Re: W3C HTML Fork without Digital Restriction Management

Am Wed, 15 Jan 2014 08:45:26 -0800
schrieb David Singer <singer@apple.com>:

> People effectively profile HTML all the time — there are ‘rolling
> edges’ of what is implemented and used, and what is falling out of
> use and being removed from implementations.

I'm not talking about that kind of thing, but about a more formal kind
of profile specification drafted by a public interest oriented community
process.

There is, IMO at least, a strong need to have an answer (which is as
precise and authoritative as possible) to the question about the
markup language format and features that are appropriate to use in
websites that are intended to be part of the “open web” (understood in
a way that in particular does not discriminate against FOSS).

I had expected the W3C process to be providing this answer, but since
this seems to be not the case (if W3C continues on the path on which it
seems to be, it will provide a superset of this answer, but not the
answer itself), it appears that it is necessary to formalize a profile
spec elsewhere.

> If DRM is not used by content owners, not implemented by browsers, or
> not supported by customers, it will die.  Having a formal spec that
> differs from the w3c one only in that it doesn’t include EME doesn’t
> seem to change the balance at all.

I agree that by itself, a formal profile spec (or any other kind of
formal spec that addresses the problem) will achieve little.

However if EME (and/or a follow-up further step downwards on the
slippery slope of increasing proprietarization of the web
platform) turns out to be dangerously successful in the marketplace,
and it becomes evident that political efforts are necessary and
appropriate to safeguard the public interest, it will be incredibly
important to already have a precise spec that can be referenced
in the context of such political efforts.

Greetings,
Norbert


> On Jan 15, 2014, at 8:41 , Norbert Bollow <nb@bollow.ch> wrote:
> 
> > Olivier Thereaux <olivier.thereaux@bbc.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> >>> Accordingly, a subset of the OWP which removes EME would more
> >>> accurately be characterized as a "profile" of the OWP, rather than
> >>> a fork of the OWP.
> >> 
> >> Agreed, profiling is a different beast. That might have been what
> >> the OP actually had in mind.
> > 
> > There's an effort to develop a profile spec, and promote it,
> > underway already at http://FreedomHTML.org/
> > 
> > Greetings,
> > Norbert
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> David Singer
> Multimedia and Software Standards, Apple Inc.
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 15 January 2014 17:39:35 UTC