Re: WebVR and DRM

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 4:02 PM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> I think we’re going to be a lot more productive if we stay on engineering
> questions, and the opinion aside. Please? Your messages are coming across
> more as political point than engineering insight.
>

Respectfully, engineering decisions have very real political and ethical
consequences, and they are not separate. We must not silence ourselves in
the name of a vague and disingenuous notion of partiality or propriety. If
anything, we are particularly responsible to speak up as a community with
particular domain knowledge. DRM is particularly problematic as it is built
on a poor engineering foundation and has an outsized negative effect on
those who are already marginalized by the way it blocks accessibility tools
and other measures that are otherwise legally protected under fair use.

I always appreciate Florian's passionate, honest input. He's been an active
contributor to the WebGL community for a relatively long time and has
demonstrated that he knows what he's talking about.

I cannot speak to "criminality" in the literal sense, as I'm not a lawyer.
Though I will point out that the EFF has sued the US government, arguing
that section 1201 of the DMCA violates the first amendment. And a case
could be made for "criminality" in the ethical sense.

Reference:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/section-1201-dmca-cannot-pass-constitutional-scrutiny

It sounds like you guys are on top of the video layer stuff, so I'll leave
you to it for the moment. But I would encourage this community to always
consider the ethics of what we're building and to design for more
inclusiveness rather than so quickly follow the sort of restriction and
marginalization that DRM encourages.

On that note, I'd also like to point out that we continue to be sorely
lacking in representation from the aforementioned marginalized groups, as
open source communities are in general. We could benefit from a few more
varied perspectives, and I would welcome any discussion on how we can do
better.

Best,
Brian