Swedish Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament Amelia Andersdotter sez, “I’m organising a panel in the European parliament on the topic of DRM in
the HTML5 standards because it’s clearly a politically contentious
issue. I see no way in which DRM in HTML5 will not worsen the
lives of individuals and technology users in the EU: we are
already in an extremely bad place with respect to cross-border access to
culture, licensing, libraries, services and individuals. So that is a
political mess that I think it is our political and democratic
prerogative to be sorting out in the law, and through politics, before
some technical people with, granted, strong financial backing, start
mucking about with the users’ primary tool to reach the internet. There
are some discussions political people should be taking, and other
decisions that technical people should be taking.”
We are organising a discussion on the issue of DRM in HTML5 in the European Parliament on Tuesday October 15th (in two days) at CET 11:00-13:00. Alas, we’ve had many last minute cancellations, primarily from those who are involved in making the DRM standard which shows just how contentious this issue is. We will be trying to organize good streaming, and a recording of the conversation for later view and this will be tweeted through the @exile6e account. For us, it is important to distinguish between the role of a legislator and democratic governance and CEO Jeff of the W3C. Ultimately, I was elected to represent and make decisions in accordance with the general interest of the European public. The W3C does not carry this legitimacy.