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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.'"
. . . we won the DRM wars? All the major stores are DRM-free. Obviously tho, some people don't really like music - they just like being self-righteous on the internet. (That's right, I ripped off xkcd 546 AND 849
I can hear the argument in a few years "We didn't need considerations when we implemented DRM, why should we actually give some now when it could cause problems". Fuck the whole argument, we don't need DRM and we don't need considerations now or later. Leave both out. - HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
There are many forces commercial and governmental both which want to rein in the internet. It's too dangerous in their view to have anyone able to communicate freely with anyone else without permission or monitoring.
Thus gradually step by step the once open nature of the internet will be closed down. The problem is that people look at each 1/1000th of the whole picture and say "that isn't so bad!". Secure boot. That isn't so bad, you can disable it! (for now). DRM in HTML5. That isn't so bad! Etc. But the overall trends is clear. The internet became what it was before the authoritarians really became aware of it. They won't make that mistake again, and they will act to put more and more controls on it both legal and technical, until what made it an incredible thing is gone.
That is probably one of the most idiotic things I have read in some time. You either allow it or you dont. What is there to trade? Its like saying.. well.. we'll let you have the H1 tag.. but you gotta let us have the HR tag.. what??
It's pretty obvious the content owners (not makers, authors, or creators, by in large) will insist on DRM for all their content, when it benefits just about nobody except them. The DRM battle was nearly won, and now W3C is actively undermining this societal progress.
It's not about "your website", it's about your access to culture that is increasingly consolidated among a few large corporate players due to the chicanery of copyright law. DRM is about controlling the playback, locking out certain uses and users.
I'd say that this will just push even more traffic to the torrents, but the NSA will probably divulging the correlated info for torrents soon enough.
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.
Is with DRM is that nobody will use it. Having DRM is not about being free or not, is the companies controlling how, when and where people could use the content they bought. Is about renting, not selling, and probably in the process getting ownership of the client hardware, own data, and competition content (and is not something hypotetic, Sony already used DRM to install a rootkit in the past ). This always was about punishing and abusing your customers, the ones that actually pay, not the ones trying to get a free ride.
And doing this, in this very moment that the intelligence agencies try to make cracks to get their backdoors inserted in every computer, is not just stupid, is criminal. Internet is getting physically broken into pieces thanks to US intervention, and will be in logical pieces thanks to this DRMd shoot in the foot.
"Nobody is forcing you to use DRM on your website."
They are forcing it into his browser by declaring it a standard, and the websites can use it without his explicit permission. So he's entitled to be pissed at them. Really it should carry a mandatory 'turn off' flag. Also what makes you think you get the choice even with 'your' website. You use adverts, you use third party software, you'll get stuck with this.
Think of it this way, one of the first uses for this will be the NSA injecting a surveillance packet, so it can track us without us being able to delete their tracker. Is that OK with you? What about GCHQ injecting its packet into American browsers, ok still? What about China injecting its drm packet? Ok? Google, OK? Microsoft? Still OK? Facebook? Still happy?
The W3C used to be a member (i.e., company) driven organization, but in 2012 they took a large donation from the Internet Society and were basically brought under ISOCs umbrella (they were running out of money) :
This does not sound like "deep organizational change at W3C," or particularly open in nature. I think that interested parties should comment / complain to the ISOC Board of Trustees.
We get a standards-based way to deliver copyrighted media
You're an idiot. The DRM is NOT standard, only the hooks to it are. So no, you don't get that. You will get a ton of platform-specific, closed, binary blobs doing who knows what to your system.
If someone doesn't provide the blob for your minority platform, well, tough luck. That's VERY different from the web originally, where anyone- you, me, anyone - could read the spec and write our own web browser. Here, it's locked down hard.
You're either an idiot or a shill. Or possibly both.
As long as Google and Mozilla simply fail to implement DRM, it will be DOA.
Losing the freedom to read is never a wise choice to make and certainly something to be politically active about. The world doesn't have to end for significant bad things to occur which demand our active principled disagreement and action. This issue isn't just about what one chooses to use on their site, it's about what users under the digital restrictions have to live with to make their computers behave in the way they want to. Saying one doesn't have to use digital restrictions management on their site is taking the weapon-user's point of view instead of the reader's point of view. Your attempt to marginalize the reader by comparing the objection to the world ending is reduction by hyperbole.
Asking what we're getting in exchange for the acceptance of DRM means one's priorities are misplaced—this question is entirely misplaced because nothing should restrict the reader. Trying to bargain for better terms after accepting a deal signals profound ignorance of how to get what readers need: the right to read.
Digital Citizen
Adding something to an open standard is "selling out"? WTF? Calm down and get a sense of perspective before posting these stories,
The W3C's stated purpose is:
"Standardizing the Web
W3C is working to make the Web accessible to all users (despite differences in culture, education, ability, resources, and physical limitations)"
http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_intro.asp
DRM's purpose is to limit web content to those users who have the money (resources) to pay for it.
