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from the digital-restrictions-managed? dept.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the nonprofit body that maintains the Web's core standards, made a terrible mistake in 2013: they decided to add DRM—the digital locks that train your computer to say "I can't let you do that, Dave"; rather than "Yes, boss"—to the Web's standards.
So the EFF came back with a new proposal: the W3C could have its cake and eat it too. It could adopt a rule that requires members who help make DRM standards to promise not to sue people who report bugs in tools that conform to those standards, nor could they sue people just for making a standards-based tool that connected to theirs. They could make DRM, but only if they made sure that they took steps to stop that DRM from being used to attack the open Web.
The EFF asked the W3C to make this into their policy. The only W3C group presently engaged in DRM standardization is due to have its charter renewed in early 2016. The W3C called a poll over that charter during the Christmas month, ending on December 30th.
Despite the tight timeline and the number of members who were unavailable over the holidays, a global, diverse coalition of commercial firms, nonprofits and educational institutions came together to endorse this proposal. More than three quarters of those who weighed in on the proposal supported it.
This isn't the first collision between proprietary rights and the W3C. In 1999, the W3C had to decide what to do about software patents. These patents were and are hugely controversial, and the W3C was looking for a way to be neutral on the question of whether patents were good or bad, while still protecting the Web's openness to anyone who wanted to develop for it.
[Continues...]
They came up with a brilliant strategy: a patent nonaggression policy—a policy the EFF modeled the DRM proposal on. Under this policy, participation in a W3C group meant that you had to promise your company wouldn't use its patents to sue over anything that group produced. This policy let the W3C take a position on the open Web (the Web is more open when your risk of getting sued for making it better is reduced) without taking a policy on whether patents are good.
The DRM covenant does the same thing. Without taking a position on DRM, it takes the inarguable position that the Web gets more open when the number of people who can sue you for reporting bugs in it or connecting new things to it goes down.
The World Wide Web Consortium is at a crossroads. Much of the "Web" is disappearing into apps and into the big companies' walled gardens. If it is to be relevant in the decades to come, it must do everything it can to keep the Web open as an alternative to those walled gardens. If the W3C executive won't take the lead on keeping the Web open, they must, at a minimum, not impede those who haven't given up the fight.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 13 2016, @11:43PM
There is a problem, right there. Copyright, patent, trademark, etc don't confer "rights", so much as they confer privileges. A right is something that you have by birth, something that is protected by a constitution. The privilege of monopoly over your own work is a privilege. It is a very special privilege, extended to creators, in the hopes that those creators might continue to create.
A big part of the problem with all those "rights" is, we discuss the issues using language dictated by the special interest group, consisting of "rights holders". The war was half lost when we permitted them to define the terms used in the discussion.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:12AM
> A right is something that you have by birth
So that rules out property rights. I didn't realize you were a communist.
(Score: 2) by NoMaster on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:16AM
I suggest you consult a dictionary. As a noun, "right" or "rights" means "a moral or legal entitlement to have or to do something"; in the copyright sense it is "the authority to perform, publish, or distribute a work or production'. Depending on the PoV of the observer, that may also be considered a privilege.
Bullshit.
Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:54AM
Copyright in the US is, at best, a privilege. Rights don't end after a certain period of time. I know copyright has gotten out of hand [gnu.org] and seemingly lasts forever, but this is not constitutional anyway.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday January 14 2016, @05:50PM
The idea of "rights" was created by philosophers of "The Enlightenment", esp. John Locke. It is not readily defineable without presuming the religious context in which he created it. Different people extract different characteristics of the "thing" described by Enlightenment philosophers as "rights", and say "That's what it means!", and they are naturally in disagreement because they're looking at different things and presuming that because they use the same word they are looking at the same thing. But the Enlightenment concept of rights was often described as "god given rights", and only actually makes sense if you presume that there is a god who gave them. The attempt at a work-around by saying "inherent rights" doesn't actually work, as the original idea required an enforcer.
So even though the term "rights" is enshrined in law, it's not something that has actual existence. People have desires, capabilities and opportunities, and if one person (or government) violates the "rights" there's nothing that will stop them. As a result the fancy language is used to promote public acceptance of immoral actions. And it works pretty well for that purpose. (Locke, etc. used it to promote actions that the government and populace of that time thought of as immoral, and it worked for them, too. Whether they were noble flim-flam artists, or deluded heretics is, I believe, undecideable.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:37AM
More terms than that. They equated copying to stealing. More and more, people are seeing through that. "Stealing is stealing" isn't working so well these days.
