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Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

techblog.netflix.com

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Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#251

Post by matt4077 »

dasil003 wrote: post #231
cyborgx7 wrote: post #2

Translation: Netflix successfully lobied DRM into what is supposed to be the OPEN web standard, to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it. Dark days for the free exchange of information enabled by the web.

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free…

Browser makers have plenty leverage. A Firefox user watching Netflix will, and this is a tautology, be worse off if they cannot continue doing so. That may lead to people switching to other browsers more often than dropping Netflix subscriptions, but the costs for Netflix wouldn't be 0, and may even be substantial considering the population of people using Firefox is self-selected to those placing a high value on openness.

If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone. There are millions of archived predictions of Apple's demised in forums such as this, but even though they had 20% of the market at peak, they easily killed flash.

Unfortunately, Google has an interest in DRM for its own sake. This may serve as a welcome reminder that the awesome job they have done with Chrome is a result of an alignment of interest between them and the web community: they need the open web to compete against iOS and the closed Facebook ecosystem. That situation may not last forever.

I'm quite happy to have had RMS and other true-believing ascetic martyrs shaping the techno-centric fantasy world we're living in. If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.

I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks. I honestly don't know what benefit they think they're getting from DRM, considering all their material somehow ends in a .torrent anyway.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#252

Post by pfooti »

derefr wrote: post #212
daenney wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. Why do you assume they didn't? And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Walk away, lose access to all its content, see a large part of their subscriber base move to different services that do support DRM and therefor get the content and eventually have t…

It's interesting that DRM is basically a "free market problem." In cases where there is a government-supported media production/distribution service, as with the BBC in Britain, no DRM is needed, because the success of the service is not dependent on income from licensing the content. Instead, the content itself is often put up for free on a government-hosted online archive, in as many formats as possible, to ensure…

And yet, I cannot just simply stream BBC content in the US.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#253

Post by voltagex_ »

Ironchefpython wrote: post #244
mavrc wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Distribute industry content with DRM, distribute their own content without, and see what the results are. Somebody's going to have to perform the experiment to see what the outcome will be. Since Netflix produces tons of content now, they are in an excellent position to try this.

> Distribute industry content with DRM, distribute their own content without, and see what the results are. The industry content will show up on the Pirate Bay, and Netflix original content will show up on the Pirate Bay. Were you expecting another outcome?

Netflix content is already on Pirate Bay.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#254

Post by braveo »

jshmrsn wrote: post #221
braveo wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how that works. It's one thing if you're converting from one compressed format to another, or recompressing an already compressed file. It's another to simply grab the pixels off of screen and compress those. You won't get as good of a shot because of the original decompression, but your description of why is inaccurate.

algesten's comment seems entirely accurate to me. He's not claiming that the captured frame buffer will be of lower quality, but that in order to distribute it afterwords, you would need to recompress the captured frames. That recompression is where the quality reduction would occur. Everything I just said is rephrasing what is already in algesten's comment.

Because it has nothing to do with the original compression.

Think of it like this.

If you compress and distribute someone's wavy hand-cam pirating of a movie, the poor experience isn't due to the compression, but the way the move was recorded in the first place.

likewise, recording a stream and then compressing it later, the quality isn't because of the original compression, it's because of the quality of the original stream.

Now that poor quality may partially be the result of the initial compression, but recompressing it isn't why the quality isn't great.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#255

Post by nikcub »

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #229
nikcub wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the browser provides a privacy and security sandbox where you can't be fingerprinted and where it is more difficult to turn decoding bugs into remote code execution exploits. Users should have a lot more faith in the protections of a browser over the free-for-all security and privacy nightmare that is desktop computing.

Who told you it's going to be sandboxed? It's probably going to be a obfuscated binary blob (it has to of it wants to try ensure that nothing is intercepting it) which will try verifying that OS isn't intercepting data.

