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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, 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!