Re: What change could we make? (was Re: Letter on DRM in HTML)

Renato Iannella <ri@semanticidentity.com> wrote:

> On 25 Jun 2013, at 03:34, Nikos Roussos
> <comzeradd@mozilla-community.org> wrote:
> 
> > Certainly the legal issues are not black-and-white in a worldwide
> > scale. That's why we shouldn't support DRM-based technical
> > solutions that are clearly on the black side of the spectrum and
> > disregard any shades of gray on consumers rights.
> 
> That is a rather tough policy position to support, as I can think of
> other W3C standards that fall into the same category.
> 
> The classic being that I use HTML5 to markup "slanderous" text on my
> website (the text being illegal in Australia). Do we blame HTML5?
> W3C? No...it is the *user* of the technology that has broken the law,
> not the technology itself.

No, that example is not in the same category at all:

There is a broad consensus is democratic societies that despite the
possibility that any text that is published could potentially be
slanderous, the freedom to publish text is good and highly desirable,
and providing people with this freedom makes a positive contribution to
society. Hence it is not problematic for W3C to work to expand this
freedom, by coordinating the creation of more effective ways to
exercise this freedom. 

By contrast, the is *no* consensus that it is appropriate to give
authors and publishers absolute control of how their publications may
be used. Copyright law gives them a lot of control, some think it's too
much control, others think it's too little. Some think that something
must be done to prevent Internet-based phenomena from eroding the
economic power of publishers; others think that as the Internet and
other technical developments make it much easier for people to create
and publish cultural goods, it is only appropriate for the economic
power of specialized publishing companies to diminish, and that
copyright law should be weakened correspondingly. In any case, the legal
situation in every jurisdiction is that there are limits to the scope
of legal control granted by law to copyright holders. When in this
situation, W3C works to coordinate the creation of more effective ways
of expanding the control of publishers over cultural goods beyond the
generally accepted rights of copyright holders, that means that W3C is
putting its (considerable!) influence behind one of the sides in a
significant political conflict of interests.

Now I'm not suggesting that W3C must never pick a side in such a
conflict. What I would suggest is that if W3C effectively picks a
side, W3C should choose the side that corresponds to the “open web”
values. In regard to the particular conflict of interests that has
sparked this debate, that is not the side which seeks to lock things
down with DRM.

Greetings,
Norbert
FreedomHTML.org

Received on Tuesday, 25 June 2013 06:39:43 UTC