support for the idea of the proposal, the large majority of W3C Members did not wish to accept the covenant as written (the version they voted on was different from the version the EFF made public), nor a slightly different version proposed by another member.

Member confidentiality vs. transparent W3C Process

Cory continued:

The LWN writeup is an excellent summary of the events so far, but parts of the story can't be told because they took place in "member-confidential" discussions at the W3C. I've tried to make EFF's contributions to this discussion as public as possible in order to bring some transparency to the process, but alas the rest of the discussion is not visible to the public.

W3C works in a uniquely transparent way. Specifications are largely developed in public and most groups have public minutes and mailings lists. However, Member confidentiality is a very valuable part of the W3C process. That business and technical discussions can happen in confidence between members is invaluable to foster broader discussion, trust and the opportunity to be frank. The proceedings of the HTML Media Extensions work are public however, discussions amongst Advisory Committee members are confidential.

In his post, Nathan Willis quoted a June 6 blog post by EFF's Cory Doctorow, and continued:

Enough W3C members endorsed the proposed change that the charter could not be renewed. After 90 days' worth of discussion, the working group had made significant progress, but had not reached consensus. The W3C executive ended this process and renewed the working group's charter until September.
Similar wording is found in an April EFF blog post, attributing the renewal to "the executive of the W3C." In both instances, the phrasing may suggest that there was considerable internal debate in the lead-up to the meeting and that the final call was made by W3C leadership. But, it seems, the ultimate decision-making mechanism (such as who at W3C made the final decision and on what date) is confidential; when reached for comment, Doctorow said he could not disclose the process.

Though the Member discussions are confidential, the process itself is not.

In the W3C process, charters for Working Groups go to the Advisory Committee for review at different stages of completion. That happened in this case. The EFF made an objection. By process, when there are formal objections the W3C then tries to resolve the issue.

As part of the process, when there is no consensus, the W3C generally allows existing groups to continue their work as described in the charter. When there is a "tie-break" needed, it is the role of the Director, Tim Berners-Lee, to assess consensus and decide on the outcome of formal objections. It was only after the overwhelming majority of participants rejected the EFF proposal for a covenant attached to the EME work that Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C management felt that the EFF proposal could not proceed and the work would be allowed to continue.

Next steps within the HTML Media Extensions Working Group

Cory also wrote:

The group's charter is up for renewal in September, and many W3C members have agreed to file formal objections to its renewal unless some protection is in place. I'll be making an announcement shortly about those members and suggesting some paths for resolving the deadlock.

The group is not up for charter renewal in September but rather, its specifications are progressing on the time-line to "Recommendation". A Candidate Recommendation transition will soon have to be approved, and then the spec will require interoperability testing, and Advisory Committee approval before it reaches REC. One criteria for Recommendation is that the ideas in the technical report are appropriate for widespread deployment and EME is already deployed in almost all browsers.

To a lesser extent, we wish to clarify that veto is not part of the role of Working Group chairs; indeed Cory wrote:

Linux Weekly News reports on the latest turn of events: I proposed that the group take up the discussion before moving to recommendation, and the chairman of the working group, Microsoft's Paul Cotton, refused to consider it, writing, "Discussing such a proposed covenant is NOT in the scope of the current HTML Media Extensions WG charter."

As Chair of the HTML Media Extensions Working Group, Paul Cotton's primary role is to facilitate consensus-building among Group members for issues related to the specification. A W3C Chair leads the work of the group but does not decide for the group; work proceeds with consensus. The covenant proposal had been under wide review with many lengthy discussions for several months on the W3C Advisory Committee mailing lists. Paul did not dismiss W3C-wide discussion of the topic, but correctly noted it was not a topic in line with the chartered work of the group.

Conclusion

In the April 2016 announcement that the EME work would continue, the W3C reiterated the importance of security research and acknowledged the need for high level technical policy discussions at W3C - not just for the covenant. A few weeks prior, during the March 2016 Advisory Committee meeting the W3C announced a proposal to form a Technology and Policy Interest Group.

The W3C has, for more than 20 years, focused on technology standards for the Web. However, recognizing that as the Web gets more complex and its technology is increasingly woven into our lives, we must consider technical aspects of policy as well. The proposed Technology and Policy Interest Group, if started, will explore, discuss and clarify aspects of policy that may affect the mission of W3C to lead the Web to its full potential. This group has been in preparation before the EME covenant was presented, and will be address broader issues than anti-circumvention. It is designed as a forum for W3C Members to try to reach consensus on the descriptions of varying views on policy issues, such deep linking or pervasive monitoring.

While we tried to find common ground among our membership on the covenant issue, we have not succeeded yet. We hope that EFF and others will continue to try. We recognize and support the importance of security research, and the impact of policy on innovation, competition and the future of the Web. Again, for more ample information on EME and frequently asked questions, please see the EME Factsheet, published in March 2016.

