DRM and HTML5: it’s now or never for the Open Web
The future of the Web is being decided at this very moment. While I’m speaking personally rather than for the W3C, the decisions made today by the W3C will build the Web of tomorrow, so these decisions will affect you. The question is: Are you at the table?
For example, take the issue of whether or not digital rights management (DRM) should be part of HTML. More than 20,000 signatures against DRM got delivered to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards body where I work, which is led by Tim Berners-Lee and Jeff Jaffe and is creating the next generation of the web through its standards like HTML5.
The members of the W3C Advisory Committee will be trying to reach consensus on the decision to include DRM compatibility in HTML on Monday in Japan . While petitions can be useful to raise awareness, you can make much more of a difference by directly participating in the W3C.
Here’s how.
Decisions within W3C about standards are not driven by the whims of a single individual. The W3C is driven by consensus and has a well-documented multi-stakeholder process with plenty of options for absolutely anyone to participate. The authority of the W3C is gained by popular trust, intellectual property agreements, and conforming code with wide deployment. Due to its open process, the W3C and other standards bodies are working hard to keep that trust by creating a Web that serves everyone.
Most of us are simply happy to launch our browsers and surf the web without a second thought as to how the standards like HTML are created. These standards are in the hands of a fairly small set of standards bodies that have in general acted as responsible stewards for the last few years. The issue of DRM in HTML may be the turning point where all sorts of organisations and users are going to stop taking the open web for granted.
How web standards are made
If every company on the web such as Google can be thought of as a nascent virtual state, then standards bodies like the W3C can be thought of as virtual meta-organisations for assorted companies and other organisations. Instead of nation states hammering out binding laws, the W3C convenes industry to hammer out the voluntary standards like HTML that define the web itself. Remember the bad old days in the late 1990s where it seemed Microsoft and Netscape almost fractured the web into incompatible corporate fiefdoms where webpages could only be viewed using a particular browser? It’s through the efforts of Tim Berners-Lee and the creation of the W3C that such a catastrophe was averted.
Who is the W3C? While the W3C has a full-time staff that helps navigate the consensus process, the vast majority of the heavy lifting is done by Working Groups (WGs). Working Groups are composed of individuals from W3C members and independent world-class experts. These Working Groups have a charter that gives them a clearly defined scope, and are approved based on whether or not the W3C can determine if there’s consensus in the review of the charter by the Advisory Committee. The W3C Advisory Committee is currently composed of 377 representatives of members ranging from Aalto University to Zynga. Is your organisation on that list?
There was heated dissent against DRM inside the HTML Working Group when Google, Microsoft, and Netflix started working on Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), which enables HTML to be compatible with existing DRM systems. However, the Director said that these features were in-scope in part based on the HTML charter, and so EME could be published as a pre-standard draft. In response to the dissent, the W3C has explicitly added "supporting playback of protected content" to a new draft charter to clarify that EME could eventually become a web standard.
A few days ago, the EFF raised a formal objection to the charter based on that clarification. Right now the fate of DRM in the HTML Working Group is still up for grabs, so the amount of support or dissent the Advisory Committee expresses to the W3C will be critical for deciding the fate of DRM in the HTML WG. If you don’t know where a particular company stands on DRM, now is a good time to find out.
This isn’t about actually stopping DRM code. If anyone can stop DRM, it’s the companies actually shipping DRM. DRM is already inside many devices, such as any machine running versions of Windows with the PlayReady DRM technology. Google has already shipped Encrypted Media Extension to work with the Google Widevine DRM system on Chromebooks and has a demonstration of how DRM will work with Youtube. While EME is not part of the HTML5 standard, much less a new DRM system, it allows HTML to be compatible with existing DRM systems. What is at stake is whether or not EME will benefit from royalty-free patent commitments and wide review that the W3C provides. W3C followed its own consensus process by asking the Advisory Committee to review the HTML charter. But guess who hasn’t been asked: the users.
Where are the users?
There is a crisis of representation at the heart of all politics. There are, after all, 377 member organisations in the W3C, but around a billion people on the internet. If the web is a truly a shared space for all humanity, everyone needs to be concerned that the technology of today does not prematurely optimise the web of tomorrow. So far, companies and nations have spoken on behalf of users. What if users and companies disagree?
The question is a classic one for not only the W3C, but also corporations, governments, or any organisation. How do the people participate? It’s not as simple as having national governments represent their citizens. Sometimes "the people" don’t agree with their governments: in eastern Europe, the largest demonstrations since the fall of the Iron Curtain came when nations states got together to pass the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which many people felt was an attack on their right to free speech, innovation, and privacy on the internet.
In my mind, there is no doubt the W3C and other organisations will have to evolve to better include users. The devil is in the details, and the W3C is always open for suggestions.
Society hasn’t found consensus about the right way to deal with DRM, so the technical battle is a source of controversy. The European Commission is "carrying out in-depth legal and economic analysis as regards the scope and functioning of copyright and related rights associated with internet transmissions" while even in the US there are calls to reform copyright laws. No-one said consensus was going to be easy, but luckily the process of standardisation is at the beginning rather than the end.
How to participate
There are lots of ways for both organisations and users as individuals to participate. The W3C runs by consensus rather than voting, so you can make a difference in W3C by building consensus around solid proposals. Proposals weigh more than petitions.
The Advisory Committee of the W3C is composed of companies as well as universities and non-profits. If your employer is a W3C member, now is the time to open the discussion internally with your management. Questions over whether DRM should be part of the HTML Working Group or part of another Working Group – or outside of W3C entirely! – are dealt with in the review of charters by Advisory Committee representatives. It’s at this level that the EFF objected to EME in HTML. If your organisation is not a member, your organisation can join the W3C. W3C membership fees have been adapted to organisations large and small, for-profit and non-profit, start-ups, and for organisations in developing countries.
If you work for a W3C member, now is the time to join the HTML Working Group. The HTML Working Group are working through the technical details of Encrypted Media Extensions in the HTML Working Group Media Task Force. Also, the HTML WG has a very liberal Invited Expert policy to allow participation by those domain experts who don’t work for W3C member organisations. Questions and objections that go beyond the technical content and charter are generally considered out of scope.
Questions that go beyond technically working on EME should be aimed at the Restricted Media Community Group, which anyone can join. Unlike Working Groups, W3C Community Groups provide a forum for discussion but do not themselves publish standards. Disappointingly, so far the discussion has been pretty weak, but this Community Group is monitored by many people deeply involved in the DRM debates.
Also, W3C Working Groups such as the HTML Working Group take technical comments from anyone on the entire web. Public comments can be made by ordinary users; the Working Group must formally address these comments if the comment is within the scope of the charter and done before the standard is complete. That means you can in public comment on EME or any other standard like the cryptographic primitives as pursued by the Web Cryptography Working Group, which can be used to exchange private messages between human rights activists as well as be part of Netflix’s plan to switch to HTML5.
Lastly, users vote with their feet when they buy products. Don’t count on non-profit and open-source members of the W3C not to support DRM. Would users leave the FirefoxOS or Linux-based phones if they don’t support DRM-enabled applications? Looking beyond the W3C, people who argue against DRM need to exert pressure on companies to experiment with different business models that don’t include DRM. If users keep demanding premium content that companies say require DRM, of course these business models will try to migrate to the web rather than use proprietary browser plug-ins that are being phased out.
Although the web has long been an open space for the unfettered sharing of knowledge, the maxim that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance" applies just as well to standards bodies as it does to governments. If there’s one golden rule in web standards, it’s that more people at the table are a good thing. It’s time to join the table.
Harry Halpin is a staff member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). He writes in a personal capacity.