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An Open Letter on DRM To the Inventor of the Web, From the Inventor of Net Neutrality (boingboing.net)
Tim Wu, a law professor at the Colombia University, and best known for coining the term "net neutrality," has published an open letter to Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In the letter, Wu has asked Berners-Lee to "seriously consider extending a protective covenant to legitimate circumventers who have cause to bypass EME, should it emerge as a W3C standard." Cory Doctorow, writes for BoingBoing: But Wu goes on to draw a connection between the problems of DRM and the problems of network discrimination: DRM is wrapped up in a layer of legal entanglements (notably section 1201 of America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act), which allow similar kinds of anticompetitive and ugly practices that make net neutrality so important. This is a live issue, too, because the W3C just held the most contentious vote in its decades-long history, on whether to publish a DRM standard for the web without any of the proposed legal protections for companies that create the kinds of competing products and services that the law permits, except when DRM is involved. As Wu points out, this sets up a situation where the incumbents get to create monopolies that produce the same problems for the open web that network neutrality advocates -- like Berners-Lee -- worry about.
When we look at recent browser usage stats we see that Chrome has 50% or more of the market. Safari has about 10%, but it's mainly on mobile devices. Other mobile browsers like UC Browser for Android, Samsung Internet and Opera Mini are about 15%. IE and Firefox are both down to around 5% or 6%. Then there are various minor players.
"Web browser" today means Chrome. If Chrome doesn't support some web technology, then it may as well not exist. If Chrome supports a technology, then Chrome's level of support effectively defines the standard.
So what's the point of the W3C these days?
Is it just to document how Chrome behaves, so the other lesser browser vendors can imitate it more closely?
With such a lack of competition when it comes to web browsers, an organization like the W3C seems to be toothless. Before moz://a ruined Firefox's user experience for so many of its users, at least there was some competition. But that has evaporated.
I don't see how the W3C can be anything other than a glorified documentation writer at this point. Maybe things will change in the future, but it seems unlikely to happen any time soon. Nobody else has been able to compete with Chrome in any meaningful way. The most likely competitor is Firefox, but it seems unlikely to turn its boat around soon. Users keep leaving Firefox, and their Servo effort is going nowhere.
Things are looking really bleak for the web, and I don't think that there's anything that the W3C can do to help.
These are legit concerns, but they will never win the argument. Yes the example given is the problem with DRM, but it is so specific that there will be no mass uprising to protect it. And having DRM built in does scare me. Imagine not being able to take a screenshot of something on a webpage, or being prevented from copying text from an article. All of this could be done with DRM.
That being said I am hoping we have enough of an open browser system now to avoid the chokepoint issue. There are several open rendering engines that browsers can use, so there will always be an alternative to the IE problem. Those browsers can support DRM while still insuring the rest of the web stays open. In a way I think the market will show that DRM taking over the web won't work. It's tolerated on videos because everyone came to the same conclusion as Tim.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle. - Plato
What is Berners-Lee going to do? Incorporate these changes into his next release of the interwebs?https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/04/28/1533207/an-open-letter-on-drm-to-the-inventor-of-the-web-from-the-inventor-of-net-neutrality#
tone
I for one cannot wait for the DRM standard to be expanded to cover the entire contents of web pages, so it becomes extremely difficult to block advertising, trackers, web-asm based malware, or do something as simple as "right click" on an image and "save as".
Fun for all!
Captcha = boycott
"Tim Wu, a law professor at the Colombia University"
Pretty sure Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia University, not "Colombia" university. "Columbia" is the personification of the New World, while "Colombia" is a country in South America.
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
Why do people think that if there isn't a standard for DRM, that websites won't use DRM at all?
All it means is that websites will write their own version, some already have.
Universal Embedded DRM would kill the social networks dead overnight. Just watch the titans fight it out. If the social networks lose, you can always spin up your own site with no DRM, standardized or not. Just be prepared to pay the new ISP toll.
History has proven over and over DRM is not a long term solution to anything. I'm kinda looking forward to the cat-mouse-mouse games between the rights-holders, social networks, and users. Maybe I'll make a few bucks "modding" browsers.
I swear, every couple of years, some new oppressive rights management shit sneaks onto the net, lives a few months, and dies. Unbroken DRM is like a target that only gets bigger with time.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
It's not at all clear to me what the author is asking Berners-Lee and W3C to do. The issue he brings up is a concern with a particular law. W3C doesn't write the law. Html EME defines a technical interface for "if you want a browser to use an encryption module, here's the code to declare that". It doesn't, and can't, effect any law in any way I can see.
All [no standard] means is that websites will write their own version, some already have.
Indeed.
Also: In the race between weapons and armor, weapons always (eventually) win.
By creating a standard and getting the bulk of the "content providers" to adopt it, the WWWC creates a single big target that leads to breaking MOST of the DRM simultaneously. Meanwhile, content providers are left with the choice of getting behind the big target or being non-standard.
Which is fine: Like WEP, or a locked screen door, DRM won't protect things forever. But, like a "No Trespassing" sign, it DOES indicate INTENT forever. Intent of the content provider to limit access, and intent of the unauthorized content viewer to bypass that limit. That takes the "I didn't mean to do it." defence away, and gets any legal cases down to examining whether the poster of the No Trespassing sign had the right to limit the access and/or the crosser of the boundary had a right to obtain access.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Richard M. Stallman (rms, widely known as the founder of the GNU Project and frequent lecturer speaking for software freedom, the freedom to control one's computers by having the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the code they run) explained why the W3C can't get away from DRM ("digital handcuffs") starting around 11m40s into the interview. Around 15m16s rms pointed out why the W3 is structurally incapable of challenging DRM:
Digital Citizen