The HTML Media Extensions Working Group was extended today until the end of September 2016. As part of making video a first class citizen of the Web, an effort started by HTML5 itself in 2007, W3C has been working on many extension specifications for the Open Web Platform: capturing images from the local device camera, handling of video streams and tracks, captioning and other enhancements for accessibility, audio processing, real-time communications, etc. The HTML Media Extensions Working Group is working on two of those extensions: Media Sources Extensions (MSE), for facilitating adaptive and live streaming, and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), for playback of protected content. Both are extension specifications to enhance the Open Web Platform with rich media support.

The W3C supports the statement from the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) regarding the importance of broad participation, testing, and audit to keep users safe and the Web’s security model intact. The EFF, a W3C member, concerned about this issue, proposed a covenant to be agreed by all W3C members which included exemptions for security researchers as well as interoperable implementations under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and similar laws. After discussion for several months and review at the recent W3C Advisory Committee meeting, no consensus has yet emerged from follow-up discussions about the covenant from the EFF.

We do recognize that issues around Web security exist as well as the importance of the work of security researchers and that these necessitate further investigation but we maintain that the premises for starting the work on the EME specification are still applicable. See the information about W3C and Encrypted Media Extensions.

The goal for EME has always been to replace non-interoperable private content protection APIs (see the Media Pipeline Task Force (MPTF) Requirements). By ensuring better security, privacy, and accessibility around those mechanisms, as well as having those discussions at W3C, EME provides more secure interfaces for license and key exchanges by sandboxing the underlying content decryption modules. The only required key system in the specification is one that actually does not perform any digital rights management (DRM) function and is using fully defined and standardized mechanisms (the JSON Web Key format, RFC7517, and algorithms, RFC7518). While it may not satisfy some of the requirements from distributors and media owners in resisting attacks, it is the only fully interoperable key system when using EME.

We acknowledge and welcome further efforts from the EFF and other W3C Members in investigating the relations between technologies and policies. Technologists and researchers indeed have benefited from the EFF's work in securing an exemption from the DMCA from the Library of Congress which will help to better protect security researchers from the same issues they worked to address at the W3C level.

W3C does intend to keep looking at the challenges related to the US DMCA and similar laws such as international implementations of the EU Copyright Directive with our Members and staff. The W3C is currently setting up a Technology and Policy Interest Group to keep looking at those issues and we intend to bring challenges related to these laws to this Group.

This is an open invitation to all people in the free-software community for genuine person-to-person dialog with people in the W3C staff about DRM on the Web (and any other topics of importance to the Web we all have an interest in discussing).

We have a People of the W3C page that lists the names and e-mail addresses of all the W3C staff, and we always welcome you to contact us about the work we are doing together for the Web. Along with that we have a Contact page that includes more details about how to find us.

We believe this invitation from us to you for real person-to-person dialog is a much more constructive route to mutual understanding and change than approaches such as the recent campaign (under the apparent aegis of the Free Software Foundation) which you might have seen, that encourages you to instead go by a W3C office to just “take a protest selfie” in demonstration against “DRM in HTML”.

As the announcement about that campaign suggests, if you live near a W3C office, “you have a unique opportunity to make a difference”—but that opportunity is actually for much more than just snapping a selfie next to a W3C sign. Instead you have a chance to talk with real people who care a great deal about the Web and its future—just as you do—and to find out things we agree about with each other, and problems we can work on solving together.

We’re all real people. So let’s treat each other like real people, and don’t instead let someone else make you try to shoehorn yourself into any narrative they want to construct about fearless activists doing battle against some faceless uncaring entity.

So if you care enough yourself to make time to visit a W3C office in person, please consider not doing it only to take a selfie in front of a W3C sign and then leave. Instead, make it an opportunity to actually meet the people at your nearby W3C office who care deeply about a lot of same things you do, and chat with some of us person-to-person over a cup of coffee (or hey, maybe even some after-work drinks somewhere nearby).

The announcement about the “take a protest selfie” campaign claims to have “reliable advice” that it will be “very influential to the W3C’s leadership”. But I have a lot more reliable advice for you: The open invitation for real person-to-person conversation, that we as people are offering you right here, is an opportunity to be much more influential.

Related:

• Tim Berners-Lee: On Encrypted Video and the Open Web
• Jeff Jaffe: Perspectives on Encrypted Media Extension Reaching First Public Working Draft
• Robin Berjon: Please Bring Me More Of That Yummy DRM Discussion
• Robin Berjon and Jeffrey Zeldman conversation about EME, DRM, the MPAA, and the W3C

During TPAC ("Technical Plenary / Advisory Committee") every year, W3C hosts a Technical Plenary with panels and presentations that brings participants together. For a few years now, we've organized most of the plenary as "camp-style" Breakout Sessions and all the participants are invited to propose Breakout Sessions. The meeting attendees build the Breakout Sessions Grid early in the day, drawing from ideas socialized in advance and new ideas proposed on that day.

