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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Protesters gathered outside a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) meeting [eff.org] to protest the adoption of digital rights management (DRM) standards:

A crowd upset about the possibility of DRM in Web standards gathered to protest outside the World Wide Web Consortium's Advisory Committee meeting in Cambridge, MA last night. EFF is participating in these W3C meetings as a member, encouraging the group to adopt a non-aggression covenant to protect security researchers, standards implementors and others from the effects of including DRM-related technology in open standards.

Is this a part of the "real dialog" the W3C has called for [eff.org]?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will consider adopting a DRM non-aggression covenant at its Advisory Committee meeting in Boston next week. EFF has attended several of these meetings before as a W3C member, always with the intent to persuade the W3C that supporting DRM is a bad idea for the Web, bad for interoperability, and bad for the organization. By even considering Web standards connected with DRM, the W3C has entered an unusually controversial space. Next week's membership meeting will be accompanied by demonstrations organized in Boston by the Free Software Foundation [fsf.org], and other cities [defectivebydesign.org] where the W3C has a presence.

The W3C responded last week by calling for "real dialog" [w3.org] on how to solve problems together. EFF will be there, once again talking through with our fellow W3C members, the legal, technical and social risks of putting DRM in the heart of the Web.

Original Submission