[whatwg] Do we really need to introduce a <device> element for giving access to webcams and mikes?

[Tran, Dzung D]

The <device> was added by Ian Hickson in response to some of the work in the W3C DAP working group. The original intent was to make sure the user are actively grant permission to a particular device camera or microphone instead of just click okay since some malicious site can just capture and post it on the internet.

Here is a reference to the work in W3C DAP: http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/camera/Overview.html

Some threads on the topic: 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2009Dec/0248.html

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-device-apis/2009Dec/0194.html


Thanks
Dzung Tran,

-----Original Message-----
From: whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org [mailto:whatwg-bounces at lists.whatwg.org] On Behalf Of Julien Cayzac
Sent: Monday, May 03, 2010 07:41 PM
To: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
Subject: Re: [whatwg] Do we really need to introduce a <device> element for giving access to webcams and mikes?

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:37 AM, Julien Cayzac <julien.cayzac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am not sure if I get your point here: are you saying that using the
> webcam locally in a canvas and somehow transmitting the webcam video
> over the network are two independent permissions to grant? If so, how
> would you detect the latter, since by allowing the page to manipulate
> the video in <canvas> you would give it permission to use toDataURL()
> too, so it could still transmit frames to the server or to other party
> if a ConnectionPeer is involved?

To answer my own question: by raising the origin-clean flags of the
<canvas> element the webcam was "attached" to.

Now, I see no reference to any interaction between <device> and
<canvas> mentionned in http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/

Julien.
-- 
Julien Cayzac
http://julien.cayzac.name/
skype://jcayzac?chat