TPAC2015 was an extremely successful week of meetings. Nearly 580 people attended, 43 work groups met face-to-face, and participants organized 50 Breakout Sessions on topics ranging from network interactions, device synchronization, Web Payments, Social Web, Testing, Web of Things, distributed Web applications, video processing, Web-based signage, digital marketing, privacy and permission, just to name a few. Please, lear more in the W3C CEO report on TPAC2015 and IETF94.

A few summaries

We invite you to read the summaries of a few of these breakouts, excerpted here:

Network Interactions

Network Interactions, proposed by Dominique Hazaël-Massieux, reviewed the outcomes of the recent GSMA/IAB MaRNEW workshop and looked at various cases where this additional interaction could be applied: WebRTC optimization, network usage adaption based on user data allowance, overall optimization of radio usage. The overall discussions of how and when the network operator would want to accommodate more specific requests for control or information on their network from the application layer remain inconclusive on a way forward.

FoxEye - video processing

FoxEye - video processing, proposed by Chia-Hung Tai and Tzuhao Kuo, aimed at bringing more power to the Web to make the Web more friendly for video processing and computer vision. Issues garnered as part of the work session were filed to the github repository for tracking.

Cross-device synchronization

Cross-device synchronization, proposed by François Daoust, explored cross-device synchronization scenarios, including shared video viewing, lip-sync use cases, distributed music playback, video walls, cross-device animations, etc. The Timing Object specification defines an API to expose cross-device sync mechanisms to Web applications. Interested parties are invited to join the Multi-Device Timing Community Group to continue the work on this specification.

How blockchain could change the Web-based content distribution

How blockchain could change the Web-based content distribution, proposed by Shigeru Fujimura and Hiroki Watanabe, was about the mechanism of blockchain and its potential related to web-based content distribution followed by a open discussion focusing on business model regarding the incentive to continue maintaining blockchain.

Requirements for Embedded Browsers needed by Web-based Signage

Requirements for Embedded Browsers needed by Web-based Signage, proposed by Kiyoshi Tanaka and Shigeru Fujimura, started from a presentation of the feature of the web-based signage and requirements for the browser. The API ideas such as auto-pilot API and rich presentation API were shown and discussed regarding the proper Working Groups where such APIs would be considered. The results of this session were provided to the Web-based Signage Business Group and reflected the discussion in the review of a draft charter for a proposed Web-based Signage Working Group.

HTMLCue

HTMLCue, proposed by Nigel Megitt, discussed the idea of a new kind of Text Track Cue which would allow any fragment of HTML+CSS to be used to modify the display on a target element in synchronization with a media element's timeline. Different views were expressed during the discussion, and two actions were noted. Other next steps include summarizing the HTMLCue proposal in a clear document.

Webex - how's it going?

Webex - how's it going?, proposed by Ralph Swick and Nigel Megitt, was a feedback gathering session to understand the experience particularly of working groups since W3C moved from Zakim to Webex for audio calls. Some of the issues can be resolved through best practices, others Ralph Swick offered to handle off-line.

Distributing Web Applications Across Devices

Distributing Web Applications Across Devices, proposed by Mark A. Foltz, discussed the potential for creating a new class of Web applications that can be distributed among multiple devices and user agents, instead of executing within the context of a single device/user agent.

Read more

The well-attended Breakout Sessions during TPAC is an opportunity to meet and liaise with participants from other groups, brainstorm ideas, coordinate solutions for technical issues. Although participation in TPAC is limited to those already in W3C groups, the TPAC proceedings are public, including the TPAC2015 Plenary Breakout Sessions records, which we invite you to read.

As we reach the end of 2015 the W3C team is putting our plans in place for CES 2016 which is the week of 04 Jan 2016 in Las Vegas. We will be there with a Hospitality Suite in the Westgate Hotel and would love to meet with you to discuss how working with our Membership on W3C Standards can help your organization at the same time that you're helping the Web Reach it's Full Potential.

We'll have both our Technical and Business Development teams there to discuss our activities in Entertainment, Automotive and Web of Things. We can also cover our Digital Marketing and Security activities as well as any other Web Technologies that you would want to explore.

In addition to these teams our CEO, Dr. Jeff Jaffe, is also available for discussion during the week. We'd love to hear from you so send your meeting requests into team-contact@w3.org or directly to me at abird@w3.org.

