SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 4, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 13 2016, @11:45PM
I4I successfully sued Microsoft over over the separation of data and formatting [theguardian.com] through the use of XML. This was something I learned about through studying the HTML 4 standard. (The patent was filed shortly before the W3C standardized HTML4).
I never did hear back from the W3C when i sent an e-mail asking how the lawsuit impacted the Internet. I4I never promised not to sue over the standard (because they were not on the committee (I checked)).
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:31AM
I wouldn't worry overly much about it other than as a historical note. HTML 4 dates to 1997 so any patented tech it embodies won't be under protection much longer, even with submarines and such.
Time flies. We are about to see a lot of interesting tech become free. MPEG1 is pretty much open now, mp3 audio is probably open now if one were to go to a bit of bother to avoid the last bits under patent, mostly involving multi-channel sound (not joint-stereo). Mpeg2 is next up, I count nine remaining patents, some also involving multi-channel and other features which could be disabled. Soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 14 2016, @07:20AM
Tell that to SCO.