Re: Cory Doctorow: What happens with digital rights management in the real world? [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 07:54:31AM -0800, John Foliot wrote:
> Whining about a technology that exists because of demand does no-one any good:
> if you want to see digital rights controls removed, go fight that in the right
> forum. Continued moaning and groaning at the W3C has zero affect on DMCA and
> other legislation, and will not remove the need for some form of technology to
> ensure that people are "free" to legally profit from their creative works
> without the fear of pirates stealing their livelihood or reducing it to a
> near-worthless collection of ones and zeros.

A particular specification will raise technical question and objections (as
this one did: from prominent implementers; from users worried about
peculiar implications of such proposal).

This is stated in the well know 'in scope' message [1] too

    This clarification is not a statement of support towards the technical
    approach taken in the EME specification or the CfC itself. While the
    W3C Team do believe that use cases like premium content should be
    addressed in the Open Web Platform in order to bring it to its full
    potential, we're also looking forward for the HTML Working Group to
    address any technical concerns raised against the EME draft.

So the "go fight that in the right forum" exhortation (implying the 'right
forum' is the legislative arena) is not correct.

This holds true even if various views expressed in public-restrictedmedia are
technically irreconcilable (as unfortunately they seem to be, barring a
miracle proposal).

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0122.html