By Janina Sajka

Today the Protocols and Formats Working Group published Media Accessibility User Requirements (MAUR) as a W3C Note. This document describes the needs of users with disabilities to be able to consume media (video and audio) content. In development since late 2009, the MAUR has already been used to ensure that the HTML 5 specification can fully support traditional alternative media access technologies (such as captioning), and newer, digitally based approaches (such as simultaneous sign language translation). It is the most thorough and comprehensive review of alternative media support for persons with disabilities yet developed. In addition to HTML 5 support for traditional broadcast approaches, it also describes media accessibility user requirements related to newer technologies being developed specifically for the web.

Media accessibility is familiar to many from the closed captions used in television broadcasts. While captions are frequently used by the general public in noisy environments, it's also generally understood that captions were initially created to allow persons who are deaf or hard of hearing understand the audio content of television and movies--content they cannot hear, as indeed no one can in very noisy environs. Over the past 30 years, most people have come to an appreciation of captions in movies and television content.

Less well known, but widely established and equally successful, is the practice of describing the visual content of television and movies for those who cannot see it. The human-narrated descriptions are generally provided on the secondary audio programming (SAP) channel of television broadcasts, or via wireless headphones in movie theaters.

As HTML 5 based web technologies are increasingly used to deliver video content, the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative has stepped forward to develop a set of requirements for insuring that media content delivered over the web can also leverage the power of the web to make media accessibility to persons with disabilities accessible. The MAUR will be useful for user agent developers and media content developers alike as they exploit the power of HTML 5. It will aid broadcasters as they publish their content on their web sites, and it will aid governmental entities seeking to meet their legislated mandates to make governmental web content accessible.

That TV and video is moving to the web is not new — a recent report by Nielsen showed that the number of American households subscribing to an internet video streaming service is already 40%. However there are still areas where these services may not meet user expectations, for example when compared to the instant availability of broadcast TV or the full-featured extras in DVD releases. Equally, broadcasters are increasingly integrating the web into their services but these experiences often need to be more seamless to encourage broad adoption. There are also new ways to enjoy content that the web has the potential to realize, such as multiple simultaneous camera views or customizable synchronization with other online and data services.

There are several groups within W3C working to make this a reality and the entry point for this activity is the Web and TV Interest Group. It's here where use cases and requirements are established and gaps in standards are identified. Most recently, the needs of video delivery on the web today include:

• Multi-screen content delivery
• Stream synchronization
• TV function and channel control
• Mixed media sources and content overlays
• Stream recognition and identification
• Server-side content rendering (e.g. for low-powered STBs)
• Improvements to existing features (e.g. adaptive streaming, timed text)

The incubator-style role of the Web and TV Interest Group has led to the creation and support of various groups that are aiming to address these issues and currently there are some exciting developments to be aware of and ideally participate in.

GGIE (Glass-to-Glass Internet Ecosystem) Task Force

GGIE (Glass-to-Glass Internet Ecosystem) Task Force

A young Task Force within the Web and TV Interest Group that has attracted a lot of attention, it has a broad focus of looking at all phases of the video life cycle: Capture → Edit → Package → Distribute → Find → Watch. The ultimate goal is to identify essential elements in digital video's life cycle and features that would be appropriate for recommendation for standardization in the appropriate SDOs, not just W3C. To achieve this, the Task Force is currently gathering use cases and all members of the Web and TV Interest Group are welcome to join in the discussion. See the Task Force page for more.

TV Control API Community Group

TV Control API Community Group

Thanks to the contributions of a growing number of participants, an API to control TV-like content and features is taking shape with the hope of eventually producing a new standard for media devices, set-top-boxes and of course televisions. We've used existing TV APIs for reference but there's still lots of work to do on the draft specification for it to one day become a standard. See the group page for more and to join. The Mozilla Hacks blog also a good summary of the TV Control API.

Multi-device Timing Community Group

Multi-device Timing Community Group

The newest TV-related group looking at how to accurately synchronize media streams across the web. This could be friends on a train wanting to watch the same movie on their separate devices, laughing at the same time. Another use case is watching a sports event on a large screen and having a separate single player or athlete view on your phone or tablet. Some interesting demos have been presented to the group but it's still early days and a great opportunity to influence its direction and deliverables. See the group page for more and to join.

Media Resource In-band Tracks Community Group

Media Resource In-band Tracks Community Group<

This group is developing a specification defining how user agents should expose in-band tracks as HTML5 media element video, audio and text tracks. In other words, web applications would be able to access information (e.g. metadata, captions, translations, etc.) within media stream containers through the media element. The draft specification that the group is working on currently covers the following media stream container types:

• MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) (video/mp2t)
• ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF aka MP4) (*/mp4)
• WebM (*/webm)
• OGG (*/ogg)
• DASH (application/dash+xml)

Other formats could be considered in the future, such as RTP streams. . See the group page for more and to join.

