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An Open Letter on DRM To the Inventor of the Web, From the Inventor of Net Neutrality (boingboing.net)

Posted by msmash on from the time-to-take-some-action dept.

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.

6 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Legit concerns but... by 605dave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Legit concerns but... by sinij · · Score: 2

      From the technical point of view, this DRM effort is doomed. The client is in the hands of the enemy, so DRM effort is dead on arrival. Therefore, this is about legality - not about what can be done, but about what is legal to do.

    2. Re:Legit concerns but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Problem is: people were making that same argument about game based DRM, and some console DRMs were decades before they were cracked, even with the hardware "in the hands of the enemy".

      And even if it is, that quickly gets too complex for 99.999% of people, who will be bound by whatever the DRM wants.

      This isn't about media files. It's about who gets to control the local machine. It's always been the end user. We're now seeing a grab over that power.

    3. Re:Legit concerns but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      And even if it is, that quickly gets too complex for 99.999% of people, who will be bound by whatever the DRM wants.

      So they turn to piracy. DRM is a hassle, and piracy makes the hassle be someone else's problem.

      And if you've tried pirating in the last few years, you probably know by now that it's no hassle at all. Piracy is the easiest thing to do; easier than paying. If people had to pay more (instead of less) to pirate, they'd do it. The players are nicer, the UIs are better, the selection is wider, and you have everything all treated the same; no "app" for this and another "app" for that.

      Piracy is just an educational problem, at this point. (Well, and there's that whole law thing too.)

      Teach someone to pirate this weekend. Let this coming Monday be another big "unsubscribe" day for pay TV/movie services. Let everyone know that if a company uses DRM, they're customers "fuck off, stop paying us."

      "EME" == "Even Money is this company's Enemy"

  2. Re:Does the W3C even matter today? by sinij · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is possible to move away from Chrome, it is harder to do so from W3C.

  3. Re:Does the W3C even matter today? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When we look at recent browser usage stats we see that IE6 has 90% or more of the market. Safari has about 0%, becase it doesn't exist yet. Other browsers like Netscape Navigator Gold exist I think.

    "Web browser" today means IE6. If IE6 doesn't support some web technology, then it may as well not exist. If IE6 supports a technology, then IE6's level of support effectively defines the standard.

    So what's the point of the W3C these days?

    Is it just to document how IE6 behaves, so the other lesser browser vendors can imitate it more closely?

    Things are looking really bleak for the web, and I don't think that there's anything that the W3C can do to help.