Principles (was RE: Is EME usable regardless of the software/hardware I use ?)

Duncan Bayne wrote:
> 
> But - and note that I'm only agreeing with accessibility amongst the
> points you raised - is such progress worth sacrificing the goal of an
> Open Web?  I argue that it's not.

...and so, your principled arguments stand tall, right up to the point where
you have no qualms throwing those with accessibility issues under the bus?
Do tell.

You want a W3C principles quote to echo back to us all? Try this one:

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless
of disability is an essential aspect." -- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and
inventor of the World Wide Web

You've already agreed that from any perspective you can look at this from,
accessibility is coming up further ahead - perfect, no, but significantly
further ahead. But you happily dismiss it as "not worth it". Is that
principle not enough? Or is it all pigs are created equal, but some are more
equal than others?



> Perhaps this is the fundamental difference between our positions?  As
> far as I can tell, you see EME as an improvement upon existing DRM
> systems (and it is, no doubt about that), and therefore that it should
> be adopted by the W3C. 

"Adopted"? I don't see it exactly like that. 

I see a technology, an emergent "standard", which is being worked on by a
collection of engineers. These engineers are currently doing that work
inside of the W3C, a place where work is done in the open, is open to public
scrutiny and feedback, a place where what *I* really focus on,
accessibility, gets an unprecedented opportunity to be included in the
dialog and emergent specifications, and a place where those specifications
are covered by a Patent Policy that "allows" anyone who wants to, to use the
technologies being worked on freely and without fear of patent risk. 

I see engineers, and W3C management patiently and sincerely respond to all
manner of questions, accusations, and outright tripe, and I see them handle
it all way more graciously and calmly than I am capable of, in an effort to
educate, explain, and reason on why this messy bit of engineering must
exist, and why working on it here at the W3C is as good a place as any, and
a far sight better than other options available to those engineers.

Finally, I see that the Director of the W3C, Tim Berners-Lee, has already
decided that this work is "in scope" for the W3C (and since he is the guy
you keep attributing to as the creator of these principles, and he sees it
in scope, perhaps it is your interpretation of the principles that is out of
skew)

I don't see the W3C as the savior of the world, the GPLv3 police, or the
arbitrator of what should and shouldn't exist on the web - it has never been
that, and god forbid if it ever does become that. It's a Standards
organization, and one of the best I've ever seen out there.


> Whereas I see DRM as fundamentally incompatible
> with W3C goals, so regardless of whether EME is an improvement on
> Silverlight and its ilk, the W3C should refuse to endorse it.

This is truly where it breaks down: your "belief" in what the goals of the
W3C are, or should be.  From: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Points/ 

"W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential, which it does by
developing technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools)
that will create a forum for information, commerce, inspiration, independent
thought, and collective understanding."

Right there, it says it: commerce.

These commercial concerns have a problem, and they are coming forward,
publicly, and working on a solution that will solve that solution. You have
concerns? Fair enough. Should those concerns be the basis of driving this
work underground, or away from the W3C? No.

I would strongly suggest that the best way to affect "success" is to work
with these engineers, not try to stop them or drive them away from the W3C.
The W3C's "blessing" of this work is not what is at issue (or perhaps it is
for you) - for me, I just want this to be the best standard it can be,
because it's going to emerge anyway, so we had best have a hand in it.

JF

Received on Friday, 14 June 2013 00:05:11 UTC