Second Screen Presentation Community Group & Working Group

Second Screen Presentation Community Group & Working Group

The Web and TV Interest Group also closely follows this work which is a good example of the evolution of an idea to a standard — it started as a proposal brought to W3C with a Community Group created for easy collaboration. A draft specification for displaying web content on secondary screens was edited and improved by a variety of stakeholders to the point where it formed the basis of a new Working Group. At this point it's officially on the standards track and further stabilization should see it implemented and brought to a big screen new you. Meanwhile, the Community Group remains open to foster discussion and ideas for future features. See the Community Group page and the Working Group page for more.

These are just some of the recent developments and as you can see, now is a prime time for those wanting to influence and guide new standards that will affect video on the web worldwide.

This is the 28 October - 7 November 2014 edition of a "weekly digest of W3C news and trends" that I prepare for the W3C Membership and public-w3c-digest mailing list (publicly archived). This digest aggregates information about W3C and W3C technology from online media —a snapshot of how W3C and its work is perceived in online media.

W3C and HTML5 related Twitter trends

[What was tweeted frequently, or caught my attention. Most recent first]

• (2.2K) A reimplementation of Winamp 2.9 in HTML5 and Javascript
• (18) HTML Modularisation
• (900) Unique t-shirts for @vgcerf and @timberners_lee (on the back "I didn't invent the Web" & "I invented the Web") #w3c20
• (250) The ride to 5 | HTML5 Doctor
• (70.2K) Web standards for the future
• (10K) HTML5 is a W3C Recommendation | W3C News

W3C in the Press (or blogs)

57 articles since the last Digest, including 26 about HTML5 to Rec; a selection follows. You may read all articles in our Press Clippings page.

• Startribune Business (3 November), Consortium looks at payment infrastructure
• San Jose Mercury News (1 November), Q&A: Tim Berners-Lee, professor, inventor of World Wide Web
• CoinDesk (31 October), W3C's Web Payments Redesign Could Bypass Bitcoin
• OpenStand (29 October), The Heroes of the Internet Believed in Open Standards
• Bob Sutor's Blog (29 October), W3C 20th Anniversary: Memories
• IBM | Thoughts on Cloud (29 October), The W3C community turns 20
• TechCrunch (28 October), W3C Declares HTML5 Standard Complete
• cfi.co (28 October), Sir Timothy Berners-Lee: Catching the World in a Web
• SD Times (28 October), W3C: HTML5 reaches ‘recommendation’ status
• ZDNet (15 October), W3C launches a Payments Interest Group to monetize the web

Yesterday we announced the HTML5 Recommendation. One of the most significant features of HTML5, and one that has been deployed for some time, is the <video> element, which will make it easier to include video in pages and applications without requiring users to download plug-ins.

There is already strong browser support for video today, but we have more work to do on interoperable support for streaming video. That is why we are working on a number of specifications to support streaming media interoperability, including Media Source Extensions, currently a Candidate Recommendation.

We ran into live stream interop issues as part of planning our W3C20 Webcast today (from 3pm-6pm Pacific Time) and ensuring the widest audience as possible. The deployed solutions we found (and will be using) rely on Flash plugins and other platform-specific approaches such as HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).

Despite that limitation, we are happy to offer the live stream with captions to those who cannot join us in Santa Clara.

Interoperable streaming is just one area where we want to make it easier for developers and users to play video and audio on the Web. We still need Royalty-Free codecs, the ability to play the content on second screens, improved support for accessibility, and more.

This is the 19-26 September 2014 edition of a "weekly digest of W3C news and trends" that I prepare for the W3C Membership and public-w3c-digest mailing list (publicly archived). This digest aggregates information about W3C and W3C technology from online media —a snapshot of how W3C and its work is perceived in online media.

W3C and HTML5 related Twitter trends

[What was tweeted frequently, or caught my attention. Most recent first]

• (65) W3C Webizen: You belong to the Web community and wish your voice were heard at @w3c? Now is the right time to take that survey
• (35) Ilya Grigorik: News from W3C webperf-landia […] Beacon, NetInfo, ErrorLogging, and Resource Hints!
• (20) W3C training: FREE Mobile Web Apps course sponsored by INTEL XDK
• (40) Mynavi: 「HTML5勧告案」登場、W3C (W3C published HTML5 draft recommendation)
• (50) Huff Post Tech: Opera Sees HTML5 As Cure For Video Fragmentation (video)
• (290) HTML5: Native Netflix support coming to Linux thanks to their move from Silverlight to HTML5
• (640) WaPost: World Wide Web inventor slams Internet fast lanes: ‘It’s bribery.’

Open Web & net neutrality

• TechCrunch (22 September), The FCC Hasn’t Decided How It Will Enforce Net Neutrality
• NPR (17 September), 3.7 Million Comments Later, Here's Where Net Neutrality Stands
• EasyBib (17 September), How Often Do Students Use the Open Web for Research? Here’s What We Found.

W3C in the Press (or blogs)

7 articles since the last Digest; a selection follows. You may read all articles in our Press Clippings page.

