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

On Wed, 2013-06-26 at 11:32 -0700, Mark Watson wrote:

>         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.

So in your opinion W3C doesn't work on creating new ways of controlling
users, just improves the integration of the existing ones :)
Well.. that doesn't change much. Improving the integration makes it
easier for content providers to spread DRM usage.

>         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.

Not perfectly legal. That's already discussed and I think already
agreed. In many parts of the world taking away some of the consumer
rights is not legal and not acceptable. If W3C disregards that fact and
proposes a way to control users and improve the existing ways of doing
that (see above), then it takes sides.

Received on Thursday, 27 June 2013 08:03:06 UTC