SV_MEETING_TITLE -- 29 Oct 2014

TPAC session - Legal Restrictions, DRM and the W3C

<scribe> Scribe: olivier

dob: introducing the topic

[round of introduction]

JCVerdie, MStar

dob: note that often technologist find DRM a problem implementation-wise

Paul Cotton, co-chair HTML WG, Microsoft

Jerry Smith, Microsoft

Haakon Bratsberg, Opera

James Stewart, British Gov

So Vang, NAB

(NAB represents broadcasters)

David Dorwin, Google, editor EME spec

Bogdan, Microsoft

JP Abello, Nielsen

Mark Watson, Netflix

Ruinan Sun, Huawei

Noriya Sakamoto, Toshiba

John Foliot, invited expert, focus on accessibility

Deborah Kaplan

Rigoh Wenning, legal counsel W3C

dob: broad audience for this, some people coming to find out where we are
... current solution is EME

EME spec -> http://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/

dob: want to talk about legal restrictions around DRM
... general improvement in copyright control
... typically copyright control attemps to compell a consumer to do something different to the range of ability they would otherwise have
... e.g want to play DVD in another country
... attempts to have copyright control which fit consumer behaviour more closely, fit with expectations of consumers and what they want to do with content on the web
... bucket of connected issues - privacy, accessibility
... some particularly fine points causing problems, but does not strike to the heart of the issue of controlling copy, access, usage

<paulc> EME outstanding bugs: http://tinyurl.com/7tfambo

dob: my area of interest - issues of user controll contorl of your own device, restrictions of what can be done on your device

Attendees: DOB, olivier, JCVerdie, paulc, Jerry, haakonb, James, So, Ddorwin, Bogdan, Noriya, jfoliot, Deborah, Rigo

dob: criminal sanction when breaking (and witnessing, etc) DRM
... would be nice to sketch out that area
... any preference on which topic to address

jfoliot: as advocate for accessibility, realise that in the past most DRM were looked at a system
... was a problem for accessibility as user needed to modify the system to address disability

<paulc> Re EME and Accessibility: see https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27054

jfoliot: EME is different - mitigation in focus on just the content and not the player and ecosystem
... on why I think w3c should continue work on this - PF group will look at the specs through the lens of impact on people with disabilities
... we can't stop a spec in its track, but carry a large stick, so if something is going to introduce a lot of accessibility issues we have a mandate to raise it
... we want to make sure anything that emerges will not clash with non-discrimination laws
... while I understand that in principle DRM is distateful, but if we are going to work on a tech best to work on it at W3C

deborah: we are at a point where we can make things better
... content providers are not going to make content available in a way that is not protected
... if we can deliver that content in a way that is standards based, works with accessible viewer/reader, can use accessible tools
... alternative would be proprietary and would not see accessibility prioritised

dob: area of influence of w3c is in the wrapper

jfoliot: because of the way we can provide support material e.g captions
... technology being moved forward in way that these can be in-band, or in separate track and coming from 3rd party source
... concern about that - if the media asset and captions are encrypted with different CDM, what then?
... at least here I can ask that question
... example - we are adding requirements for deaf/blind people
... requires screen reader - many available on the market
... for average production company they would not be able to take proprietary solution and test with assistive tech
... standard promises interop

paulc: dropped link to bug related to EME and accessibility, raised by TAG -> https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=27054
... requirement to have similar accessibility as you would without EME
... no-one has identified any concrete changes yet

dob: part of legal issues around restrictions and limitations revolves around access/accessibility
... ability to format-shift
... part of the challenge is that content is not available to the rest of the interface but could be accessed (legally) and transformed
... TAG is raising this issue but we do not have model for how video could be transformed

paulc: if you remove EME what changes here?

dob: the fact that it would be illegal

[scribe missed conversation, technical issues with IRC client]

deborah: legal question on fair use for right to transform for accessibility reason
... case law not yet established

dob: tension you've got is that would be perceived as a straw to suck content out

deborah: international copyright law not yet covering this
... nothing the W3C can do right now

dob: there is something normative here happening - discussion on using HTTPS to convey content (for privacy)
... one of the bugs raised is that it is often necessary to identify user
... general concern that traffic may identify user uniquely
... suggestion that communication be encrypted
... issues around that - practicality, role of w3c in raising and solving one set of privacy issues around DRM

paulc: similar to discussion at IETF - discussed, answer was no
... some people believe https MUST be used, other think it should be a SHOULD at most

<paulc> EME bug on usage of HTTPS: https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=26332

olivier: explain that requiring https throws things like caching out of the window

paulc: that was the main argument against making TLS mandatory

mark: practical issues concerning us is almost the opposite
... large volume of content, would have impact on capacity
... we don't actually like people caching our content
... causes hard to debug customer problems

paulc: expect we will see this request made in other places - not just for media

ddorwin: point to next session on privacy
... monitoring etc

rigo: there is no option of not doing it

mark: discussion of cost of flipping switch

dob: feel that there is similar interaction between consensus (privacy) and awareness of challenges
... want to make sure we talk about issues that are outside of w3c
... broader copyright issue with accessibility
... problems would largely go away if legal framework was reformed

mark: want to go back to specific issue with DRM and privacy
... mitigation on identifiers
... discussion would not have happened if we hadn't been doing this in w3c

rigo: do you plan to expose rights metadata?
... everyone agreed (at workshop - date?) that it would be good.

paulc: relationship to DRM? should probably be solved for any data

rigo: sounds like a great semantic web project

jfoliot: emergence of schema.org somewhat solves that
... was talking with Chaals on using metadata for accessibility
... technology is emergent, need to solve this for all data on web
... locking mechanism for encrypted content - serving metadata would add value

dob: closed format or DRM means no way of deriving metadata
... so you need a system to ask
... people wanting to copy-control also want to control metadata too
... because it may be a revenue opportinuty (e.g what's playing on the radio)

Attendee+ MichaelGood

michael: how does EME address customer irritation?

mark: use case of content subscription
... understanding that you do not own content
... EME would work for this use case alone

ddorwin: we are using it for rental and purchases
... there is a difference there
... "buying" on the web is different

mark: issues when advertising does not match reality. not "getting a digital copy"

jfoliot: worked at Capital record - through the years music did not change but carriers did
... when you buy, you buy the carrier, not the content
... consumer irritants often about player being locked down
... putting malicious software in the player

olivier: similar feeling about EME - adding malicious software to inherently open software - until now

jfoliot: you are not going to convince everybody - but think that we can work to fix this perception problem
... need to do a better job at transparency / explaining the reality of the pain points
... less of a technical problem than a marketing problem

paulc: AD BREAK - consider attending HTML WG meeting on Friday morning
... start at 9
... triage EME bugs

ddorwin: public-restrictedmedia mailing-list where things such as fair use are being discussed

dob: do think a lot of these things are within purview of w3c - we can discuss issues of e.g accessibility and wider legal context

<paulc> See http://www.w3.org/community/restrictedmedia/ and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-restrictedmedia/

dob: even though mostly engineering, good to have such discussions

- DRAFT -

SV_MEETING_TITLE

29 Oct 2014

Attendees

Contents

TPAC session - Legal Restrictions, DRM and the W3C

Summary of Action Items

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