I wrote this statement and want to respond to your criticism.
Firstly, I think you make a very good point. I experience a similar feeling when I read things that appear one-sided, and I try in my writing to communicate the fact that both sides of the issue have been considered, even if I think one is completely absurd. I'll take your criticism into account with future writing about EME.
FWIW, here's the other side of the argument as I understand it:
"DRM is already happening on the Web, so we might as well do it at the W3C, with the vague hope that we will win some kind of concession from the DRM companies. Also, maybe if we don't, they will take their content off the Web and into some other system (subtext -- we care more about Netflix being on the Web as defined by W3C than we do about the Web as defined by W3C being free and open.
I think the other side of the argument is primarily the following:
a) The Membership of the W3C have decided they want to work on DRM.
b) Like most industry consortiums, the W3C is ultimately beholden to its (industrial) Membership. (And it's not clear they can refuse an organisation from joining as a Member without opening themselves up to allegations of being a cartel and the legal complications that would involve.)
A lot of this comes down to the relationship between the W3C and its Member organisations, and whether the W3C can refuse to work on something its Members want to.
There's also some of what you alluded to, which I will call c) A number of Member organisations have made it clear that they will work on this in some public forum regardless of what that forum is.
Now, from a purely pragmatic point-of-view, what is gained by the W3C refusing to work on it? Apple, Google, and Microsoft will still ship DRM modules; the web will still start relying on DRM modules existing within browsers. The outcome is entirely unchanged, as ultimately because of c we've ended up with an interoperable API from JS one can use to deal with DRM modules.
Refusing the venue is purely making a political point, it doesn't change the outcome. Now maybe that political point is a goal in and of itself, but given most of the arguments people make against DRM I'd suggest the goal here isn't a political point but rather reduction of reliance of DRM on the web.
By refusing to work on it, you upset the Membership (because you're going against them), jeopardising your own future (because a industrial consortium is nothing without Members), and not changing the outcome.
Question: He says EME will allow publishers to dictate which browsers can implement CDMs that can interoperate with their content, and therefore control the browser market, and that this will quell innovation. I have questions about this, however. In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?) so it still wasn't possible for a developer to make a new browser that could play DRMed video without getting their permission. What is the meaningful difference from the new status quo?
Is the difference that now, publishers control content and compatibility, whereas before publishers controlled content and DRM companies controlled compatibility? Is that actually a meaningful change for users or for browser developers? It doesn't seem like it is.
> In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?)
Nope. The status quo was that any browser which implemented NPAPI (officially the Mozilla plugin API, but historically used by everyone but IE) could use Silverlight and Flash. That's how Google Chrome got Flash support initially and the reason why obscure browsers that neither Adobe and Microsoft cared about could still support both.
