Minutes/Internet Engineering Commitee/2014-06-18

19:47 <@jscinoz> Hello 20:00 < DanielJ> :-) 20:03 <@jscinoz> So, my apologies for not being terribly organised, unfortunately there's been so much stuff going on lately. I'll ensure to hvae a proper agenda for the next meeting, but as for this one, I suppose it'd be prudent to just figure out if there's any issues people've come across that could be relevant to the committee? 20:06 -!- David [~David@xrqpz.dc31.com] has joined #ppau-iec 20:06 <@jscinoz> Hey David 20:06 < David> BAM 20:07 < David> hmm 20:08 < David> cannot chat 20:09 < DanielJ> ? 20:09 <@jscinoz> What do you mean? 20:11 <@jscinoz> Should we perhaps postpone this in that case? 20:14 < David> yay 20:14 < David> can see now 20:15 < David> close quassel client, open quassel client ;) 20:15 <@jscinoz> Ah I see, so how have you been? 20:15 < David> shit 20:15 < David> hah 20:15 < DanielJ> :-( 20:15 < David> pulled my achilles 20:16 < DanielJ> ouch 20:16 <@jscinoz> That's not what you want :( 20:16 < David> at the same time wife Has influenza B 20:16 < David> and 4 weeks until baby number 3 due 20:17 <@jscinoz> Ah, quite a lot ot be happening at once... 20:17 < David> wife's whole family has flu B, no baby sitter s, my mum moved to Melbourne and my dad is useless ;) 20:18 < David> so good times all around, enough about me though 20:19 < DanielJ> :-( 20:20 <@jscinoz> Still, hope things get easier for you soon. 20:21 < DanielJ> so this is the ToR eh? http://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Internet_Engineering_Committee/Terms_of_Reference *has a quick read again* 20:23 <@jscinoz> Yeah, honestly, not too much has been done since that was written, I've been pretty busy with moving, and while i'm settled in now, had a lot on my plate with work, and roommate drama 20:23 -!- mode/#ppau-iec [+v David] by jscinoz 20:23 -!- mode/#ppau-iec [+v poedgirl] by jscinoz 20:23 <@jscinoz> poedgirl: are you around, by the way? 20:25 <+David> nothing terrible in there 20:28 <+poedgirl> uhh, sort of 20:30 <+David> so.... agenda? 20:30 <@jscinoz> Right, so, the only big thing to determine now: Does this meeting time suit you? Or would an alternate time be better? 20:31 < DanielJ> http://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/iec-minutes-20140618 (such as it is) ;-P 20:31 <@jscinoz> Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to put one together, but there will be for the next one. The only item, which DanielJ helpfully added is to confirm whether this meeting time suits. Other than that, this is fairly freeform 20:31 <+David> I like later, my kids suck, but quassel makes this not completely terrible 20:31 <@jscinoz> Would later work for you poedgirl? You're in WA, iirc, so it's actually quite a bit earlier for you, isn't it? 20:32 <+David> I'm on the floor of my kids bedroom ushering them to sleep currently 20:33 <+David> 830 or 9 eastern would. bee my preference but I understand if this is too late 20:34 <+poedgirl> yeah that's fine 20:35 <@jscinoz> Alright, so 9PM AEST works for everyone? 20:36 <+David> yes 20:37 <@jscinoz> Alright, I'll update the calendar entry when I have teh chance. Fortnightly meetings work fine for everyone? 20:37 <+David> as for days, as. long as its not overlapping with general or NC I'm good 20:38 <@jscinoz> What day is general usually? NC is thursday, so we're good on that front 20:38 < DanielJ> general is tuesdays 20:38 < DanielJ> agian fortnightly like NC 20:39 <+David> Tuesday general, yesterday was last one 20:39 <@jscinoz> Ah, so i guess we'll keep it on wednesday if there's no objections? 20:40 <+David> none here 20:42 < DanielJ> i need to duck away, but will gladly compile the remaining minutes from the log if need be, should be back shortly anyway, but dont hold anything up for me 20:44 <+David> cheers DanielJ 20:45 <+David> anything we want to discuss today? 20:45 <+David> net neutrality is boiling up 20:46 <+David> fttn trials delayed 20:46 <+David> etc? 20:47 <@jscinoz> There was the whole EME clusterfuck with mozilla 20:47 <@jscinoz> Or really EME in general 20:50 <+David> ah yes way to support their own irrelevance 20:51 <+David> I don't think it will achieve anything 20:52 <+David> just another worthless drm 20:53 <@jscinoz> Unfortunately now, all major borwsers support it, and while mozilla's is the safest (heavily sandboxed, per-site device IDs to minimise tracking), we have the potential for it becoming something almost required 20:53 <@jscinoz> if many sites start requiring it, the average end user doesn't care about the philosophy of DRM, they only care that the content they're after isn't available on their platform 20:54 <@jscinoz> I foresee this being particularly bad for the adoption of desktop linux 20:54 <+David> it will breed more pirates 20:54 <+David> I dislike desktop Linux aesthetically, but yes 20:55 <+David> what's the hold up there exactly? 