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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.
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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, Insightful) by darkfeline on Wednesday January 13 2016, @11:57PM
I wish we could reclaim the World Wide Web dream. Like Project Xanadu, it's more or less unsalvageable at this point. An electronic space filled with multimedia documents, hyperlinked to one another. In effect, an ultimate form of Wikipedia, decentralized, where anyone could publish whatever information they want.
The Web is long dead. Sure, there are a lot of applications and JavaScript repositories using the same technologies (HTML and HTTP), but the Web itself? All that's left is a handful of webrings lost to the sands of time.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 14 2016, @01:49AM
The heart may be in the right place here but they are trying to close the door long after the cattle escaped.
The big mistake was ever allowing ecmascript - it's all one long slippery slope from there.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday January 14 2016, @02:34AM
Nope, that wasn't the problem. It was the AOL problem. The mindless masses who create nothing and only consume crap.
They turned the Internet into a modem to dial into Facebook and Twitter and watch cat videos on YouTube.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 14 2016, @03:23AM
They turned the Internet into a modem to dial into Facebook and Twitter and watch cat videos on YouTube."
As you say, the mindless masses create nothing. They didnt build bookface or twotter or youtube. Passive consumers couldnt begin to build any of that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday January 14 2016, @05:10AM
True, but their limitless demand drove all of the decisions once they arrived.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Geotti on Thursday January 14 2016, @06:01AM
You're both forgetting the advances we're attaining in semantic enrichment & structure (OWL, RDF) as well as stuff like location based services, context aware environments and tech, immersive/ambient computing, etc.
We'll come back. Huge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday January 14 2016, @01:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 14 2016, @04:24PM
And yet today if you go to twitter with sane brower settings they will not serve you even 128 characters.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by xpda on Thursday January 14 2016, @06:08AM
There are cat videos on YouTube? Cool!