[rights] tyranny of the majority but no consensus

[Bob Glushko <glushko@SIMS.Berkeley.EDU>]

I am going to respond to the note from Mike Godwin below sent to me and Hari Reddy since I doubt that Hari will.

I too am appalled by the recent votes at the F2F and on yesterday's conference call.  But neither surprised me.

In the days before the F2F, I sent Hari several messages urging restraint in the face of the mounting pressure from the MPEG constituency in the TC to ignore the fact that the requirements process hadn't reached consensus but he didn't reply to me. He didn't reply to me afterwards either when I suggested he take steps to address the bad feelings caused by the votes at the F2F.  He has steadily lost the impartiality with which he began as the TC chairman and now predictably sides with the "party line" as defined by Content Guard and Microsoft, ignoring the fact that a substantial proportion of the members are opposed to the "damn the requirements process, full speed ahead" approach they advocate.

The critical votes were 11 to 10 and 12 to 9 on Thursday and 10 to 8 yesterday.  This bare majority clearly demonstrates there is no consensus for moving forward at this pace -- and also demonstrates that there is little chance that a specification will be voted out of the TC for submission to OASIS, since far more than 1/4 of the membership will oppose it.  I am puzzled by the persistence of the MPEG side given this arithmetic.  No specification will be voted out of the TC without dealing with the full set of requirements submitted to it.  Do the math.

I understand that some of the member companies in this TC have strong business interests to "get something out" but I also believed in its charter.  The first goal is said to be:

Define the industry standard for a rights language that supports a wide variety of business models and has an architecture that provides the flexibility to address the needs of the diverse communities that have recognized the need for a rights language

It is clear now that any community other than the MPEG is a second-class citizen whose requirements will be dealt with at some unspecified future time. It has been disingenuous to call for participation by user organizations and by people who care about legal and regulatory  issues and then vote to suppress any meaningful impact of their contributions.

bob glushko

X-Sender: mnemonic@brillig.panix.com
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:34:46 -0400
To: "Reddy, Hari" <Hari.Reddy@CONTENTGUARD.COM>,
   "Mike Godwin (E-mail)" <mnemonic@well.com>
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic@well.com>

Gentlemen,

I am astonished to hear that the wishes of experts contributing to the subcommittee were wholly ignored in the vote this afternoon.

It seems clear to me that certain corporate members attended the meeting with the intention of circumventing the wishes of those who want to see the first version of the REL accurately express a full range intellectual-property rights.

I hereby register my protest. I think this was immensely insensitive on the part of the corporate members, and am considering whether and how to publicize this subversion of a purportedly "open" standards process.

This was the last thing I expected, given the representations that had been made to me about the subcommittee's work. In the time we had allotted this morning, I believe I demonstrated my willingness to help the committee reach a first edition of its work in a reasonable amount of time, and I point out that drawing a line with regard to submissions was my idea.

I feel an immense sense of betrayal, and I imagine that other members do too.


--Mike



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"I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy ...."
           --Walt Whitman
Mike Godwin can be reached by phone at 202-637-9800
His book, CYBER RIGHTS, can be ordered at
        http://www.panix.com/~mnemonic .
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--
Robert J. Glushko, Ph.D.
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~glushko
School of Information Management & Systems
102 South Hall
University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-4600