HTML5 Hurdles: Hollywood and DRMBut Opera says building its product to run HTML5 pages is no walk in the park. It says working within the red-tape-restrictions of standards bodies and in a landscape where competitors must agree on how HTML5 should handle things such as video and touchscreen functions is a challenge.But the reward of making HTML5 a new browser standard is well worth the heartache. With HTML5 pages audio and video play within the browser (now external player required). HTML5 also delivers a cavalcade of new slick interactive features ideal for the touch interface.

But it's Hollywood, not just technical hurdles, which are proving the equally as thorny when it comes to development of HTML5. Hollywood wants Opera and other browsers to support a full set of DRM controls. These controls would make sure the browser can decrypt only non-free music or video that had been paid for, and then that the user could watch and listen to it for a prescribed amount of time. Naturally, the browser makers aren’t that excited about building this in. One Opera exec told me they want to make a browser that operates on the open Internet and can display or play any content the user decides to consume. That kind of talk sends shivers up the spine of music and movie industry types. The record and movie industries are notoriously avid (A.K.A. paranoid) about content security on the Web. They fear that delivering paid content on something as connected as a browser might make it easier to steal content.

Standards Body Standoff? And to add another level of complexity to the equation, issues like the above aren’t being discussed in just one standards body. There are two major ones--the (3WC) and the . The oldest and arguably most influential one, the 3WC, is known for acting very slowly, and merely “recommending” standards without having much power of enforcement. So it’s no wonder that the development world isn’t speeding toward HTML5. There’s a lot to work out, and the more I learn about the process the more it sounds like a Herding Cats scenario.