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

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:39 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb@bollow.ch> wrote:

> 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.


I think we agree on these facts so far (at least with my IANAL caveat).


> 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's not what is proposed. We're proposing to improve the technical
integration of _already existing_ means of control, addressing some of the
user concerns with those (security, privacy, accessibility). That's
different from "creation of more effective ways of expanding control". If
DRM were not already widely deployed and used on the web and if the W3C was
likely to cause it to be, then your characterization would be more
accurate, but neither of these are true.


> that means that W3C is
> putting its (considerable!) influence behind one of the sides in a
> significant political conflict of interests.
>

I draw a different conclusion about what would constitute "taking sides".
If W3C were to refuse to even discuss a proposal from it's members on the
basis that the proposal is intended to be used with* technologies that
_some people_ believe should be the subject of legal controls, but which
are presently perfectly legal, _that_ would be taking sides.

In fact, the technologies we're discussing are widely deployed without
legal challenge. Not taking sides involves bringing the positive influence
of the standardization process to any technology that is relevant and which
has support amongst our members, within the policies are procedures we have
established.

[Note "intended to be used with" - the proposal in question doesn't even
specify the technologies in dispute!]


> 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.
>

So, I think we agree W3C should not pick sides in an open and likely
long-running political debate, but we seem to disagree on what "not picking
sides" means.

A W3C recommendation says "if you need to do X, we recommend you do it in
this standard way, not in some proprietary way". It doesn't "recommend"
that you do X. We published WebGL, but that doesn't mean W3C is
recommending that people use WebGL for all applications - there are other
W3C alternatives for rendering content: Canvas or just HTML itself. In
fact, if asked, W3C would probably recommend using something searchable and
linkable like HTML over WebGL if you have a choice. That doesn't mean we
don't publish WebGL. Likewise, W3C might recommend that people use
unprotected <video> instead of EME, if they have a choice, but that doesn't
mean we shouldn't work on EME.

...Mark


>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
> FreedomHTML.org
>