September 28, 2017

It’s a battle for the World Wide Web, and you’re losing

editor:	Shira Jeczmien

Early last week the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), ruled in favour of the introduction of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). The W3C has been entangled in controversy for five years debating this bold vote, while the general public has been left largely in the dark, with only awkward acronyms and incomprehensible concepts glistening at the end of the tunnel.

Championed by Netflix, Google and Microsoft, EME is basically designed to stop people saving, copying and sharing copies of movies and other high-quality content streamed online without permission. Which does sound fair. But EME also stands in complete opposition to one of the founding principles of the Internet that it remains open, guarded by the W3C’s standards.

Someone recently enlightened me with a smug yet plausible solution for the continuous North Korean conundrum: to distribute a couple million smartphones connected to the Internet and simply let the world wide web to its job. It will take a matter of days, he told me, eyes glistening with glee, until there will be a civil uprise.

This somewhat utopian theory is embedded in the idea that the Internet is the epicentre of individuality, of autonomous expression; where there’s a place for everyone and anyone. From internationally followed gurus to Asos fan groups on Facebook. The Internet, with its endless knowledge, is where revolutions are birthed, an open and shared place.

Yet if, magically, Internet connected smartphones were distributed to naively clueless www. users who have never been exposed to its complex web, I can almost guarantee they will join the ‘Netflix n Chill’ movement before anyone could finish saying Revolution. And this force isn’t because of Netflix’ super branded aesthetics or its incomparable ability to drop world renowned series on a weekly basis, it’s because they, among others, are shaping the web in their favour.

Issues around copyright infringement have accompanied the web since its founding, precisely because of the anonymity and access its tools lend themselves to. But here is precisely where W3C’s ruling, increasingly swayed by corporate interests, is controversial, and regressive. Without our realisation, or even understanding, the Silicon Valley tycoons are shifting the very rules from which they were founded: access for all, shared information and an open web.

The Internet, when founded at least, promised a parallel world to ours, where corporate laws can be skewed in favour of empowerment of information and the users who contribute to its economy of exchange. But its ceaseless development has left us mere web surfers blissfully unaware of what’s to come. And so the battle for the world wide web continues, and for the first time, it looks like the users are losing.