W3C's openness hypocrisy: Public barred from 'public' conference
The World Wide Web Consortium, which purports to be an "open forum" for standards discussion, doesn't exactly live up to its own claims.
Earlier on Monday, the W3C barred one of my colleagues, News.com reporter Anne Broache, from attending a "Toward More Transparent Government" conference held, ironically, in a government building in Washington, D.C.
W3C's Danny Weitzner, who claims 'public' actually means 'not public'
The conference Web site clearly says: "Conversations and results are public."
But Danny Weitzner, one of the W3C's policy directors and event co-chair, repeatedly claimed in a followup telephone conversation that, by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public." Weitzner was the person who personally barred my colleague from entering the conference.
"There was clearly some ambiguity," Weitzner said. "We recognize that the (call for participation) could have been more clear." He said that News.com was not being singled out and another reporter who telephoned was also rejected.
Weitzner, a lawyer and Washington insider before moving to the W3C, said making an event discussing government transparency less transparent was necessary because government officials could then speak more freely "without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say."
"There are times when in order to have an open exchange of ideas, you need to provide an off-the-record environment, which is what we did," Weitzner said. He was, however, unable to identify any government officials who attended the event who might feel stifled.
The event also featured a keynote speech by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee on the topic of "Widescale data integration: opportunities and challenges."
When asked whether Berners-Lee, hardly reticent about expressing his opinions on this topic, would be opposed to media coverage, Weitzner replied: "The purpose of his event was not to publicize his views."
It's true that the W3C has the right to close its meetings, of course, though we wonder about about the propriety of doing it when a federal building is the venue. The W3C event was held at the National Academy of Sciences, created by an act of Congress in 1863 and funded primarily by federal tax dollars.
The bigger question is whether it's wise for a standards body that supposedly prides itself on openness -- and providing an alternative to proprietary, secretive organizations -- to bar the press from covering, on behalf of our readers, events that are listed as "public" on its own Web site. (It's not like these are confidential discussions about W3C staff salaries or anything, after all, and the Internet Engineering Task Force allows reporters into its working group sessions.)
This week's event at the National Academy of Sciences certainly seems newsworthy. Beyond Berners-Lee's keynote, there also were position papers submitted by Google, Red Hat, the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.S. General Services Administration, and the U.K. Office of Public Sector Information.
The Web site says that "W3C membership is not required in order to participate in the Workshop" -- it doesn't mention any fees nor were we asked to pay any. News.com didn't register in advance, it's true, but Weitzner claimed that we would have been barred anyway.
The odd thing is that before we heard back from Weitzner, we talked to W3C spokeswoman Janet Daly, who said "I can't apologize enough" for the confusion and added, for good measure, "I'm very sorry."
"I think if I had been in DC, I probably would have said, 'Geez, why can't we have her in here?'" Daly said, referring to my colleague who got the boot.
Kudos to her: at least someone at the W3C seems to favor transparency in an official event about, ah, transparency. Unfortunately Weitzner, who gets to make these decisions, doesn't seem to have figured that out.
Declan McCullagh, CNET News' chief political correspondent, chronicles the intersection of politics and technology. He has covered politics, technology, and Washington, D.C., for more than a decade, which has turned him into an iconoclast and a skeptic of anyone who says, "We oughta have a new federal law against this." E-mail Declan. 
You'll have to ask the W3C to see if there is in fact any explanation, beyond a bureaucrat's random decision.
It is very important that bodies like W3C educate lawmakers. Like your average computer user and CNET reader, lawmakers are woefully ignorant technically.
There needs to be efforts to get them to understand what is happening and why, even if it is at a basic level.
W3C should be commended for working with lawmakers in positive ways. Regardless of whether this meeting was for the express purpose of educating them in tech issues, it is a positive development. Unlike tech companies that just pay them off to the detriment of everyone else.
Lets ignore the fact that cnet is hardly a reputable news agency(they usually just regurgitate press releases, write nonresearched articles heavily based on a recently published article from more reliable news sources, or simply miss the boat).
In his rush to defend this lady once again, he fails to mention whether the press at large were not allowed in or just Anne Broache. To a legitimate reporter, this would be worth mentioning. To be fair, he mentioned another reporter was barred, but were any allowed in?
Your argument that it was held in a public building has no merit and is laughable. From city and town halls all the way to the federal government, there are always closed door sessions. Is this ideal? No, but sometimes it is necessary.
What Declan hasn't figured out is that the world doesn't revolve around CNET. The world will not end, and there will be plenty of W3C events she can attend, so what is with all the crying and illogic?
agasint OS's besides Windows. Though that is changing.
But he's right. Talking about a transparent govnermnet and then
saying that officials won't be candid unless they're less than
transparent is patent nonsense. You talk about logic, this is
1984-quality newspeak. The hypicrisy of W3C should be
shouted from the housetops.
If a government official doesn't want what they say to come out
in pubic, it's because they don't really believe what they are
saying. It's time for the cowards to go home. The obviously don't
represent the public.
Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson or Abe Lincoln saying they
wouldn't want their official statements to be kept from the
public? What horse hocky!
You obviously have an axe to grind, so don't go slamming others
for bias when your own comments are dripping with it.