Pirate is a battleground term, connotes criminal activity for material gain, but has been turned on its head. Pirate stories (such as Pirates of the Caribbean) depict pirates in a favorable and some even a heroic light. Pirates can be cool. They are rebels against tyranny, rather like Robin Hood, and they appear to enjoy freedoms that landlubbers can't have when there is no place on land free from oppression. I was unsure that the Pirate Party should call itself that, thought maybe Sharing Party would be a better name, but now feel that media monopolists overplayed their hand and made "pirate" a lot cooler that it would be otherwise.
I have a notion that our very language is a hindrance because it is so possessive. "My father" is a possessive form, but it is a totally different meaning from "my arm" or "my marbles". "My work" or "my song" has yet another meaning, that you are the author, not the owner. These media propagandists have tried very hard to confuse everyone on these points. "I have an idea" doesn't mean you have some cunning plan or instruction written down on a piece of paper in a lockbox.
And yes, "rights" is another deliberately misused term. Intellectual properties are a wholly artificial creation of the government. It was supposed to be a good deal, the public got something in exchange for extending a government monopoly on an idea or a work of art. And, that term too, "intellectual properties" is yet another propaganda piece, jamming that word "property" in there as if the intellectual was no different than the material.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday January 14 2016, @05:56AM
Welcome to Babel. Have some LSD and write a book. Thanks!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday January 14 2016, @06:23AM
It was lost in the USA when we let Disney turn copyrights into "forever minus a single day" thus giving the *.A.A the ability to put a tollbooth on all of recorded history and an endless source of revenue for bribery.
So remember kids when you are rushing to see that new Star Wars movie? You are handing your hard earned money to the corp responsible for some of the most egregious "lobbying" seen yet and which is the reason that your family can't enjoy Jimi Hendrix and the other great artists of the 60s for free, nor can new artists use those songs for interesting mash-ups like The Grey Album. Thanks guys.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1, Troll) by frojack on Thursday January 14 2016, @07:22AM
Speaking of copyrights, you can tell where ever Hairyfeet has been on the web by just searching that phrase "forever minus a single day".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday January 14 2016, @01:39PM
News Flash, that was a quote by Jack Valenti [wikipedia.org] who went before congress and argued that was the "true intent" of copyrights. I'm far from the only one who has used that quote as its right up there with his "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." on the "WTF?" scale.
BTW if you actually bothered to do what you said and Google it [google.com] then you would know this as the very first link [rufuspollock.org] is to a paper citing Valenti and the line.
Perhaps this will encourage you to actually try looking up a quote instead of just babbling? Learning about the history of a subject before you speak...its a good thing.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:35PM
You've popularized the phrase singlehandedly far more than Valenti ever did. The majority of hits lead to you.
He's been dead for 9 years, don't you think its time to stop kicking his corpse? Especially since nobody took him seriously, other than you.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday January 14 2016, @09:55PM
Again I have to educate the ignorant...News Flash dumbass, the vast majority of our nastiest copyright laws, including the DMCA [wikipedia.org]? Were implemented as a direct result of his lobbying for the MPAA.
So again try actually learning about the subject instead of just bitching like a butthurt 14 year old Halo player. To use a quote, from Abe Lincoln this time just so you won't automatically assume its more of my endless wisdom, " Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:58PM
More than that, it hinders the creation of new art. This song [youtube.com] could not have been legally written if the copyright on this 1962 song [youtube.com] had been renewed.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday January 14 2016, @09:39PM
And how many artists each year are sued because they happen to come across the same notes as some song written 50 years ago they most likely have never heard?
The western scale only has 12 notes and only certain combinations will work with a particular key signature, which means that in all likelihood all musical combinations are already under copyright so in reality if one were to look hard enough ALL possible songs are held behind the copyright tollbooth. Listen to U2's "Vertigo" and then listen to "Sex Type Thing" by STP, its close enough that if the band that released first wanted to be a douche they could have simply banned the other song, even though I seriously doubt the Edge is listening to STP, because at the end of the day every musical variation in a particular key? SOMEBODY has already done it and thanks to endless copyrights will now "own" that combination forever.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 14 2016, @07:56PM
Copyright, patent, trademark, etc don't confer "rights", so much as they confer privileges. A right is something that you have by birth, something that is protected by a constitution.
I agree with you in spirit. The pedant in me can't help but mention this, though:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause, empowers the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 14 2016, @08:42PM
I'd mod you up if you weren't already at 5, since state-dictated monopolies are indeed privileges. But you say "A right is something that you have by birth, something that is protected by a constitution." In the US at least, copyRIGHT and patents are in fact protected by the constitution. If you invent something, it's your birthright to have a limited time monopoly.
I vehemently object to the term "intellectual property", as if I own the software and books I've written. I don't own them! I hold a "limited time" (except how is my life+75 yrs "limited"?) monopoly on their publication. It is indeed property, but I don't own it any more than an apartment dweller owns his home.
We're in political season here in the US, why is no one asking candidated about repealing the Bono Act?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience