14:33:09 RRSAgent has joined #epub 14:33:09 logging to https://www.w3.org/2021/10/26-epub-irc 14:33:12 RRSAgent, make logs Public 14:33:14 please title this meeting ("meeting: ..."), ivan 14:33:41 Meeting: EPUB3 + PING Joint Meeting 14:55:49 CharlesL has joined #epub 14:56:37 Yanni has joined #epub 14:57:07 shiestyle has joined #epub 14:58:38 BenSchroeter has joined #epub 14:59:09 present+ 14:59:13 present+ 14:59:18 MattChan has joined #epub 14:59:25 avneeshsingh has joined #epub 14:59:25 present+ yanni 14:59:33 present+ MattChan 14:59:34 present+ 14:59:35 present+ 14:59:37 rickj has joined #epub 14:59:38 present+ brad 14:59:39 present+ 14:59:43 present+ 14:59:45 present+ 14:59:47 duga has joined #epub 14:59:48 George has joined #epub 14:59:50 present+ 14:59:51 present+ brady 14:59:56 present+ 15:00:09 present+ 15:00:15 mgarrish has joined #epub 15:00:41 present+ 15:00:43 present+ 15:00:48 George has joined #epub 15:01:01 present+ 15:01:28 I cannot join zoom today, sorry, conflict 15:01:38 victoria has joined #epub 15:02:34 I wanted to mention that many teachers and parents want to track the progress of their student/child as they read. What is the reading progress. Just want to make sure this use case is in the mix. 15:02:36 npdoty has joined #epub 15:02:41 present+ 15:02:46 Bill_Kasdorf has joined #epub 15:02:49 present+ 15:03:14 present+ johnr 15:03:23 bmay has joined #epub 15:03:50 George has joined #epub 15:03:55 weiler has joined #epub 15:04:04 hober has joined #epub 15:04:12 Hi, can someone share the Zoom link? 15:04:19 +1 15:04:30 George has joined #epub 15:04:46 https://mit.zoom.us/j/92468476393?pwd=Yk5ydXZqSTlla01PTkdlZVpuZ1lRdz09 15:04:54 present+ 15:04:58 jrossi has joined #epub 15:05:15 johnroque has joined #epub 15:05:27 present+ aramzs 15:05:29 Ah, it should be available on login apparently if you click the Agenda & Calendar info link 15:05:35 present+ 15:05:50 George has joined #epub 15:06:08 present+ victoria 15:06:31 Bill_Kasdorf_ has joined #epub 15:06:32 scribe+ 15:06:54 present+ John Roque 15:06:56 wendyreid: welcome everyone to epub wg / PING joint meeting 15:07:06 ... this meeting is all about the horizontal review, performed by Nick 15:07:23 ... would you kindly give us the highlights now? 15:07:46 zakim, who is here? 15:07:47 npdoty: i appreciate the active discussion we've been having 15:07:47 present+ 15:07:48 Present: ivan, dkaplan, yanni, MattChan, shiestyle, brad, BenSchroeter, rickj, avneeshsingh, duga, brady, George, wendyreid, dauwhe, tzviya, npdoty, mgarrish, johnr, hober, aramzs, 15:07:48 ... victoria, Roque 15:07:48 On IRC I see Bill_Kasdorf_, johnroque, jrossi, hober, weiler, bmay, Bill_Kasdorf, npdoty, victoria, mgarrish, duga, rickj, avneeshsingh, MattChan, BenSchroeter, shiestyle, Yanni, 15:07:50 George has joined #epub 15:07:52 ... CharlesL, RRSAgent, Zakim, dkaplan3, Jemma, Karen, wendyreid, tzviya, Judy, ivan, ShawnT, join_subline, jcraig, kirkwood, Joshue108, MURATA, MichaelC, dauwhe, github-bot, 15:07:52 ... AramZS 15:07:56 victoria_ has joined #epub 15:08:05 MichaelC has left #epub 15:08:13 ... the challenge is that epub is large and complicated technology, that takes advantage of other web technology, but not always in an obvious way 15:08:21 ShawnT has left #epub 15:08:24 ... that's why the review is long, and the discussion is valuable 15:08:42 ... the categories are self-contained packages, interactivity, and DRM 15:09:06 ... the self-contaged packages is about the way that epub could have even stronger privacy than generally on the web 15:09:17 ... like reading a book, where you don't expect surveillance 15:09:33 ... interactivity is about whether users know who they are interacting with 15:09:50 George has joined #epub 15:10:03 present+ jrossi 15:10:04 ... i.e. guarantees of authenticity, distinction between private highlights in your book vs when this goes back to the publisher 15:10:17 ... 