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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: 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.