The World Wide Web Consortium has just signaled its intention to deliberately create legal jeopardy for security researchers who reveal defects in its members' products, unless the security researchers get the approval of its members prior to revealing the embarrassing mistakes those members have made in creating their products. It's a move that will put literally billions of people at risk as researchers are chilled from investigating and publishing on browsers that follow W3C standards.

It is indefensible.

In order to make remix videos, do computer research, or make e-books accessible, people often need to bypass access controls on the media they own. This week, EFF explained to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the government cannot prohibit such speech without running afoul of the First Amendment, in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case of VidAngel v. Disney. 

VidAngel provides a service that allows customers to view movies minus the parts it identifies as offensive. Disney and other entertainment companies, including Fox and Warner Brothers, argued that providing this service violates copyright law and the related law against bypassing access controls in Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.