Bonum Certa Men Certa

Tim Berners-Lee Loses a Lot of Credibility Around the Web

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, is widely criticised on the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Source: Original from John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, modified by Techrights



Summary: Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C are quickly destroying their reputation by showing that they work for Hollywood

DECADES ago Tim Berners-Lee created what we now know as the "World Wide Web". Unlike the Internet, this was not a military project. It was harboured by CERN (science) at the time. Unlike the Internet, the World Wide Web was not a tool of power over people. It was created to help Tim Berners-Lee share his physics paper with other people, collaborating and pushing towards scientific improvement.



I have enormous respect for Tim Berners-Lee and I also exchanged some words with him online (regarding patents in the W3C) after I had pointed out in a conflict or contradiction regarding the stance on software patents. It sure seems like Apple, Microsoft, etc. are hijacking the W3C and Tim Berners-Lee just walks along with them. He can't be foolish enough to genuinely believe that DRM is a good idea, but he sure goes ahead with it now. At Mozilla, there is now a "pledge never to implement HTML5 DRM" and Slashdot chastises Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C for approving work on DRM for HTML 5.1. Most notably, however, the DRM stance gets criticised by the EFF, which unlike the FSF is not expected to feel quite so strongly on this matter. A prominent EFF figure accuses the W3C of lowering its standards and says:

On Monday, the W3C announced that its Director, Tim Berners-Lee, had determined that the "playback of protected content" was in scope for the W3C HTML Working Group's new charter, overriding EFF's formal objection against its inclusion. This means the controversial Encrypted Media Extension (EME) proposal will continue to be part of that group's work product, and may be included in the W3C's HTML5.1 standard. If EME goes through to become part of a W3C recommendation, you can expect to hear DRM vendors, DRM-locked content providers like Netflix, and browser makers like Microsoft, Opera, and Google stating that they can now offer W3C standards compliant "content protection" for Web video.


Cory Doctorow, another influential person, is rightly upset and the word is getting out there:

We got news on Wednesday from Boing Boing that the World Wide Web Consortium is going to add DRM to HTML 5. There’s not much information available right now on how this will work or how many browser developers will go along with the program and allow their product to become enforcers for Hollywood and the recording industry.


If Tim Berners-Lee is trying to destroy his reputation right now, then he sure does a fantastic job.

The problem is not the medium, the problem is the way information is encoded. If the W3C actively facilitates DRM, then it turns the Web into just a vehicle for encryption that is used against people (Blu-Ray in itself is fine [1], but it's DRM that spoils it). The copyright cartel does not need DRM to do business, shows a new study [2]. The so-called war on piracy is a form of muddying the well [3] for censorship, control, and artificial inflation of sales that relies on making work digitally expire, rot, erode. That's not what the World Web Wide was created for. That's not what motivated Tim Berners-Lee to set up a site/Web pages.

More people and even nations begin to entertain the possibility of a 'new' Internet or 'new' Web -- one that's not riddled with spying (mostly US-centric surveillance as the US controls the Internet) and with DRM (mostly serving Hollywood). Tim Berners-Lee is British, so given the GCHQ's special relationship with the NSA he remains to show what side he will be on. There are parallels to be drawn between the surveillance crisis and the menace of DRM. It's all about controlling one's packets.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. Open-Source Blu-Ray Library Advances (libbluray)
    The latest release of libbluray, the open-source Blu-ray library used by VLC, MPlayer, and XBMC among other multimedia projects, has better support for Blu-ray Disc Java and Blu-ray menus.


  2. Piracy Isn’t Killing The Entertainment Industry, Scholars Show
    The London School of Economics and Political Science has released a new policy brief urging the UK Government to look beyond the lobbying efforts of the entertainment industry when it comes to future copyright policy. According to the report there is ample evidence that file-sharing is helping, rather than hurting the creative industries. The scholars call on the Government to look at more objective data when deciding on future copyright enforcement policies.


  3. Scammers Flood The Internet Archive With Pirated Movies
    The Internet Archive is being plagued by scammers who upload thousands of links to pirated movies in the hope of luring visitors into downloading malware or signing up with pay sites. The uploads seemingly point to popular movie titles such as World War Z, Epic and The Hangover Part III, but unsuspecting users who try to watch or download a copy are in for a heap of trouble.


