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FSF Supports Today's Boston March Against DRM In HTML5 (defectivebydesign.org)
Atticus Rex writes:
A small artist-led group called Ethics in Tech is joining the long-simmering struggle between streaming video giants and Internet freedom activists over whether the Web should include Digital Rights Management in its technical standards. This Saturday, Ethics in Tech will lead a march on the W3C, the body -- led by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee -- that decides on Web standards.
The Free Software Foundation is promoting the march, and their "Defective By Design" site is sharing this quote from the march's organizers. Dear W3C: we demand you comply with UNESCO and international civil and political rights. Halt EME -- ensure the protection of a secure, accessible, and open web. Make ethical standards or stand on the wrong side of history.
The Free Software Foundation is promoting the march, and their "Defective By Design" site is sharing this quote from the march's organizers. Dear W3C: we demand you comply with UNESCO and international civil and political rights. Halt EME -- ensure the protection of a secure, accessible, and open web. Make ethical standards or stand on the wrong side of history.
Even if you cannot go to the march you can support the cause by messaging, spreading the news and letting fellow citizen know the issue.
Engage on the issue with your friends, it is not useless, it is our world.
If you don't like, how the content is sold to you, then do not buy it . Very simple, eh?
But, no, as a good "Illiberal" — and you can't be one without an Authoritarian screaming inside you — you have to make sure, no one else can buy it either.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I hate it when people making purely subjective, moral arguments disguise it as being factual. There is no right or wrong "side" of history one could be on.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
"I'm right, therefore, everyone else is not only wrong, but also they're Hitler."
Once camel has nose in tent, rest of camel soon follows. End game is transfer of control away from end user. Presently end user controls display of web content: ad blockers, tracking blockers, blocking scripts trying to disable right click menus or "save as", blocking popups, all possible today. The DRM-on-web goal is partly about streaming content but end game is DRM for all page content, to deny local control and thus local ability to block ads, tracking, and script imposed limitations.
The web where the end user was in control was not acceptable and is being reeled back. Goal is TV 2.0. Goal is clawing back control temporarily in the hands of end user after web caught certain interests off guard. Neither govt neither corporations want end user control of web browsing experience. If a few will find a way around it does not matter: the majority will follow the herd. It suffices to steer the herd.
I generally think DRM and standardized DRM is not a good idea. But hell would freeze over before I would support any group called "Ethics in Tech", no matter what their position may be.
People who use terminology like that are saying clearly that they are unwilling to engage in open, honest debate with other people, and instead want to verbally beat up anybody they disagree with.
Note that a group of "developers, thinkers, artists, and digital citizens" calling themselves "Ethics in Tech" might well come down on either side of the DRM debate, since many "creative people" believe that copying their works without their permission is "unethical".