• The Inquirer (22 September), Ubuntu Linux users might be able to stream Netflix soon
• Geeky Gadgets (22 September), Netflix Linux Native Playback Support Arriving Very Soon Via HTML5
• Huff Post Tech (19 September), (VIDEO) Opera Sees HTML5 As Cure For Video Fragmentation
• The Washington Post (19 September), World Wide Web inventor slams Internet fast lanes: ‘It’s bribery.’

This is the 5-12 September 2014 edition of a "weekly digest of W3C news and trends" that I prepare for the W3C Membership and public-w3c-digest mailing list (publicly archived). This digest aggregates information about W3C and W3C technology from online media —a snapshot of how W3C and its work is perceived in online media.

W3C and HTML5 related Twitter trends

[What was tweeted frequently, or caught my attention. Most recent first]

• (100) W3C Blog: A Greater Voice for Individuals in W3C – Tell Us What You Would Value
• (48) W3process CG tracker: ISSUE-124: Normative Reference policy should explicitly black list WHATWG specs # The gist of the thread is in Jeff’s reply: #
• (55) HTML5 video: Adobe announced Primetime Digital Rights Management is now available via HTML5 on major web browsers
• (90) HTML5 video: PayPal’s Accessible HTML5 Video Player
• (210) HTML5 video: Netflix uses HTML5 video on Chrome for Mac

Open Web & net neutrality

• The New York Times | Bits: Netflix and Other Big Websites Protest Proposed Net Neutrality Rules, 10 September
• The Daily Dot: Net neutrality just broke the FCC's all-time commenting record, 11 September

W3C in the Press (or blogs)

4 articles since the last Digest. You may read all articles in our Press Clippings page.

• ZDNet | 500 words into the future (9 September), Build the future of the web, one standard at a time
• ZDNet (8 September), Adobe adds HTML5 support to Primetime DRM
• CNET (8 September), Boosting browsers, Adobe extends its DRM to Web video
• PayPal Engineering (5 September), Introducing an Accessible HTML5 Video Player

This is the 24-31 January 2014 edition of a “weekly digest of W3C news and trends" that I prepare for the W3C Membership and public-w3c-digest mailing list (publicly archived). This digest aggregates information about W3C and W3C technology from online media —a snapshot of how W3C and its work is perceived in online media. You may tweet your demos and cool dev/design stuff to @koalie, or write me e-mail. If you have suggestions for improvement, please leave a comment.

W3C and HTML5 buzz in Twitter

[What was tweeted frequently, or caught my attention. Most recent first (popularity is flagged with a figure —number of times the same URIs or tweet was quoted/RTed.)]

• (44) W3C Community Group: HTML for email Community Group
• (18) Net awards 2014: Test The Web Forward nominated a Game Changer of the year
• (15) W3C Blog: W3C honoured in 2014 net Awards technology nominations, by Coralie Mercier
• (274) mnot’s blog: Nine Things to Expect from HTTP/2
• (22) W3C Blog: Creating the future of Web and TV, by Daniel Davis
• (25) #web25: 2014, the year the Web turns 25
• (65) Clubic: W3C: vers une standardisation du paiement sur Internet (W3C: towards standardization of Internet payment)
• (31) NFC World: W3C publishes draft NFC API
• (100) HTML5: The HTML Landscape
• (22) Vidcast: TPN.tv - W3C 25th Anniversary Celebration and What the Next 25 Looks Like, interview of Jeff Jaffe at CES
• (38) T3N: Sauberer Code: Die Validator-Suite von W3C im t3n-Test (Clean code: The Validator Suite of W3C in t3n-Test)
• (51) Podcast: The Big Web Show - Bring Me The Head Of Tim Berners-Lee, Robin Berjon talked with Jeffrey Zeldman about EME, DRM, MPAA, and W3C

Net Neutrality & Open Web

• Mashable: The Fight to Save Net Neutrality: 1 Million Signatures and Counting, 30 January 2014
• Huffington Post: Netflix's Battle For Net Neutrality Could Look Like This, 27 January 2014
• EFF: Why the FCC Can't Actually Save Net Neutrality, 27 January 2014

W3C in the Press (or blogs)

2 articles this week.