20:56 <@jscinoz> Programmers suck at UX :P 20:56 <+David> codec licencing? 20:56 <@jscinoz> Oh sorry, you mean with EME specifically? 20:56 <+David> yes 20:56 <+David> eme on *nix 20:57 <@jscinoz> Basically, the actual decryption of content is handled by a binary CDM (Content Decryption Module) 20:57 <@jscinoz> These, like browse rplugins, are OS ABI and CPU architecture dependent. 20:58 <+David> ah 20:58 <+David> yeah that's poo 20:59 <+David> android will have fun with that 20:59 <@jscinoz> Yeah, Android would probably be okay, considering market-share 21:00 <@jscinoz> but it will mean things will become more homogenous, and will hamper innovation (tnew cpu archs, like the arm64bit one) 21:01 <+David> so do we put together something on this 21:01 <+David> some wiki materials maybe 21:02 <@jscinoz> In theory, yes, but I'm not sure what more we could add to the discussion. Pretty much every point against it was detailed on the w3c lists through the standardisation process, FSF have bitched about it, EFF may have (can't recall) 21:02 <@jscinoz> What would be the goal of the wiki materials? To explain to non-technical people why this is bad? 21:03 <+David> is it worth while? 21:04 <+David> a grouping of resources and party reasoning may be useful in the future 21:04 < Brendan> jscinoz: make it platform independent at least. 21:04 < Brendan> that could be argued. 21:04 < Brendan> you point out that we are fundamentally against this, but if you're going to be completely evil, do it in a way that isn't crippling. 21:04 <+David> html5 based, not plugin reliant 21:05 < Brendan> that doesn't make sense. 21:05 <@jscinoz> That's the best part, they can implement EME and still say "hey look, we're html5!" 21:05 < Brendan> lol 21:05 <@jscinoz> it still uses and 21:05 < Brendan> yes 21:05 <+David> bleh 21:05 <@jscinoz> it breaks the fundamental nature of the web, that it should work and look (more or less) the same everywhere 21:05 <+David> could not the decryption part be handled there? 21:08 <@jscinoz> At a technical levle yes, JS crypto is pretty widespread and used for security-critical applications (cryptocurrency wallets). I believe the binary nature of CDMs the simply another security-through-obscurity farce 21:10 <@jscinoz> But, at the end of the day, unless they've managed to figure out cryptographic obfuscation (assumed impossible, but not proven either way), the key's gonna end up in memory 21:10 <@jscinoz> so it really is nothing more than a roadblock 21:11 <@jscinoz> It's in the same vein as internet censorship - any technical person can trivially evade it, but the vast majority of people are quite easily dissuaded by trivial inconveniences 21:13 <+David> Only takes one pirate to decrypt and seed though 21:14 <+David> So really another push towards piracy 21:15 <@jscinoz> Yep, so it really doesn't accomplish much. All it does is hamper innovation (since you can be sure that movie studios and the like won't license their content to distributors who don't use some form of DRM) and inconvenience legitimate consumers (limiting device choice) 21:15 <@jscinoz> there's also the tracking issue 21:15 <@jscinoz> there's a unique hardware id generated by the host environment that's used as the identifier against which content purchases are associated 21:16 <@jscinoz> as far as i'm aware, mozilla are the only ones to do this in a privacy preserving way - they provide a different hardware id to each unique origin 21:17 <+David> Yeah that last part is more concerning 21:18 <@jscinoz> It's becoming increasingly hard to avoid tracking on the web, aside from the obvious (cookies, localstorage, indexedb, flash cookies, etc) things like font fingerprinting are starting to be used 21:22 <+David> So I guess action item, compile wiki page on EME including party lines and supporting documents 21:23 <+David> To be used as a resource for future policy/pr/educating 21:23 <+David> Revisit next meeting 21:24 <+David> Ultimately these meetings should be used for decision, with discussion mainly taking place outside the meeting, then they don't drag on 21:25 <@jscinoz> Sure, so just to summarise then: 21:25 <@jscinoz> Meeting time to be moved to 9pm every other wednesday 21:25 <@jscinoz> Wiki article on EME to be written, with party lines and supporting documents 21:25 <@jscinoz> Was that it? 21:26 <+David> Yup 21:28 <@jscinoz> Alright then, is there some formal rpocess to conclude this then? 21:29 <+David> Vote to end meeting 21:30 < Brendan> nah they can just close 21:30 < Brendan> NC votes. 21:30 <+David> :) 21:30 < Brendan> "they" being the chair 21:31 <@jscinoz> In future, should we have the voting bot in here? 21:36 <+David> So... 21:37 <@jscinoz> Meeting closed? 21:37 <+David> Done :)