The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a hard decision to make: a coalition including the world's top research institutions; organizations supporting blind users on three continents; security firms; blockchain startups; browser vendors and user rights groups have asked it not to hand control over web video to some of the biggest companies in the world. For their part, those multinational companies have asked the W3C to hand them a legal weapon they can use to shut down any use of online video they don't like, even lawful fair use.

Is the W3C in the business of protecting the open web and its users, or is it an arms-dealer supplying multinational companies with the materiel they need to rule the web? We're about to find out.

Last Monday, we published our open letter to Hewlett-Packard CEO Dion Weisler, and more than 10,000 of you promptly stepped up to sign it, telling the company that you agree that it is absolutely unacceptable for a company to send out deceptive "security" updates that reconfigure your printer so that it only accepts the company's own high-priced ink.