Their 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. If anything, the "rhetoric" should be scaled up until they retract their approval of a restrictive internet.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's pretty obvious the content owners (not makers, authors, or creators, by in large) will insist on DRM for all their content, when it benefits just about nobody except them. The DRM battle was nearly won, and now W3C is actively undermining this societal progress.
It's not about "your website", it's about your access to culture that is increasingly consolidated among a few large corporate players due to the chicanery of copyright law.
You make it sound as if I have a right to the content other people produce. I don't and never did. I don't consider it to be "culture" either.
DRM is about controlling the playback, locking out certain uses and users.
I'd say that this will just push even more traffic to the torrents, but the NSA will probably divulging the correlated info for torrents soon enough.
If the content producer hasn't given you permission to consume their content, then you have no right to seek it elsewhere. If I cannot watch a movie through legal channels then I don't watch the movie. Same thing with TV shows and music. I don't consider respecting other peoples' rights to be very onerous, and I don't think I'm missing out on much.
Fine by me. I can survive without their content. Can they survive without my money?
A company that does not sell its products goes under. I don't quite get why everyone thinks it would be different for content providers. Why does everyone think they got the longer breath, it's not like we're dying without the latest Hollywood crapfest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Relax, it's W3C. It's not like any browser that ever existed did actually implement any of their standards correctly, what makes you think it's different with DRM?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The problem with those industries is te old saying: "there's one born every minute*". A never ending flux of uninformed idiots supports stupid businesses.
* it's more like 4 per second, now, so either that saying is incredibly outdated or it was coined by one of them.
DRM is the opposite of an open standard. Duh! DRM means that your browser (and possibly the computer it runs on) will have to be certified to behave just the way the DRM masters tell it to. How is that in any way compatible with a so-called open standard.
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."
I'll respect copyright law once copyright law respects me back.
So, does this mean it is time to fork W3C and have a more meaningful standards organization?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
And just like today, DRM will be a bastard and suck down CPU cycles that on a limited system will make said content unusable. Worse, and the real reason to be against DRM, is that it introduces a layer of "trust us, download this" as a part of said "free content". That is the very hallmark of a lot of the current malware epidemic. That the W3C is greenlighting any of this is going to make already said limited systems even worse off if it catches on.
So, just like today, people will be better off just bypassing all of the above and pirating the content post DRM-removal.
Jolly, everyone else is doing a shitty job and pushing on DRM people. The W3C should too! Because making it a standard somehow makes it better.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Content owners that make their DRM not work for me (a Linux user) cannot consider me in their market. Therefore they would LOSE NOTHING if I crack the DRM and access their content privately.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
'What do we get for that DRM?'
Did "we" vote on this? Let's look at their members list: Apple, AT&T, Facebook, Csico, Comcast, Cox, Google, Huawei, HP, Intel, LG, Netflix, Verizon, Yahoo!, Zynga and ... The Walt Disney Company. Seriously, are we really so daft that we sit here scratching our heads wondering why a consortium of those players and THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY ended up including DRM? REALLY? There is a bill known as The Mickey Mouse Act in regards to excessive copyright that was passed into US law. And we're wondering how Disney might have influenced DRM as an option in a standard ... they're on the list, folks! Pull your heads out of your asses!
And those are just the companies I recognize that have a serious amount of money to be made on DRM (hello, Netflix?!). If I examine closer, there are much smaller players like, say, Fotosearch Stock Photography and Footage that sound like they would gladly vote for DRM in order to "protect" their products/satiate content owners.
My work here is dung.
Well, as both a consumer and programmer I will NOT have any encrypted code or codex coursing through my system. The bullshit DRM'ed content and corresponding proprietary code is not worth the risk of losing control of the system that I do my banking on.
If the browser makers bow and include such features the must NOT be installed by default and be optional plugins that are installed after installation. If not, then I will simply remove from the sources any DRM that finds its way into any of the open source browsers I use. I will then compile and make available the binaries and sources without said defective by design non-features (providing a stampede of GNUs doesn't beat me to it).
Even if "mainstream" consumers do not flock at first to the more open non-proprietary systems, this DRM will still fracture the web along a line dividing the herd from those who would be heard decrying this move as invasive. It's not uncommon for an upstart to take the lead in the browser wars. In a post Snowden world, built in DRM'd browsers don't stand a chance. The mud will be slung, because it's fun to do so. How can you prove that the DRM module doesn't have a backdoor? If it's open source, then it will be subverted in seconds.
The W3C missed the memo: DRM is dead.
And you know what? People are migrating away from the "open web"!
Ever complain that "everything is an app" and "why don't do they do a web site?".