• Access iQ (31 January), An interview with Australian accessibility pioneer Dr Andrew Arch
• ITespresso.fr (30 January), Le W3C fédère l’écosystème du paiement en ligne autour de HTML5 (W3C brings together the ecosystem of online payment around HTML5)
• Microsoft Open Technologies (30 January), Pointer Events Progress: Mozilla and Blink Communities Reach a Significant Engineering Milestone
• NFC World (29 January), W3C publishes draft NFC API
• TechCrunch (28 January), Amazon Appstore Now Allows Developers To Charge For HTML5 Web Apps, Promote Them Through “Free App Of The Day”
• Cash (20 January), «Mir missfallen Überwachung und Zensur» ("I am displeased surveillance and censorship")

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to attend CES in Las Vegas and spent a lot of time being wowed by innovations in TV-related areas. There was the obvious headline-grabbing tech such as curved screens (the jury's still out, it seems) and gorgeous OLED, 4K and 8K screens (the jury is most definitely in!). 3D TV was also prevalent although for me, screens without requiring glasses were the most interesting and promising. The ones I saw had a surprisingly large viewing angle and even outside that angle, the content is still enjoyable as 2D. Like escalators becoming stairs, it's a technology that degrades gracefully. There were also numerous input mechanisms on show ranging from sensors in the screen or in custom glasses detecting hand movement to handheld devices with innovative keyboards. Naturally there was also a lot of interest in using phones and tablets to control a second screen.

Outside the hardware space, other transformations seem to be taking place. In the news we hear of cable companies expanding more into media, online video providers expanding into production and e-commerce giants expanding into video streaming services.

Add this to the ongoing trend of devices becoming more powerful and becoming more interconnected and you have exciting new directions for the web to head towards. In the TV world, the progression seems to be TV browsers evolving into TV-based web apps which are now evolving into entire TV platforms based on web technologies.

So why was W3C at CES in the first place? Well in the Web and TV Interest Group we're constantly looking at requirements for a variety of current and future use-cases. Based on those requirements, we investigate where there are gaps in existing specifications and how they can be filled. This could be done by feature requests or bug reports to existing working groups, establishing new community groups to address specific issues, or communicating with external organizations where similar work might be being done. But first, what kind of work is currently on the radar?

Multi-screen is a hot topic and although this is not a new idea — indeed, many consumers are already enjoying second-screen content — most of the current solutions are based on proprietary technology. We're working to make this available in an open way through HTML5 and related specifications so users won't be tied to a particular hardware manufacturer or operating system. There's already a Second Screen Presentation Community Group which is producing a draft specification, and work continues on the Network Service Discovery API for finding devices within a local network. However the opportunities could still be explored further. This could be deeper integration with the main screen content, a more seamless experience without restrictions such as being on a single network, for example, or better synchronization of content, possibly using technologies such as audio fingerprinting. Immediately this raises concerns over security and privacy which are as important as any discussions of technical feasibility.

Earlier I mentioned 3D and although this technology might have had a slow start in the living room, I believe its progress has merely faltered and we'll see it being adopted eventually. In which case, 3D-aware captioning is a challenge waiting to be met. Aside from the immediate problem of preventing on-screen captions from interfering with the 3D effect, there is also the opportunity of enabling creators to deliberately move captions through the 3D space as part of the viewing experience.

Metadata is another area where standardization is important and although steps are being taken, there are still gaps such as metadata specifically for audio (sometimes referred to as object audio), globally recognized categorization for individual videos, and exposing existing metadata within media streams. Regarding the last issue, a community group (Media Resource In-band Tracks CG) was recently set up to work on how web applications could access in-band track information within formats such as WebM, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 using the HTML media elements.

Already a lot of work is being done around the globe to bring these and other innovations closer to our living rooms. Avoiding duplication of effort and encouraging alignment of emerging standards is one incentive for an upcoming web and TV workshop on March 12-13 in Munich, Germany, where we intend to focus on convergence of the next wave of TV technology as it makes more and more use of the web. The workshop is open to both W3C members and non-members and the requirement for participation is either a short statement of interest or a more thorough position paper. We are also welcoming sponsors for the workshop.

Even if you're unable to attend there are a number of options for taking part in the ongoing work. You could follow the Web and TV Interest Group mailing list archives which are public and include minutes of our face-to-face meetings. You could, of course, become a W3C member and join the Web and TV Interest Group and other groups directly. Lastly, a reminder that W3C community groups are open to all, both to join and create. They are diverse and currently include both forums for discussion and groups working on draft specifications which may be incorporated in to working groups in future.

To batter a well-worn cliché, the revolution may not be televised — the revolution may be in television itself and more and more the web will be a part of that.

There has been a lot of response to the announcement that W3C considers content protection for video as in-scope for discussion in the HTML Working Group. In this post I can touch on some of the arguments.

We hear the outburst of criticism (and some support) for W3C's recent rechartering of the HTML Working Group that put content protection for video in-scope for discussion. We hear that criticism as a signal that many people value W3C's voice, and feel betrayed by this decision. I want to make it clear that I and all the staff at W3C are as passionate as ever about the open Web. Also, none of us as users like certain forms of content protection such as DRM at all. Or the constraints it places on users and developers. Or the over-severe legislation it triggers in countries like the USA.

