Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

Let's try to reply. Making questions to hide affirmation is never a good way to have peaceful discussion ;)

Emmanuel Revah [2013-10-04T09:10]:
> Why is that finding a better "thing" is considered as the only way to avoid W3C's recommendation of EME ?

So basically, content owners currently uses a business model that is working for them. I'm not judging if it's a good or a bad business model at that point. It's just a fact.

Content distributors (servers) and content players (clients) want to be able to make money in their own activities. So they follow the requirements set by the content owners. They want to minimize their costs and they create technologies which will answer these requirements. Social and business dynamics at play. The legal systems allow it (with some restrictions in some countries as we have already discuss it).

If some of we—I would very much like that everyone here thinks as we aka the community discussing about it—think that it is not a good idea to do EME and that we should not work at all on it, we decide as a group that the W3C platform is not the good place for this. It's a possible choice. The likely outcome is that some of the we will go outside of W3C and creates it in another fora (because it is authorized by law). But it can still be a choice of W3C. It didn't solve the larger issue which is about DRM on the Web, it just pushes it outside of W3C. It is basically a political/philosophical/etc. stance. Valid points. 

OR we decide that we want to enable a environment which helps content owners, distributors, players and users to find a way to agree on a technological solution where a consensus is possible. So instead of creating a wall, we allow a space to find a solution. I'm still hoping for this, but myself I haven't been able to imagine a positive solution, nor I haven't seen technological propositions for it.


> Are retarded business models that want to be on the web more important than the web's users ? W3C says yes.

This can't be answered in a reasonable way. And it's borderline acceptable. Think about "we" when discussing, if you do not, I don't think there's a reasonable "contrat social" (Rousseau) and then you should protest outside of this forum. We value our discussions because we respect each other even if we disagree. I myself think that DRM is not good at all for culture and its development and for the society. Business models are chosen by people who make a living of it. If you think this specific model is not moral, ethics, etc. then it's toward the society representative that you should voice your concerns. It will be more effective.


> Of course the W3C is a community, but it has guidelines. From what I've understood, EME does not respect those guidelines. For example, there is no guideline that states "if you can't find a better solution then we should use this broken thing here".


That's a nice articulation. It is so far an interpretation of W3C mission [1]. The W3C Process document [2] drives the work of W3C. What the **director** of W3C (not talking about the person in this role) has said so far that working on "EME specification is within the scope of the Working Group or not" aka the **charter of the WG** [3][4]

NOTHING has been said so far if it's in scope with W3C mission. See above my first points. One of the forums for W3C to express this is the W3C AC meeting, this is an ongoing discussion I believe. The same type of discussions which happened around the heated debate on patent policy. 

It is a good debate to have, and like you I guess, I would like very much so to have an answer to that question. I haven't seen it yet.

The point raised by Cory will happened, because when a system is created, people are using it. It will overflow the perimeter of media. Definitely and *I* think it is very bad for the Web as we know it. My own unsolved question is what do *we* do about it?


[1]: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission
[2]: http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/
[3]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0122
[4]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Sep/0129.html

-- 
Karl Dubost
http://www.la-grange.net/karl/