Recent Techrights' Posts

It's Hard to Trust People Who Worked - Not Only Those Who Still Work - at Microsoft
Bryan Lunduke is just what people would call an "arsehole of a person"
Links 06/07/2025: Climate Change and "The Right to Criticise"
Links for the day
The Mainstream Media Took 4 Days to Realise Microsoft Shut Down Its Operations in Pakistan and Fired Everybody
We estimate that Microsoft has had about 29,000 layoffs since January
“Twibel” Actions Against Comedians (and Why It's a Truly Low Blow)
they try to make up in quantities for a lack of merit or quality
 
Links 06/07/2025: Airlines Perils, Scams, and Breaches
Links for the day
Two Risks to Companies: The Microsoft Culture and the Microsoft Tools
Novell was killed by a form of "social engineering" by Microsoft
For the Second Time, Bryan Lunduke From Microsoft is Siccing Racist Trolls and Vandals at Me
You're only reinforcing the point we made yesterday
Links 06/07/2025: End to End Encryption at Risk, Reuters Twitter ("X") Account Withheld in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/07/2025: Tinylog and Certification Rotation
Links for the day
PCLinuxOS Sites Coming Back, Gradually
let's just be patient
Social Control Media, Even If Based on Free Software, Still Has Many Problems
a distraction from what actually mattered and still matters
IBM is Not Your Master
IBM makes friends with people who exclude the majority of the population: women
Help Fund the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
If you have some dollars to spare, go support the FSF
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 05, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 05, 2025
A Short History of Attacks on Techrights (and Boycott Novell Before That)
good opportunity to tell again the story of several (not all) attempts to silence us
Leadership in Free Software
Don't let IBM lead. It's a terrible flag bearer.
Linux Foundation Apparently Flirting With Slop (Marketing by LLM-Generated SPAM)
The Web is in a really bad state!
COVID-19 Sped Up Site Improvements in Techrights
A few months later we created our very own IRC network
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: Negative Questions and 'Touching Grass' (Going Outside)
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Dalai Lama Succession as 90th Birthday Approaches, 40 deg C in China
Links for the day
Links 05/07/2025: Hungary and US Defecting to Russia, "Google's Hotseat Hypocrisy"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/07/2025: 4th of July 2025 and "Zig Roadmap 2026"
Links for the day
How to Combat the Exploitation and Abuse by Microsoft GitHub
Not to mention corruption and crimes against women
Bryan Lunduke is Actually Sending His Audience to Attack People
"[Lunduke] is actually sending his audience to attack people."
Even The Right Wing is Rejecting Bryan Lunduke
no wonder he became so irrelevant and marginal
Microsoft's MSN Helps Microsoft Spread Lies About the Layoffs' Scale (Well Over 25,000 People Laid Off This Year)
There seem to be monopolies on lies and on truth
The Death of X Has Been Greatly Exaggerated (by Compromised Media)
X.Org Server is alive and well
Rewriting Things in Rust
How far would you go?
In 2025 Everything is "AI". Remember Blockchains?
Talk about what companies and things (services, products, software) actually do, not the labels they use
Julian Assange Has Been Free for a Year
Julian Assange and I disagreed on some things
Monopolies and Scalping
Monopolies gravitate towards price hikes
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 04, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 04, 2025
Microsoft's August Layoffs Wave: "August is Confirmed for Additional Performance Based Cuts"
"August is confirmed for additional performance based cuts from the recent connects along with additional organizational cuts."
What Microsoft Reputation Laundering (With a Weaponised Law Degree) Looks Like in a Foreign Continent
You would expect this in uncivilised and primitive countries
Slopwatch: LLMs 'Write' Fake or Distorted 'News' About "Linux"
LLM slop disguised as news
Links 04/07/2025: Google Replaces the Web With Slop, "AI Might Kill Us All"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: Mindfulness and F1
Links for the day
Weeks After Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia the Company Shuts Down in Pakistan, Too
Last month Windows' share in Pakistan fell to an all-time low
Rob Musial's June 2025 Additions of Malware in Proprietary Software
Via the GNU Web site this week
Links 04/07/2025: Microsoft's H-1B Visa Applications Show Another Crisis Unfolding, Many More Deep Cuts and Shutdowns Revealed, Complete Microsoft Exits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/07/2025: A Day To Remember and "Stop Killing Games"
Links for the day
Crime and Corruption at Microsoft GitHub Cannot be Covered Up by SLAPPs in Another Continent
We'll write about this for a long time to come
Slop Videos Are Disappointing Garbage, Nothing New, Just Brute Force up on Display or a Pedestal of Slop
Slop videos aren't a new thing
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 03, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 03, 2025
The War on Local Storage (People Hosting Their Files Locally and Privately)
There's nothing wrong with controlling one's computing
What Digital Independence Means
Independence in the digital realms means abandoning platforms like GitHub, not just rejecting proprietary software
NVidia is a Bubble
they temporarily see fortunes and wrongly assume perpetuity thereof
Fedora Does Not Care About Diversity and Inclusion, It's About Optics (Corporate Image)
any notion of inclusion is superficial and misleading
Don't Buy the Excuses for Microsoft's Mass Layoffs
Back in the 90s, Microsoft bought a lot of companies to get and stay ahead