We're together in wanting a robust, rich, open Web. We want a Web open to inventors and tinkerers, to media-makers and cultural explorers. We want a Web which is rich in content but also a two-way, read-write Web. We want a Web which is universal in that it can contain anything. As Michael Dertouzos, one-time head of the Lab for Computer Science here at MIT, used to say, an Information Marketplace, where people can buy, sell or freely exchange information. To be universal, the Web has got to be open to many different sorts of businesses and business models.

The HTML Design Principles give helpful guidance on the priority of constituencies: "In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementers over specifiers over theoretical purity. In other words, costs or difficulties to the user should be given more weight than costs to authors; which in turn should be given more weight than costs to implementers; which should be given more weight than costs to authors of the spec itself, which should be given more weight than those proposing changes for theoretical reasons alone. Of course, it is preferred to make things better for multiple constituencies at once."

So we put the user first, but different users have different preferences. Putting the user first doesn't help us to satisfy users' possibly incompatible wants: some Web users like to watch big-budget movies at home, some Web users like to experiment with code. The best solution will be one that satisfies all of them, and we're still looking for that. If we can't find that, we're looking for the solutions that do least harm to these and other expressed wants from users, authors, implementers, and others in the ecosystem.

The arguments about whether content protection for video, and EME in particular, should be in scope for W3C discussion and standardization are many and varied. When we discussed the issue in the W3C Technical Architecture Group earlier this year I noted on the whiteboard a list of related arguments, then already quite long, and that list has not grown any shorter with time. Many of the arguments involve what different parties, the users, the browser makers, the media content distributors, and so on, would do under different new scenarios -- things which we can opine on but in the end only guess. Many of these arguments involve comparing very different types of things -- the smoothness of a user interface and the danger that programmers will be jailed. So there will not be an end to much of this argument for a long time. I would like to thank everyone who has weighed into the discussion thoughtfully and with consideration, and I hope you will continue to do so.

Let me just pick up a few elements, by no means a comprehensive set.

W3C is a place where people discuss possible technology. The HTML Working Group charter is about the scope of the discussion. W3C does not and cannot dictate what browsers or content distributors can do. By excluding this issue from discussion, we do not exclude it from anyone's systems.

Some arguments for inclusion take this form: if content protection of some kind has to be used for videos, it is better for it to be discussed in the open at W3C, better for everyone to use an interoperable open standard as much as possible, and better for it to be framed in a browser which can be open source, and available on a general purpose computer rather than a special purpose box. Those are key arguments for the decision that this topic is in scope.

No one likes DRM as a user, wherever it crops up. It is worth thinking, though, about what it is we do not like about existing DRM-based systems, and how we could possibly build a system which will be a more open, fairer one than the actual systems which we see today. If we, the programmers who design and build Web systems, are going to consider something which could be very onerous in many ways, what can we ask in return?

The conversation has just started. The Restricted Media Community Group is one forum for discussing this. The www-tag@w3.org list is good for general Web architecture, and there is the HTML Working Group and a Web Copyright Community Group. And there are comments to Jeff's posting or this post though I may not be able to answer them all.

Let us all continue to pursue creation of a powerful Web platform that is built on open standards. The use case of protected video content is a challenging one. We think this discussion will help get us there, but there is much more to do to achieve the level of openness I have personally sought for 25 years, and that W3C has pursued since its inception.

timbl ]]> 28 Mon, 11 Mar 2013 02:03:04 +0000 https://www.w3.org/blog/2013/good-news-about-vp8-licensing/ https://www.w3.org/blog/2013/good-news-about-vp8-licensing/ Jeff Jaffe https://www.w3.org/blog/2013/good-news-about-vp8-licensing/#comments Jeff Jaffe

I applaud the licensing agreement announced by Google, MPEG-LA, and additional patent-holders. The agreement appears to align with W3C's Patent Policy which has a goal of assuring that W3C Recommendations can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. Google has also re-iterated its goal to provide the web with a Royalty-Free video codec.

Royalty-Free licensing terms have played an important role in making the Web the premier platform for innovation, and W3C adopted its patent policy to encourage the widest adoption of Web standards. This is the first high-quality video codec we are aware of available on Royalty-Free terms.

Video is huge. In May 2012 Cisco predicted that by 2016, video will be 55 percent of all consumer Internet traffic. Last month they indicated that by 2017, two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic will be video. Given support from developers for using HTML5 to reach diverse platforms, and growing interest from the television, automotive, digital signage, digital publishing, gaming, and other industries, this decision to aim at royalty-free licensing is likely to give VP8 an advantage on the Web.

Royalty-Free video is critical for the Web in general and has recently received attention for WebRTC. In November 2012 the W3C staff conveyed to the IETF that "there should be a royalty-free standard web infrastructure which should include Real Time Communications on the Web." While W3C does not endorse a particular technology for WebRTC, we are quite pleased that there is finally a Royalty-Free codec to choose from.

Congratulations to all parties involved for increasing the value of the Web for the global community.