Re: Alternatives to DRM?

On 04/24/2013 11:07 AM, Jeff Jaffe wrote:
> On 4/24/2013 8:27 AM, Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 2:33 PM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
>>> Dom, in framing this as a question about open source compatible DRM was
>>> anchoring the discussion on a long-established W3C practice to make sure
>>> that our standards are implementable in open source.  I was merely
>>> pointing
>>> out that this would be possible with DReaM.
>> This still interprets "open source" as "disclosed source" instead of
>> the freedoms associated with Open Source which happen to require
>> source disclosure.
> 
> Yes, that was my interpretation of Dom's question.  If he intended his
> question as you interpreted it, then my answer did not address this
> question.

When writing the article Henri cited, I had the "user freedom"
interpretation in mind, specifically, as those freedoms are necessary to
enable user-innovators and the unaffiliated developers of new
technologies ("disruptive technologies," as Christensen describes them).
I was using open source as an example of those freedoms, not as the sole
criterion.

>>> To your point, W3C could certainly add a new practice to make sure
>>> that our
>>> standards are compatible with the "no 'disclosed source code except
>>> keys'"
>>> category.  In that case DReaM like solutions would indeed be excluded.
>> I thought it was already effectively a requirement that W3C specs be
>> implementable in ways that grant the downstream freedoms associated
>> with Open Source
> 
> I have not seen that in my three years at W3C, but I would appreciate
> pointers to where that practice was established.

Many of W3C's policies are oriented toward making the Web freely
implementable and freely usable -- in the sense of independence, not
"free of charge," although free of charge comes through in places too.
The royalty-free patent policy assures that no permission is required to
develop a new implementation, and that a developer won't be subject to
licenses or escalating costs if the implementation succeeds.
Implementations shouldn't have dependencies on mutable permissions and
preferences of others in the field.


http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/#sec-Requirements
includes 5.7, "may not impose any further conditions or restrictions on
the use of any technology, intellectual property rights, or other
restrictions on behavior of the licensee, but may include reasonable,
customary terms relating to operation or maintenance of the license
relationship such as the following: choice of law and dispute resolution;"

> 
>>   (and that this was one of the reasons why the
>> boundaries of the EME spec have been drawn to exclude the actual
>> production CDMs).
> 
> W3C has not received any requirements to work on actual production CDMs.

And that seems to be part of the challenge, that EME specifies an
CDM-shaped hole, where known CDMs impose licensing constraints that
wouldn't permit an independent browser developer to implement. How might
we better satisfy that dependency?

--Wendy

> 
>>   It would be news to me if the current policy merely
>> required W3C specs to be compatible with source disclosure. After all,
>> the RF Patent Policy is relevant to  downstream freedoms but orthogonal
>> to source disclosure.
>>
>> -- 
>> Henri Sivonen
>> hsivonen@iki.fi
>> http://hsivonen.iki.fi/
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wseltzer@w3.org +1.617.715.4883 (office)
Policy Counsel, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
http://wendy.seltzer.org/        +1.617.863.0613 (mobile)

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2013 20:27:51 UTC