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One Year Since the W3C Sold Out the Web with EME

posted by chromas on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the is-anyone-using-it? dept.

canopic jug writes:

Molly de Blanc writes at that it has been one year since the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sold out. It was then they, including Tim Berners-Lee himself, decided to incorporate Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into web standards signalling an end to the open Web. She covers how it happened, what has transpired during the last year in regards to EME, and what steps can be taken.

Digital Restrictions Management exists all over the world in all sorts of technologies. In addition to media files, like music and film, we can find DRM on the Web and enshrined in Web standards. As a Web standard, its use is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), making it not only easier, but expected for all media files on the Web to be locked down with DRM.

It's been a year since the the W3C voted to bring Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into Web standards. They claimed to want to "lead the Web to its full potential," but in a secret vote, members of the W3C, with the blessing of Web creator Tim Berners-Lee, agreed to put "the copyright industry in control" of media access. The enshrinement of EME as an official recommendation is not how we envision the "full potential" of the Web at the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:11AM (#737414)

    This sort of selling out of principles has more in common with politicians.

    You say this as if TBL had principles in the first place..
    I used to go drinking with the Oxford Particle Physics mob, TBL was, at best, regarded as a 'lazy bastard' (real quote from one of them) and was probably just pipped at the post in the 'cordially disliked' race by Wolfram (though that was more petty Oxford politics than anything else..).
    I also knew someone who did occasional work for the W3C (won't say what, as that'd decloak both him and his friend who still works for them), after a couple of years of having to deal with them his opinion of them was, shall we say, less than complimentary? (fuckwits to a man, was the phrase he used in the pub one night to describe them after a trying week)

    Yes, I spent a lot of time in pubs, getting drunk....welcome to the IT world British style..