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An online Magna Carta: Berners-Lee calls for bill of rights for web
- higherpurpose 13y agoI upvoted this because I want that to happen, but I'm still very disappointed with Tim Berners-Lee for supporting DRM on the web, and worse still (in the long run), bringing MPAA on the W3C board. I don't know how someone who's usually fighted for Internet freedom and such can do those things.
- officialjunk 13y agoSeconded.
- asharpe 13y agoBut isn't that the fundamental problem? If the web is used to countermand existing laws, then it invites further intrusion of government to uphold those existing laws. It's cause and effect. Which is a shame because it gives Government the reason to further intrude.
- smokinjoe 13y agoBecause a good compromise leaves everyone upset.
- throwaway2048 13y agowhere exactly is the compromise for the MPAA?
- gkoberger 13y agoI personally dislike DRM (and think it causes piracy), however I'm not fundamentally opposed to it. An open internet doesn't mean we should be open to share people's hard work free of charge. DRM does little to stop piracy (we both know that), however to say it jeopardizes the freedom of the Internet is disingenuous.
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoAn open internet doesn't mean we should be open to share people's hard work free of charge. How is this an argument for DRM? All DRM does is improve the reverse engineering skills of pirates (making them more equipped to crack the next DRM) and serve as a crutch to end users, making them turn to piracy just to get DRM-free software, so they aren't treated as buffoons. I'd say DRM jeopardizing the freedom of the Internet is very much true.
- wlesieutre 13y ago> to say it jeopardizes the freedom of the Internet is disingenuous. My biggest beef with DRM is that it makes no allotment for fair use. I'm sure most of us have encountered an irritating website that tried to block right click and ctrl-c, but it's trivial to get around it. What if it weren't? For some reason, we've accepted the idea that video is a special thing that you can't easily grab snippets of and share. I think it's mostly because DRM showed up before there were consumer friendly tools to do it (like ctrl-c for text), rather than some special attribute of video as a copyrightable work. If we accept DRM protected video, what do we say when a photographer comes around and says "Hey, why can't I protect my photos like that?" A lot of websites already try, but we have screenshots and noscript to work around it. Or further down the line, what happens when writers start to ask "Video is protected against copying, why doesn't the browser disable copying from my article?" And all of a sudden I can't copy a quote out to email to my mom without either retyping it or taking a photo and running OCR. Easier than exercising fair use on an encrypted video stream, but still an annoying extra step for something that I ought to have the right to do. In short, I don't think video should get to be special, and if you wouldn't accept DRM on every single piece of content then you shouldn't accept it on videos either.
- userbinator 13y agoAnd all of a sudden I can't copy a quote out to email to my mom without either retyping it or taking a photo and running OCR. That is assuming that all your other software hasn't evolved to the point where it recognises "copyrighted content" and stops you from doing that... this is worth reading if you haven't already: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html "if you outlaw freedom, only outlaws will have freedom."
- billspreston 13y agoHow's the Bill of Rights working out for you? Far as I can tell, the first, fourth and seventh have all been forgotten about. What makes you think governments are going to respect a Bill of Rights for the virtual world when they don't even respect the one for the physical world!
- sdrothrock 13y agoA Bill of Anything won't do much without some enforcement... and enforcement in America suffers from a lot of problems including basic interpretation. Since Berners-Lee's suggestion isn't backed by any political body at all (powerful or not), it seems like a completely useless suggestion. Even if it were backed by a powerful political body, like, say... the US or the EU, I'm not sure how comforted I would be. Edit: It's been a while since I've taken Latin, but "Magna Carta" essentially means "Big/Great Paper," so the tongue-in-cheek modern equivalent might be something like "Yotta Byte."
- saraid216 13y agoPretty sure Berners-Lee isn't under the jurisdiction of the Bill of Rights.
- arethuza 13y agoI suspect he is in he US a fair bit - does the US Bill of Rights only apply to US citizens in the US? Even so, we have our own Bill of Rights across on this side of the pond: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
- johnvschmitt 13y agoCalling it a "Magna Carta" is very appropriate from a historical perspective. That said, because of the perverse corruption in each country, I'm afraid it'd look like this: USA Version: People (=companies) have the right to protect their interests by suing/banning anyone who makes copies of any data. People (=companies) have the right to innovate by throttling, or inspecting packets, to extort or ban competitors. Other countries might have better versions, but the USA, through TPP, World Bank, Aid packages & other secret trade pacts will assert their version to be dominant. We really need election finance reform before we can take actions. Until then, I'm kind of fine with gridlock, to slow the corruption down a bit.
- happyscrappy 13y ago>Other countries might have better versions, but the USA, through TPP, World Bank, Aid packages & other secret trade pacts will assert their version to be dominant. Europe's principles mean nothing if they don't stand up for them. Hell, Russia will take Crimea and Germany will barely bat an eyelash.
- kordless 13y agoIf you want to bridge borders, make it a cryptocurrency based contract.
- pekk 13y agoHow do you plan to enforce it?
- pyalot2 13y agoTimbl is planning on using DRM to enforce it, of course.
- EGreg 13y agoHow was the original Magna Carta signed by the king? Similarly, how would this bill of rights come to be acknolwedged and enforced by governments?
- thaumasiotes 13y agoSeems safe to say you know the answer, but let's get it out in the open. The Magna Carta was signed when King John's lesser nobles forced him to sign it.
- yarrel 13y agoBut make sure they can be circumvented by DRM.
- pyalot2 13y agoThat guy has lost all credibility calling for anything on the web by rubberstamping DRM into it.
- josteink 13y agoUntil he admits that opting for DRM in html, in an open standard (!), was a historically bad idea, that guy has no credibility and nobody should need to bother about what he thinks.
- bananas 13y agoGlad someone mentioned this. You cant call for open standards and an international bill of rights whilst bending over for corporate content control.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y agoSeriously, the guy who invented the web (and let's stop for one second to think about what that has given us) makes one bad call and you say as a result he has no credibility? I sure as hell hope you hold yourself to the same standard in your own life.
- nfoz 13y ago> (and let's stop for one second to think about what that has given us) It's entirely unclear to me that Tim's web is better than whatever similar system(s) would have gained popularity in its place.
- hopeless 13y agoDRM is not my preferred solution but it's really the only solution that our profession has offered the content creators^ as a means of protecting their property. Perhaps it's time for us to invent a solution that satisfies the principles of openness and the ability for creators to get paid (and this was always what I took from TBL's comments) ^ and I don't just mean the Disneys of the world. Independent photographers in particular are royally screwed by the web - though even DRM won't fix that.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> Independent photographers in particular are royally screwed by the web - though even DRM won't fix that. DRM is a haphazard attempt to violate fundamental laws of economics - if a good can be copied and distributed at zero marginal cost[0], it's futile trying to prevent that by fiat. Independent artists and musicians have always been "screwed" if they want to make a living selling their art itself, as opposed to performances of it (for musicians) or the service of creating it (ie, photoshoots, wedding photographs). We can look at the business models that Shakespeare and Marlowe operated under, or even Bach and Beethoven - by and large, artists in this era were paid by patrons who essentially commissioned works. And this was still in an era in which copying the plays or sheet music still came at a significant marginal cost (whereas copying digital works has no cost). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)
- thrillgore 13y agoTo opt for a bill of rights while advocating for the crippling technology that is EME is the true sign of a hypocrite.
- czottmann 13y agoHe's right, of course. But even if the "communal decision" is made by the majority of the people online it wouldn't be worth much without all governments officially signing it, too, and/or having a body enforcing it. Sad as that makes me, I do not see that happening anytime soon if at all.