3rd DRM. The DRM situation seems a bit extreme here 15:10:36 ... i've tried to purchase and analyze ebook myself, but it seems like users cannot inspect the ebooks they interact with 15:10:53 ... DRM provider may be surveilling users 15:11:26 ... other thing is an obfuscation section, not sure if this provides much business value, but does prevent users from inspecting their content 15:11:50 George has joined #epub 15:11:59 ... re. fingerprintability, our concern is that this may reveal to publisher or retailer identity via configuration data 15:12:40 q+ 15:12:42 ... also concern whether user details could get leaked out into the web at large, e.g. via a link in the ebook 15:12:54 ... these are the 5 categories that are detailed in my report 15:13:03 wendyreid: i think it might be worthwhile to go thru each of these one by one 15:13:08 present+ Lubra_Dajani 15:13:18 ... some might require more discussion than others 15:13:39 ... i'm going to start with the last one, epub and browsable web 15:13:50 George has joined #epub 15:13:56 ... right now there is not really a relationship between epub and browseable web 15:14:07 ... you can't link from web into a specific part of an epub 15:14:17 q+ 15:14:20 ... we are working on CFI but it has never gone into practice 15:14:22 ack wen 15:14:40 ... you usually cannot get to an epub from the open web without an intermediary 15:14:41 ack dauwhe 15:14:50 George has joined #epub 15:14:51 q+ 15:15:05 dauwhe: i thought npdoty comment was more about what happens when you go from epub into the open web via link 15:15:08 ack du 15:15:09 ack duga 15:15:09 duga: i think it goes beyond that 15:15:32 ... also the ability to put scripts into epub, e.g. that tracks progress of reader thru the book that reports this back to the publisher 15:15:41 ... that would bypass the privacy policy of the RS 15:15:51 ... and it would not be clear to the user that this is happening 15:16:12 ... we try to get around that by making interactive content a special separate thing, but there is worry that this can be worked around via script 15:16:30 q? 15:16:34 ... other case is external resources, that when loaded could flag for publisher that progress has been made 15:16:54 ... at Google we do things to make this safer, but what we do isn't part of the spec 15:17:17 ... also not sure how we would spec this 15:17:23 q+ to ask for documentation of the "safer" things 15:17:57 npdoty: there are advantages to privacy and interop if you say that "content is proxied, scripts are disabled" etc. 15:18:09 ack weiler 15:18:09 weiler, you wanted to ask for documentation of the "safer" things 15:18:38 sam: npdoty pointed to interop reasons why you would put that into spec, but there are other advantages to documenting those things as well 15:19:12 q+ 15:19:16 ack ivan 15:19:17 wendyreid: this is not something we've done before, but telling authors and RS what could possibly be done could give ideas for what to do (or NOT to do) 15:19:21 yeah, I think the starting point is to document the threat model and how it applies to ebooks 15:19:37 currently only privacy of the content author is considered, but useful to consider the privacy of the reader, and privacy from whom 15:19:45 From George Kerscher: Make sure the Youth case of a teacher or parent wanting to track their students progress through a title as they read is an important use case here. (both George an I are in another meeting, sorry we couldn't attend this call) 15:20:04 ivan: as one of the co-editors of some of these spec docs, it would be helpful to separate what needs to go into the privacy section from those issues that require a change in the normative spec 15:20:12 q+ 15:20:22 ack weiler 15:20:22 ... keeping in mind that anything that goes into the normative spec must be testable 15:20:36 sam: agree, and most of those mitigations should be part of the normative text 15:20:49 ... in general i expect those things to be part of the normative spec 15:20:50 q+ 15:21:21 right, there is a separate reading system conformance specification, yes? 15:21:25 ivan: not sure how that would be done. There are very few normative statements about what RS should do, and how 15:21:51 ack rickj 15:21:55 wendyreid: let's continue on with the recommendations, and we'll sort out which is normative vs informative later 15:22:11 ... so information exposure and fingerprintability is next 15:22:32 ... this is the section where the use-case of a teacher or parent wanting to monitor progress of student comes up 15:22:35 present+ Eric_Mwobobia 15:22:48 ... epub is used by a number of parts of publishing, from general trade to education and academics 15:22:58 ... here the trade use case will be different from education sphere 15:23:11 q+ 15:23:30 ack rickj 15:23:37 ... for educational purposes, use cases may be more invasive than what we'd do at Kobo for example 15:23:53 q+ to recall being a student 15:24:16 rickj: you've got domains of understanding that need to be accomplished. Publisher may have good reason to know what is happening with book, without what is happening to individual users 15:24:26 zakim, who is here? 15:24:26 Present: ivan, dkaplan, yanni, MattChan, shiestyle, brad, BenSchroeter, rickj, avneeshsingh, duga, brady, George, wendyreid, dauwhe, tzviya, npdoty, mgarrish, johnr, hober, aramzs, 15:24:30 ... victoria, Roque, bmay, jrossi, Lubra_Dajani, Eric_Mwobobia 15:24:30 On IRC I see victoria_, Bill_Kasdorf_, johnroque, jrossi, hober, weiler, npdoty, mgarrish, duga, rickj, avneeshsingh, MattChan, BenSchroeter, shiestyle, Yanni, CharlesL, RRSAgent, 15:24:30 ... Zakim, dkaplan3, Jemma, Karen, wendyreid, tzviya, Judy, ivan, join_subline, jcraig, kirkwood, Joshue108, MURATA, dauwhe, github-bot, AramZS 15:24:32 ack npdoty 15:24:32 npdoty, you wanted to recall being a student 15:24:40 ... institution may want to know what is happening for a book in a course, but not outside of that 15:25:02 q+ to add a comment about algo bias 15:25:09 npdoty: i was a student and students have privacy interests as well 15:25:13 q? 15:25:17 q+ 15:25:22 ... i didn't expect my teachers to have proof of what reading I had done 15:25:40 q+ to respond to Nick 15:25:44 ... there might be a reason that learners want to share info about their reading habits, but they need transparency and control 15:25:58 ... which would be consistent with both privacy and those use cases 15:25:58 ack rickj 15:25:58 rickj, you wanted to respond to Nick 15:26:13 q- 15:26:27 q+ 15:26:39 ack tzviya 15:26:39 tzviya, you wanted to add a comment about algo bias 15:26:46 rickj: right, we need to understand the use cases. There are some competency-based cases where the student gets their credential based on how they interact with the content, and that needs to be measured 15:27:03 q+ 15:27:34 tzviya: i agree with both position, and the difference between grad school and first grade. Part of the way a kindergartener's ability to read is assessment of reading pace 15:27:57 ... a tool might be able to do this better than a person, in a less biased way 15:28:03 ack AramZS 15:28:07 ... trading off against the need for privacy 15:28:16 present+ Joshua_Ssengonzi 15:28:44 AramZS: it seems likely that there will be bias in such tools, but more to the point, we've seen student lead movements against this sort of monitoring 15:28:58 I'd be happy to help make connections to colleagues working on student privacy. I don't think purchase/ownership is the most important distinction 15:29:08 ... they're interested in not being tracked, whether the reading materials are being provided by the institution or not 15:29:19 ... and recognizing that there may be edge cases here 15:29:30 ack dkaplan 15:29:39 ... but students have actively resisted, especially in the college setting 15:30:04 dkaplan3: i think its a mistake to get too bogged down in particular use cases 15:30:33 ... there are obviously clear use cases (not collegiate) where tracking is useful, and a user could conceivably consent 15:30:42 ... so #1, should that be part of epub? 15:30:52 q+ 15:30:58 ... because a RS can always do whatever it wants outside of the framework of the spec 15:31:15 A good summary of resistance to educational surveillance - https://theconversation.com/online-exam-monitoring-can-invade-privacy-and-erode-trust-at-universities-149335 15:31:25 ... can we require that if you do tracking it is disclosed, and can we make it so that it must be blockable 15:32:03 wendyreid: i think its work looking to make sure that we're not encouraging this, but a lot of this falls onto the RS 15:32:25 s/work looking/worth looking 15:32:36 wendyreid: next, DRM and obfuscation 15:32:48 q+ 15:32:53 ack wend 15:32:56 ... is obfuscation only for fonts? No. It can also be applied to images, I believe. But most common use-case is for fonts 15:33:01 ack dauwhe 15:33:04 ... the obfuscation is done primarily by tools 15:33:11 ack wendyreid 15:33:13 q+ 15:33:17 I'm not aware of having consented to surveillance of my reading habits of when I've purchased an ebook, for what it's worth :) 15:33:20 dauwhe: not aware of real world use of obfuscation aside from fonts 15:33:50 ... adobe was heavily involved in original epub. They were concerned about fonts easily accessed from the epub package. 