Re: Alternatives to DRM?

On 4/24/2013 4:27 PM, Wendy Seltzer wrote:
> 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;"

I believe this is a statement about restrictions on the sublicensing of 
patents under the patent policy, not about the degree of freedom 
associated with the spec per se.

>
>>>    (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?

I believe that the Working Group is already discussing how to make sure 
that the CDM-shaped hole enhances interop.

>
> --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/
>>
>>
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 2013 20:47:02 UTC