Re: Invalid acceptance of DRM requirement (was Re: walling of the web)

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 2:34 AM, Norbert Bollow <nb@bollow.ch> wrote:

> Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:
>
> > Plus, pirate sites ask their
> > users to participate in law-breaking in order to access the content
> > (a much bigger ask than installing a CDM, surely).
>
> That is not true in regard to all jurisdictions.
>
> Under Swiss law, downloading for personal, private purposes is legal
> as a matter of principle regardless of whether the person who uploaded
> the content and the site operator are acting legally or not.
>
> This does not mean that copyright holders are paid nothing. There is a
> system of levies on empty media etc, the proceeds from which are
> distributed to copyright holders. This system is explicitly intended to
> compensate copyright holders for what their losses may be due to what
> the Swiss system, as a matter of law, allows people to do.
>
> A major reason behind this system is that users are generally not able
> to know whether a given site is a “pirate site”, or even on a site that
> may strongly look like a “pirate site” whether the content was
> uploaded legally, i.e. by a representative of the copyright holder
> (that happens even on sites which are truly “pirate sites”, because this
> is in a significant category of circumstances an effective form of
> promotion), or illegally.
>
> Going forward, for a variety of human rights related reasons, I think
> that the system needs to be improved to make upload and “pirate site”
> hosting also legal as a matter of principle as long as those
> activities are done in an entirely noncommercial way. In my view, that
> change however is not something that any country could reasonably do on
> its own, as it will require a significant change to international law.
> The process for making a significant change to international law
> obviously cannot be easy or fast, especially when (as it will certainly
> be the case in regard to this) it will be opposed by well-funded
> lobbying.
>
> So I'm certainly not going to hold by breath until the international
> legal system has been updated according to what makes sense in the
> Internet age.
>
> However, given that it has not been possible (yet) to update copyright
> law, internationally, to make it conform in the context of the Internet
> age to the human rights requirements, it is not an appropriate strategy
> to shape the future of the web on the basis of arguments about what is
> or isn't currently considered to be “law-breaking” in regard to laws
> which in the view of many people are simply wrong (in a variety of ways:
> morally wrong, violating human rights, and failing to achieve the
> intended purpose) in the context of the Internet age.
>
> Therefore, in shaping and building the open web of the future, I
> would suggest that the relevant legal arguments are not so much about
> what is currently legal or illegal, but about what on the basis of first
> principles, in particular human rights, should be legal or illegal.
>

Thanks for clarifying. It certainly helps to know more explicitly that the
basis of your position is fundamentally a political one.

The above is a really a question for the W3C Director and Team. Myself, I
think it's a little much to expect an unelected technical standardization
body to operate on the basis of a particular political position. You're
free to ask that we adopt such a position, but I think it's unlikely to
happen.

...Mark


>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> FreedomHTML.org
>