15:34:16 npdoty: the obfuscation can be undone easily though 15:34:44 dauwhe: some font vendors have told me that even these very ineffective means are good because then they can say that if you work around them then you violated DMCA etc. 15:34:55 ... the legal case is clearer 15:35:27 ... this is anecdotal only. As a publisher we've not obfuscated fonts. 15:35:37 ... but i'm open to discussion of whether we need this or not 15:35:44 not a single title in our 2mm title inventory with font obfuscation included 15:35:53 wendyreid: obfuscation tends to break things in RS 15:35:54 I'm not sure the goal of making it easier to sue the user is important 15:36:11 ... DRM is tricky because the spec does not specify the DRM to be applied 15:36:22 ... there are a number out there, with the most popular being Adobe DRM 15:36:33 ... though implementation is also platform specific 15:36:47 q+ 15:36:48 q+ 15:36:49 ... in our charter we've said that we are not going to talk about DRM, which also complicates things 15:36:53 ack duga 15:37:07 duga: i think you can only obfuscate fonts 15:37:33 ... boils down to whether or not the publisher's license of the font allows it to be used in ebook or not 15:37:52 ... it appears to be okay to font vendors as long as font can be embedded 15:38:01 ... removing this may limit fonts that publishers can use 15:38:10 ... but this was also written before WOFF was a thing 15:38:32 ack duga 15:38:32 ack rickj 15:38:47 ... so i'm open to recommending WOFF, but leaving it open to RS to do this (esp. for backwards compat) 15:38:59 q+ 15:39:00 ack mgarrish 15:39:04 deprecating the feature would be helpful in terms of the risk of expanding user-agent-implemented obfuscation to other w3c work 15:39:10 rickj: my opinion is that we shouldn't address this in spec 15:39:32 mgarrish: we've never wanted to go into DRM implementation in spec 15:39:37 ack weiler 15:39:58 q+ 15:39:59 sam: but you have the have the hooks for it in the spec, even if you aren't fully specifying the DRM 15:40:06 ... so we care about this 15:40:08 q+ 15:40:10 and the hooks make it so that the full contents of files are encrypted, rather than some smaller subset 15:40:11 ack tzviya 15:41:13 tzviya: epub exists in an ecosystem that has been around for a long time. If we took out those hook we would be ceding our standard to a world that would not accept the lack of it 15:41:41 wendyreid: we wouldn't have the support of most of the publishing industry, RS would be happy, and retailers would also be impacted 15:41:48 ack dauwhe 15:42:13 dauwhe: i might disagree. If we took this out of the spec, would this change anything in practice? 15:42:18 I think our goal in doing a privacy review is to note the current privacy situation and the potential harms 15:42:22 q+ 15:42:35 ... as far as i know every epub created is done without DRM, because DRM is the responsibility of retailer rather than publisher 15:42:46 but we could also consider harm reduction or mitigation, as W3C has done in the past about DRM 15:42:46 ... so removing from spec would not change this 15:43:08 ... and the DRM that exists and is being used may or may not rely on the hooks in the spec 15:43:15 ack mgarrish 15:43:37 mgarrish: i agree with dauwhe. It doesn't break anything if we take this out. 15:43:48 ... it might just make things more difficult for implementors 15:44:06 ... we'd need more information certainly, but not sure that anything breaks by taking this out 15:44:33 wendyreid: okay, good points everyone. This is something we need to assess as part of our privacy threat model 15:44:40 ... next is interactivity 15:45:04 ... you had a question about RS and full screen reading 15:45:17 ... full screen reading tends to be an option 15:45:39 ... user-generated text tends to be in annotations, or specific text fields put in by the author 15:46:13 ... but epub doesn't really do local storage 15:46:28 q+ 15:46:32 ack ivan 15:46:33 ... and then there is other interactivity that we've touched upon, e.g. some RS lock scripting 15:46:39 EPUB does not do local storage, however, reading systems do (we do) 15:46:50 ivan: re. the annotation system, that is 100% outside purvey of the spec 15:47:00 ... implementation of that is down to the RS 15:47:14 ... it would be nice to have a standard annotation system, but today that doesn't exist 15:47:42 ... we can and should put something into RS spec about annotation related privacy concerns 15:47:44 q+ 15:47:46 q+ 15:47:47 ack mgarrish 15:47:55 ... but the normative standards should probably not change, since we don't talk about this 15:48:14 mgarrish: there is a spec for annotations, but not sure that it's widely implemented 15:48:29 ack npdoty 15:48:30 ... but even that was only about interchange, not about what happens within each RS 15:48:57 npdoty: i think the point of interactivity is that it might not always be obvious who you're interacting with 15:49:26 ... i'm assuming that when i highlight something in my book, that i'm interacting with the RS, but could I also be interacting with the publisher? 