Re: I strongly urge all supporters to reconsider the EME proposal. It is not in your best interests!

Sent from my iPhone

On May 20, 2013, at 8:22 AM, Hugo Roy <hugo@fsfe.org> wrote:

> Le lun. 20/05/13, 08:00, Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com>:
>> Second, I addressed the idea that this is an affront to ordinary users
>> earlier in the thread. Modest security measures are not generally
>> considered an affront even when they are inconvenient to ordinary
>> users. Users understand that there are a minority of people who want
>> to get stuff without paying. Now, you can reasonably argue that the
>> measures are disproportionate to the threat. There are plenty of
>> examples where people go too far with security measures, causing too
>> much inconvenience to those who are not in fact a threat. But it makes
>> no sense in such cases to argue that, therefore, there should be no
>> security measures.
>
> This is not about a minority of users who want to get stuff
> without paying. This is not about security either. This is about
> who controls what, this is about freedom. Not about the freedom to
> do whatever you like and get away with it for free; but the
> freedom of a person to act responsibly and to control their own
> computing.

And no one is taking that away. Should I not also have the freedom to
give up a little bit of control of what my computer does with some
specific data at a specific time and in a specifically constrained way
if I am offered something in return ? Or would you have it that people
are forbidden from offering or forbidden from accepting such a deal ?
What about if the service performs financial transactions, but only if
I agree to have some trusted module on my computer ? Is that about
freedom too ?

Yes, I agree there are some more subtle issues at play and I described
one balance of different public interests in another mail, but please,
let's get away from this idea that anyone is losing some fundamental
freedom of action here. No one who does not wish to has to install
DRM.

>
> The fact is, with EME, users are not free any more: the CDM
> controls what they can do; and the CDM can claim to have more
> power than copyright-holders are legally entitled to.

Are you claiming that the terms of service of some or all services
that require DRM are illegal ? I would think that could be taken up in
the courts.

As I said in my previous mail, clearly there is a public interest in
ensuring the limitations of copyright actually apply in practice, but
this is a complex legal and public policy issue, which is the subject
of ongoing public debate and it can't be reduced to simple statements
about freedom. The EME proposal is not about that, it is just about
making DRM *as it is used on the web today* simpler and more
transparent.

...Mark

> This is an
> affront to every ordinary user.
>
> --
> Hugo Roy | Free Software Foundation Europe, www.fsfe.org
> FSFE Legal Team, Deputy Coordinator, www.fsfe.org/legal
> FSFE French Team, Coordinator, www.fsfe.org/fr/
>
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Received on Monday, 20 May 2013 15:50:02 UTC