Especially on iOS, which has supported web apps since it was iPhone OS 1.0. And it still does. Yet everyone wants apps.
You know what the result is? Try using iTunes Preview - it basically gives you a quick summary and wants you to do everything from within an app. Or take a look at Steam - SteamPowered.com is a bit more functional, but a lot of it is tied to an app as well. About the only one that isn't is Google Play - where you can do everything from the website.
Heck, try browsing the web on a mobile device, and half the time they ask you to install their app.
The "open web" is now more about hawking apps than providing content - the content is still there, but you use an app.
Eventually we'll just have stuff like iTunes Preview locking things up off the web, and if you're on any platform other than Windows, OS X, iOS or Android, that's all you get for web content.
This proposal is more about keeping the web relevant to content providers. We've already seen what happened when content provider's interests weren't taken care of - see HD-DVD which only had AACS to protect it. But content providers got angry because lack of region coding meant you could go to amazon.com and buy a HD-DVD of a movie that hasn't even come out yet. Or the Sony PSP where custom firmware was basically the reason why systems outsold games nearly 2-to-1.
The future of the web is already happening - on mobile devices.
I basically agree with most of your post, but wanted to point out one mistake -- which is common enough, no offense. W3schools, which you cited, is in no way associated with W3C.
In fact, the information available from their site is often incomplete, inaccurate and sometimes plain wrong. It has been getting better, apparently, thanks in no small part due to these guys.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
It's not so easy. I hate DRM but I'm pretty sure that if this gets passed some customers of mine sooner or later will approach me and ask me funny things like "listen, I know there is a new thing in the web called DRM and I can use it so nobody can look at my HTML code, right? How much does it cost?" And what happens if I tell them they should not use DRM? Simple: somebody else will get the job. Once the genie is out of the bottle it's extremely difficult to put it back in there and all sort of nasty things will happen. Saying goodbye to view source won't be the worst one.
I wonder what *W3C committee members* got in return for that and if we can start a "STOP DRM" campaign and kill this madness.
W3schools, which you cited, is in no way associated with W3C.
Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated.
Though it's even more saddening to read W3C's vision on their own site:
Vision
W3C's vision for the Web involves participation, sharing knowledge, and thereby building trust on a global scale. The Web was invented as a communications tool intended to allow anyone, anywhere to share information.
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission#principles
I guess they'll need to amend it to "Trust anyone who has the cash, share with anyone who has enough money."
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
you're talking about a piece of black box code that is designed to talk directly to the hardware, and designed so it can override the OS
snowden's whistelblowing made it general knowledge that collusion between all of the big software companies and the US and UK intelligence/spy-communities is common.
does that really seem like good idea to you?
the W3c is comprised of these guys
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Member/List
theyre major corporations like Microsoft, Sony BT, Cox, Square Enix Comcast and at&t. these guys either have direct pressure to, or direct interest in pushing DRM whether you like it or not. they outnumber individual members and can basically determine the course as they see fit by lobbying and intimidating other members into concensus. in short, asking the W3C is functionally incapable of representing the interests of anything more than a collection of large corporations. Sort of like the US Government.
Good people go to bed earlier.
By paying the correct toll at the correct tollbooth, and tacitly agreeing that culture is something you "buy" and not "participate in".
> Tim Berners-Lee: DRMed HTML least of all evils
No, Tim, DRMed HTML is a pretty big evil, in that it sabotages an open, readable format by saddling it to an unnecessary rights management monkey.
Let stakeholders in DRM do their own dirty work and see if the public embraces it. The fact that they are going to do so doesn't make it incumbent on web developers and standards bodies to make it more easy for them to do so in a more universal manner.
Check your mandate, Tim.
Do you ever sing happy birthday to your kids? In a McDonalds maybe? Well what you did was create a public performance of a copyrighted song. How dare you. The original owner of the song didn't give you permission to do that. What about singing this most famous song in a movie? Well that will cost you $10000
How about a band taking a 10 second snip of a symphonic rendition of a rock song and using it as a riff in their own song? Sorry 100% of all income and royalties now go to the original creator of the song, not even the people who originally performed the symphonic piece.
This is the sad reality of copyright law today. I don't have the rights to other's content, but they sure as heck shouldn't have the rights they do either. Don't argue that this doesn't affect culture either.
Personally, I prefer the term "Human Rights Management" since the free and open communication of ideas is a human right. This right extends to the public domain and to fair use. But it is much easier to swallow if we "manage" those rights, rather than just violate them outright.
The problem with virtually every DRM scheme I have seen pushed by industry is that they make no provision for fair use or for the limited terms of copyright. DRM is seen as a way to protect from the vagaries and limitations of copyright by silently removing "copying" as an option.
Here's an option: if you want to use DRM, you no longer get copyright protection. It becomes a trade secret.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause