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Dear DRM Elimination Crew Member,

Using a free browser is now more important than ever. We've written
[recently][1] on this topic, but the issue we wrote about there was
minor compared to the gross injustice Google is now attempting to
force down the throats of web users around the world. The so-called
"Web Environment Integrity" (WEI) is the worst stunt we've seen from
them in some time. Beginning its life as an innocuous, if worrying,
policy document posted to Microsoft [GitHub][2], Google has now
fast-tracked its development into their [Chromium browser][3]. At its
current rate of progress, WEI will be upon us in no time.

By giving developers an API through which they can approve certain
browser configurations while forbidding others, WEI is a tremendous
step toward the ["enshittification"][4] of the web as a whole. Many of
us have grown up with a specific *idea* of the Internet, the notion of
it as a collection of hyperlinked pages that can be accessed by a wide
variety of different machines, programs, and operating systems. WEI is
this idea's antithesis.

[1]: [link removed]
[2]: [link removed]
[3]: [link removed]
[4]: [link removed]

Compared to its staggering potential effects, the technical means
through which WEI will accomplish its ends is relatively simple.
Before serving a web page, a server can ask a third-party
"verification" service to make sure that the user's browsing
environment has not been "tampered" with. A translation of the
policy's terminology will help us here: this Google-owned server will
be asked to make sure that the browser does not deviate in *any* way
from Google's accepted browser configuration, precluding any
meaningful use of the [four freedoms][5]. It is not far-fetched to
imagine a future in which sites simply refuse to serve pages to users
running free browsers or free operating systems. If WEI isn't stopped
*now*, that future will come sooner than we think.

[5]: [link removed]

While Web Environment Integrity has a policy document that attempts to
explain valid ways in which it could be used, these are all non-issues
compared to the way that we *know* it will be used. It will be used by
governments to ensure that only their officially "approved" (read:
backdoored) browsers are able to access the Internet; it will be used
by corporations like Netflix to further Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM); it will be used by Google to deny access to their
services unless you are using a browser that gels with their profit
margin.

Once upon a time, Google's official policy was "don't be evil." With
the rapid progress they've made on Web Environment Integrity in such a
short time, we can say very safely that their policy is now to
*pioneer* evil. As we write this, talented and well-paid Google
engineers and executives are working to dismantle what makes the web
*the web.* Given that Google is one of the largest corporations on
the planet, our only hope of saving the Internet as we know it is a
clear and principled stance for freedom, a collective upholding of the
communal principles on which the web was based.

Let us repeat: there is absolutely no legitimate justification for
WEI. The use cases that the policy document highlights are nothing
compared to its real use case, which is developing a method to obtain
complete and total restriction of the free Internet.

We urge everyone involved in a decision-making capacity at Google to
consider the principles on which the web was founded, and to carefully
contemplate whether Web Environment Integrity aligns with those
principles. We hope that they will realize WEI's fundamental
incompatibility with the free Internet and cease work on the standard
immediately.

And if they don't? Well, they ought to be ashamed.

In solidarity,

Greg Farough
Campaigns Manager

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