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The W3C Sells Out Users Without Seeming To Get Anything In Return
An anonymous reader writes "Questioning the W3C's stance on DRM, Simon St. Laurent asks 'What do we get for that DRM?' and has a thing or two to say about TBL's cop-out: 'I had a hard time finding anything to like in Tim Berners-Lee's meager excuse for the W3C's new focus on digital rights management (DRM). However, the piece that keeps me shaking my head and wondering is a question he asks but doesn't answer: If we, the programmers who design and build Web systems, are going to consider something which could be very onerous in many ways, what can we ask in return? Yes. What should we ask in return? And what should we expect to get? The W3C appears to have surrendered (or given?) its imprimatur to this work without asking for, well, anything in return. "Considerations to be discussed later" is rarely a powerful diplomatic pose.'"
The question of what "we" get is not very meaningful until there is an actual "we." And if you are talking about programmers making mass-scale demands of any significance, you first need to have a common base of opinion for that mass to have a unified voice. Now let me ask you -- if programmers were inclined to join together in this kind of way, wouldn't that first have expressed itself as some kind of coherent economic grouping like -- say -- a union? I'm sure there are a few unionized programmers out there ... uh... somewhere... but I've personally never met one, ever.
So if they won't do this for a core economic interest (salary, working conditions) then how realistic is this idea that there would be some kind of coherent constituency agititating for something "in return" for DRM? Because as it turns out, quite a few programmers benefit from being employed by companies with a stake in DRM. And that is, on some level, almost every for-profit company on the internet which makes it business selling proprietary information (content, programs, web services). Which is just about everyone, besides the relatively small proportion of economic activity at companies relying on open-source business models.
This is not about programmers at all. If anyone is going to complain, it's "consumers." There are a lot more of them, and the population of potential complainers is much larger. Whether or not that means diddly squat in a major capitalist system where all the for-profit internet-connected companies really, truly ARE a significantly incentivized interest group that pretty much like the perceived benefits of DRM... well, color me skeptical about that.
How long before W3C's reputation is ruined?
The W3C's says themselves that their reason for existence is to standardize the Web to be "accessible to all users (despite differences in culture, education, ability, resources, and physical limitations)" http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_intro.asp
The reason for DRM's existence is to limit web content to those users who have the money (resources) to pay for it.
W3C's endorsement of DRM is antithetical to W3C's own clearly stated values, and shows that they are no longer a fit group to determine web standards. So yes, as you say by doing this, they have ruined their reputation.
Has W3C jumped the shark?
"Jumping the shark" is an idiom that describes the moment when a brand, design, or creative effort's evolution loses the essential qualities that initially defined its success and begins its decline into irrelevance.
So yes, since W3C has lost the "essential qualities that initially defined its success" as a result of their decision to endorse an internet segregated by wealth, they have clearly met the criteria to be shark jumpers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
> We forced content providers to choose: Roll your own DRM product and fail, or adopt a DRM-free standard, and make money.
Apple's DRM worked acceptably and looked great compared to the nightmarish DRM from other companies. The media companies realized that DRM was quickly giving Apple huge leverage over them and locking their customers into Apple-only --- and then Apple would tell them "you can only charge $0.99 cents for a song".
Then they realized The DRM was working great! Really great! For Apple. For the music companies? Not so much.
[Classic "Beware, you might get what you want!" Pie in the Face story.]
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory