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

Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:

> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb@bollow.ch> wrote:
> 
> > Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:
> >
> > > My point was that what is or is not legal in a given
> > > country is something that service providers need to watch out for,
> > > not something we need to debate here.
> >
> > Even though W3C is not an intergovernmental organization, it is a
> > body that makes global Internet governance decisions.
> 
> IIUC, W3C produces technical "Recommendations" which people may
> follow or not as they choose.

That way of describing the situation vastly understates the very real
and global impact of whether or not W3C decides to "recommend"
something, and the resulting responsibility of W3C to make these
recommendations responsibly.

> > Any such decisions that are incompatible with existing national law
> > (that doesn't violate internationally recognized human rights), or
> > with how national laws could reasonably be changed, are a very
> > serious matter. That is not the kind of thing that W3C could
> > legitimately decide without consultation of the parliaments of the
> > democratic countries of the world.
> 
> Well, I'm going to leave it to the W3C team and Director to determine
> whether any of those things apply here.

I would certainly hope that this kind of question will be discussed
openly, and that not only the perspectives of technical and business
people will be taken into account, but also those of government
representatives of various countries and of international civil society
organizations.

A good way to get this discourse started would be by means of an “Open
Forum” organized by W3C at the Bali IGF, see http://intgovforum.org -
the deadline for reserving an “Open Forum” time slot is June 30. 

Greetings,
Norbert

Received on Monday, 20 May 2013 19:50:38 UTC