15:49:38 ... for forms inside books, does that get shared or not? 15:49:47 q+ 15:49:55 ack dauwhe 15:50:00 ... the web has historically not been very transparent about this, but there's an opportunity here to be better 15:50:18 present+ 15:50:48 dauwhe: on the web we have the idea of origin and first party. When you choose to go to a website, you've given first party defacto permission to collect some info 15:51:00 ... with epub there is a separation between the content creator and the UA 15:51:20 ... if I buy from Kobo, I interact with Kobo but the content is from publisher 15:51:41 ... as far as I know all the data goes back to the retailer, but the publisher knows nothing 15:52:24 ... so in terms of user expectations, a user might have a baseline expectation of greater privacy in ebook than in open web, but not sure that is really the case now 15:52:58 q+ 15:53:34 npdoty: but there is an expectation of interoperability, that a book from one retailer can be readable in multiple different UAs 15:53:42 ack rickj 15:53:43 +1 to goal of interop 15:53:49 ... there should be some privacy properties that user can rely upon, no matter where they take the book 15:55:20 rickj: we used to always need to explain that epub is 2 things, a file format, but also a thing in the supply chain used to ferry around data 15:55:54 q+ 15:55:55 wendyreid: remote resources is something we've talked a lot about in the wg, but perhaps we won't get into that now for time 15:55:59 ack dauwhe 15:56:34 dauwhe: thank you npdoty for you thorough and comprehensive review. You've given us a lot to digest here, and I'm looking forward to doing that 15:56:45 wendyreid: yes thank you, this meeting was very productive 15:56:47 what do we want to do next? and I think we need to explicitly consider where this diverges from ethical web principles or design principles and what we might do to converge in the future 15:58:40 scribe+ 15:59:03 wendyreid: Most important next step is for epub WG and go through all the comment 15:59:06 ... s 15:59:43 ... A lot of the topics are things we can comment on directly, but others are more ecosystem. Perhaps we can give guidance on those 15:59:53 q+ 16:00:02 ack tzviya 16:00:03 ... Might want to build a threat model and get feedback on that from PING 16:00:16 tzviya: I have never written a privacy threat model - do you have examples? 16:00:45 npdoty: This is kind of a unique case 16:00:58 ... we can give some examples, but not sure how helpful they will be 16:01:13 wendyreid: Looking forward to seeing the web ones, I think they will be useful 16:01:27 target privacy threat model for the web is in progress here: https://w3cping.github.io/privacy-threat-model/ 16:01:35 ... Next steps are to continue in the epub group, then share when we have something for review 16:01:52 ... Thanks everyone! 16:01:54 dkaplan3 has left #epub 16:01:59 rrsagent, draft minutes 16:01:59 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/10/26-epub-minutes.html ivan 16:02:06 CharlesL has left #epub 16:02:26 I think describing privacy properties, threats, the actors involved, will be useful, even if it's briefer than the in progress detailed privacy threat model for the Web generally 16:02:41 zakim, end meeting 16:02:41 As of this point the attendees have been ivan, dkaplan, yanni, MattChan, shiestyle, brad, BenSchroeter, rickj, avneeshsingh, duga, brady, George, wendyreid, dauwhe, tzviya, npdoty, 16:02:45 ... mgarrish, johnr, hober, aramzs, victoria, Roque, bmay, jrossi, Lubra_Dajani, Eric_Mwobobia, Joshua_Ssengonzi, CharlesL 16:02:45 RRSAgent, please draft minutes 16:02:45 I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2021/10/26-epub-minutes.html Zakim 16:02:47 I am happy to have been of service, ivan; please remember to excuse RRSAgent. Goodbye 16:02:48 rrsagent, bye 16:02:48 I see no action items