Web archiving and the Wayback

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technological restrictions that control what users can do with digital media, is antithetical to the open web. Moreover, EME opens the possibility that DRM could spread to non-video content such as typography or images, which poses an even more existential threat. Machine would suffer.

Archiving is not the only activity endangered by anti-circumvention laws and EME: from accessibility adaptation to security research to the kinds of legitimate innovative activities that you began whatsapp lead your career with — inventing the first search engines — the normal course of the open, standards-defined internet is incompatible with the anti-circumvention regime that comes into play if the W3C publishes EME as a recommendation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has proposed a sensible and simple compromise: binding W3C members not to invoke anti-circumvention laws unless there is some other cause of action. This preserves the legitimate interests of rightsholders against those who trespass on their copyrights, trade secrets and contractual obligations, without turning the W3C standards process into a backdoor to creating new legal rights to prevent legitimate, vital activities.

Every organization involved in creating and preserving the open web is facing unprecedented challenges and pressures today. It is up to the guardians of the open web to meet those challenges with an unwavering commitment to our core principles: that the web must be free for anyone to write, to read, to connect to, to adapt, to archive and to preserve. As such, I recommend that we object to the publication of EME as a W3C specification without safeguarding these foundational principles of the open web.