The W3C's plan for DRM in HTML5 is a betrayal for all web users

You're talking nonsense. The web is just the dominant way of accessing "app clouds" on today's internet. Users don't care whether the code running on their device is Java vs. Javascript if the end result is the same. All you're promoting with "put DRM in HTML" is for all the horrific things you dislike about native apps to be allowed to infect the web.

You're fighting the wrong battle. It's not "make sure the web wins over native apps" -- it's "make sure open wins over corporate oligarchy." DRM is the opposite of open. We should not allow DRM to be in HTML. We should not allow it to be in operating systems. We should not allow it to be anywhere -- content providers who claim they won't sell their content without DRM are just lying. Make their choice "no DRM or no distribution method" and they'll pick no DRM.

Unfortunately, as much as some of us would like that to be true, it seems very unlikely. DRM isn't some binary thing where either it prevents copying 100% or it doesn't; it's a deterrent. It works as long as it stops/delays anyone from copying the product illegally so they get it through a legitimate channel instead. It works and is cost-effective if it does that to enough people that it saves more money than it costs in implementation expenses and any loss of good will. On the evidence to date, that loss of good will doesn't seem to translate into much actual loss of custom once the bitching dies down, presumably because most of the people doing the bitching were never going to pay for the material anyway, so it's a relatively low bar for DRM to be economically viable.

The reality is though, adding DRM to browsers produces no value for anyone other than the lazy big media companies that can't adapt to the modern world.

Of course they can't. The law in most places is set up so the content producer's side of the bargain is clear, but that law is not enforced to make sure that everyone else keeps up their side of the bargain too.

Lots of people post on forums about how these companies need to "adapt their business models". Approximately 100% of those people also enjoy content made by the "lazy big media companies" in question under their current business model, which is becoming less effective. Wanting cheap/free access to that content by making sure that the legal/economic framework under which is was produced continues to be circumvented is a Faustian bargain. It's not sustainable. But no-one seems to be having much success with ideas for alternative business models so far.

Of course there will probably always be mass market films or pop music or sports games that will reliably make a profit even under these conditions. However, the same conditions are toxic to smaller, independent content producers who might have done something innovative or catered to a niche market. Next week the same consumers who object to DRM and dying business models will be complaining that modern AAA games are all derivative titles in long-running series, the SyFy channel doesn't show much good sci-fi any more, the latest Hollywood blockbusters are mostly SFX, action scenes, and attractive young stars whose acting abilities are debatable, and it's getting harder and harder to buy a general purpose computer and run your own software on it instead of buying a device that is already locked-up to some degree the moment you take it out of the box.

It's hardly preemptive. People have been illegally ripping off content since forever, and they've been doing it on a potentially business-destroying scale since the Internet became popular. The official law enforcement bodies conveniently sidestep the whole issue by making copyright infringement a civil rather than criminal offence in most places, which also transfers the burden of enforcement onto the copyright holder in most cases, and then the costs of actually bringing a case to court over someone ripping off a $10 movie are prohibitive. The normal mechanisms that are supposed to protect someone who has been wronged under the law have failed.

The content producers are now saying that if you want their content, you have to let them include technical measures to protect their rights because the legal system mostly doesn't. What other choice has society left them? You are still free not to consume their content and the accompanying DRM by buying something else... assuming, of course, that there is a viable business model to produce that "something else" instead.

This came as a proposal from Google. It was tested in Chromium first. The DRM is essential for their "World-saving" ChromeOS that nobody really cares about.