Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/18/antifeatures-for-all.html
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“the W3C executive repeatedly said that they didn’t think the _rich and powerful_would be willing to compromise, and in the absence of such willingness, the exec have given them everything they demanded”
That is a good summary of the “negotiation process” of late-stage capitalism…
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I wonder how much money if took for the corporations to buy the W3C?
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Who were the 58.4% who voted for this? As a user/consumer, I’d be interested in writing to them, especially those whose products I own.
P.S., the W3C page says there are 463 members (including the EFF). 270 of 463 would be 58.3%, and 271 would be 58.5%. Are you counting only non-EFF members in this percentage? I can’t figure out how to get 58.4% of 463.
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From the W3C press release:
I have no idea how these 185 member reconcile against the 463 listed in the membership section, I’d assume there is some non-voting form of membership.
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A lot less than it’s currently costing Trump to buy the UN.
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How long before we start seeing plain text sites using EME to force users to display unwanted ads? I know EME is meant for video streaming but once you have a way to run that kind of nonsense in a sandbox for video streaming how long until someone figures out you can send text the same way? This is the beginning of the end of the experiment with the open web it seems.
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Time for a hard fork, right?
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I applaud your desire to fight the good fight, but I doubt any of the usual suspects really care what we as individual consumers actually think about this — especially in the absence of any direct competitors who are not already onboard, caught under the wheel, or else being dragged behind the bandwagon.
Fund the EFF, explore other unregulated decentralized networks and protocol stacks.
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I wonder how much additional shit Tim Berners-Lee will talk about the next web now that he’s officially tanked the last one.
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The list of W3C members includes dozens of direct competitors to each other. Over 40% of members voted against this, so surely there are some companies who are on our side.
My goal is not to start a letter-writing and boycott campaign of every W3C member. That would indeed be impossible. My goal is to stop buying products and services from the W3C members who supported this, and start (or keep) buying from W3C members who supported the appeal, and write both of them and tell them why.
It’s still unlikely to cause any company enough financial damage, on its own, to change their position, but along with other bad publicity, it could help. Every journey starts with one step. There’s many companies on the W3C roster which already have a black eye (or two, or ten) from other recent incidents, and they could be looking for some positive PR for a change.
This is essentially a two-party system, and we vote with our dollars. I just don’t know who is in which party. That’s a necessary first step. We’re never going to be able to hold anyone accountable if we don’t even know their position.
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I guess the W3C was always prone to this sort of thing.
If I’m not mistaken the funding comes largely from corporate membership.
We need more detail to react appropriately.
- For a start who leaned on who to make this happen
- then who voted against it
- who voted for it.
Armed with that we can make our choices, like:
- Boycott those who oppose our desire to control our lives
- Adopt or become involved in creating alternate browsers, that aren’t our enemies
- Techniques like filtering and fixing web content programmatically (on our own machines)
- Adopting other protocols…
- Finding out how to turn off DRM in the browsers we use (I have no problem with never seeing a page, or having a blank in there, if needs be.)
- Ways to prevent any potentially malicious DRM associated code getting onto our systems
There are a few things out there that are started on some of these roads, in some sense.
(I haven’t tested or analysed these thoroughly but here’s some food for thought, Cliqz, https://netrunner.cc/, https://contnet.org/ )
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Ferengi Golden Rule: “He Who Has The Gold, Rules”
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Well then, I am going to become a criminal
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Very unlikely this is the beginning of the end of the experiment with the open web.
It means that not every member voted.
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In fact EME would allow for ads to be not shown if you don’t accept EME but cannot force you to see ads that you don’t want to see. Besides, EME does not apply to HTML, just to video.
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EME cannot be used for plain text (or even HTML) sites. It only applies to media.
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So because you don’t think they will compromise means you arne’t even trying thus giving them no reason to compromise because they’re getting their exact way?
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Something to consider.
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