First, as Anne's editor, it's my responsibility to note when groups hold supposedly "public" events like this that aren't.
Second, your reading comprehension is poor. Read the article again. Contrary to your claim, it says that we weren't singled out and that at least one other organization was barred from attending the "public" event.
As for the rest of your post, it doesn't deserve a response.
* Creating hype out of nothing
* Focusing on the most sensationalistic aspects of every issue
* Focusing exclusively on one side of every issue
These are part and parcel of being a technology writer. More or less every tech article I have ever seen written has been either an opinion piece or a thinly-veiled advertisement. Not to say that I don't eat it up like Cheetos...
These types of semi-public standards organizations meetings are designed to get stakeholders, experts and policymakers in the same room to hash out every side of an issue. Having the media involved [especially tech media - see above] would inevitably have a chilling effect on the openness of the dialogue. Not everyone is delighted to have someone in the room who is analyzing every word they say and looking for their next blog post/opinion piece. Think about it!
In conclusion, there's no need to turn everything into an Area 51/Freemason conspiracy. I'm sure you'll get your press conference eventually.
Thanks
Hypocracy is claiming one thing and doing another. In this case, it's claiming a meeting is public and then closing it to the public.
Just as the XML-Dev list is debating Stylus repurposing posts and inserting their own links into them without author permission, the subjects of press articles are closing off the ability of the press to spin by denying access to the articles.
One wants communion over dominion but history shows this to be impractical at scale not because of the big conspiracy but because of the little ones. Local effects in a scalar, I'm afraid. It isn't hypocrisy as much as it is natural evolution by the very design TimBL set into motion. Sorry lads.
One thing that is apparent to anyone who watches is that press participation often gets in the way of actual work getting done. Good for the W3C.
2) The [i]results[/i] and [i]conversations[/i] are to be made public, as stated right here: http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/eGov-policy-cfp At no time did anyone there say that any random person (credentialed or not) can simply walk in and plop down. Specifically, these parts are relevant:
* "Space is limited and priority for registration is given to those who have submitted position papers. If you request registration without sending a position paper we suggest that you wait to make any non-refundable travel arrangements."
* "W3C membership is not required in order to participate in the Workshop."
* "The total number of participants will be limited. To ensure diversity, a limit might be imposed on the maximum number of participants per organization."
Cripes... can't C-NET even check basic facts anymore?
/P
So, SUCK IT UP! Crying babies...
For example, the conference was by invite-only from the start, but that all results and discussions were to be made public. That alone changes things radically, no?
See my wee post above for details.
/P
So to me, it comes as no big surprise that W3C is banning the media from "public" events such as these. Not when the members are a bunch of execs from companies that pride themselves of restrictive things such as trademarks, intellectual property and closed, propietary data formats.
W3C should be disbanded, and its responsibilities (if they still do anything other than write "standards" on paper), should be passed to the IETF.
- W3C has always been a playground for companies, some big and some small. That's why the W3C was created in the first place, because completely open standards work done at the IETF wasn't always working. The W3C member companies are the same ones who actually do most of the work like writing the specifications and implementing the technologies. If you rather have them not cooperate, but only develop new proprietary webtechnologies on their own, well, the web wouldn't be as open as it is (though it could be a lot more open).
- VML was submitted as a 'Note' to the W3C, by Microsoft and some other companies. From the text:
"This document is a NOTE made available by the W3 Consortium for discussion only. This indicates no endorsement of its content, nor that the Consortium has, is, or will be allocating any resources to the issues addressed by the NOTE."
<http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-VML.html>
It never got any further than that note, precisily because the W3C decided to pursue development of SVG instead as on official W3C Recommendation.
- Most W3C working groups operate under a Patent Policy that makes it impossible to secretly insert patented ideas into specs. The recommendations of the W3C are never proprietary and closed, even if the process to create them sometimes is not open enough for everyones taste.
There is a lot that can be improved at the W3C, but your mindless rant made me want to defend it :)
This sort of asinine commentary is disheartening. While you make broad, unfounded, negative generalizations with no basis in fact, some poor 12 year-old is going to think they should take you seriously. Shame on you.
- Guh?
- by JustOneVoice June 19, 2007 7:06 PM PDT
- So, let me see if I have this straight. You compare Daniel J. Weitzner to Bill Clinton because, in your reporting, he "repeatedly claimed" that public means "closed to the public"? Not to point out the very obvious flaws in your reasoning, but did you actually follow the impeachment proceedings? Bill Clinton was busted because he lied under oath, in a very clear and public way. If Daniel Weitzner did anything, it was to be underspecific when he should have realized some people can't read directions. No one tried to pull a fast one. The guidelines for registering for the workshop were publicly available and accessible to anyone who cared to read them. If the W3C chose not to allow CNet or other press representatives to participate, it was well within it purview to do so in accord with the published guidelines of the workshop. To make such loose and flimsy alignments in your comparisons speaks more of your skills as a journalist than to anything W3C or its representatives may have done.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(29 Comments)Your rant is sour grapes, and you should be ashamed of yourself for acting like such a weeny. Some poor 12 year-old working on a homework assignment may take you seriouosly and perpetuate your flawed and resentful reasoning. Shame on you.