Petition Fights Proposal For Digital Rights Management In Internet Core

Just days after the celebration of 20 years of the open WorldWideWeb, more than two dozen advocacy group are circulating a petition to prevent the World Wide Web Consortium from accepting a proposal to allow restrictive new copyright measures on the underlying Web used by hundreds of millions of people.

The fight is against digital rights management (DRM), technical measures employed to ensure copyright holders get paid by those using their work. DRM is seen as contrary to the free flow of information on the internet.

In the efforts, “freedom activists rallied against DRM in HTML5, stressing this technology’s harmful effects on innovation and users’ freedom,” the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) said in a release. On today’s Day Against DRM, FSFE said, its sister organisation, the Free Software Foundation, will deliver the petition signatures opposing DRM in HTML5 to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in Boston.

Earlier this week, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) celebrated 20 years since it put its WorldWideWeb technology in the public domain (IPW, Information and Communications Technology, 30 April 2013). The W3C has long been seen as a voice for keeping the internet open.

FSFE, FSF and 25 other organisations have signed the petition, which is available at defectivebydesign.org, here. The petition had nearly 25,000 signatures by press time.

“By accepting to implement DRM in HTML5, W3C would endanger interoperability and open the door to the implementation of restrictive technologies in the heart of the internet,” FSFE said.

“Device manufacturers and corporate copyrights holders have already been massively infecting their products with user-hostile DRM,” the group said. “Tablets, smartphones and other minicomputers are sold with numerous restrictions embedded that cripple users freedom. The proposal at table in W3C goes even further.”

“DRM creates damaged goods that users cannot control or use freely,” it said. “It requires users to give-up control of their computers and restricts access to digital data and media.”

“Millions of Internet users came together to defeat SOPA/PIPA, but now Big Media moguls are going through non-governmental channels to try to sneak digital restrictions into every interaction we have online,” the petition states.