Firefox:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1021232

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1021235

The spec talks about both securing the CDM with Sandboxing and preventing fingerprinting, amongst other security + privacy issues that should be addressed:

https://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#cdm-security

https://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#privacy-fingerprintin...

the spec also says if the CDN isn't sandboxed then the user needs to be warned and prompted to allow exec:

> if a user agent chooses to support a Key System implementation that cannot be sufficiently sandboxed or otherwise secured, the user agent should ensure that users are fully informed and/or give explicit consent before loading or invoking it.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#256

Post by e40 »

franciscop wrote: post #240
dasil003 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free…

I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch." IMO the 2005-2015 wave of pirated content was due to the exact opposite; users (people in the living room) not going the extra literal mile to buy/rent a DVD. With the coming of Spotify & Co the music pirate scene has pretty much died off and it's because the physical CDs are replaces by something orders of magnitude easier . Same thing is happening w…

I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch."

I have quite a few data points that say you are flat wrong about that. I would add to this: people watch what they want to watch and how they want to watch it.

I've literally downloaded HBO shows even though I'm an HBO Now subscriber. The Roku HBO Now app is so horrible, I just hate using it.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#257

Post by pdeuchler »

dasil003 wrote: post #231
cyborgx7 wrote: post #2

Translation: Netflix successfully lobied DRM into what is supposed to be the OPEN web standard, to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it. Dark days for the free exchange of information enabled by the web.

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free…

I think we lost the ability to make fun of RMS once the Snowden revelations come out. Regardless...

>> It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here

You realize the world's largest browser vendors are Google, Apple, and Microsoft... right?

>> EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards.

Ahhh yes, the classic "compromise some of my morals to save the rest of them". Works every time.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#258

Post by zanny »

wildmusings wrote: post #234
problems wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the problem started when people decided installing a browser from an ad agency seemed like a good idea.

Why is reasonable DRM a problem in the first place? I'm paying Netflix $8 a month to watch thousands of movies whenever I want. Being constrained to a large number of devices that take some steps to prevent someone from ripping the movies is a fair tradeoff. It works flawlessly on my computer, on my phone, and on my xbox. The DRM hasn't bothered me once.

Because I'm going to immediately argue with you that there is no reasonable DRM.

It comes from two ideological positions. One believes that content creators need complete systemic control of what they make - at all costs (that the creator maintains full control no matter how the content is interacted with) - and the other is that content shouldn't be controlled (or that I, as a buyer of content, should control the content I bought), and all real world implementations fall between those extremes.

But when it comes to DRM, it should be understandable that plenty of people (myself included) are not willing to allow third party companies to run proprietary code (the drm) on my hardware for the exclusive purpose of preventing me from interacting with data on my own computer (the streamed movie / music). When web browsers start baking in this proprietary functionality, it forces me to look for alternatives to the established open source browsers.

If you are content with that relationship with content (heh) providers, then this is not your fight. But at least accept that a lot of us want to own our computers, and proprietary software takes away that right, and DRM is just one of the more visceral forms proprietary software takes where its entire purpose is to impede the users ability to control their computers.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#259

Post by vinceguidry »

abecedarius wrote: post #168
mozumder wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but Hollywood has the upper hand here. Hollywood has no desire to enter an open platform. They're completely happy if none of their movies are online, ever. Really. They already have a massively profitable distribution system in the theaters. The problem is that people want to watch Hollywood movies on their computer, including people that use Linux. So what do you tell those people to do? Tell them run Window…

People used to say the same about music before iTunes went DRM-free. In the long run, universal computers have far more value than audiovisual media. And you can explain what Hollywood wants without taking their side.

Music is a different animal. I can listen to a piece of music hundreds of times. I'll only watch a movie once, even the most diehard will only watch a movie at most dozens of times. I'm going to notice restrictions on my music way way sooner than I'll notice them on my movies. My only real objection to DRM on movies is philosophical, while my objection to DRM in music is practical, as in, I'll pirate my music if I can't move it around.

Re: Update on HTML5 Video for Netflix

#260

Post by bubblethink »

ReverseCold wrote: post #246
dasil003 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free…

Someone can fork FF though and make it so that the DRM looks like it's there to the websites it visits, but it isn't really there. There's no way DRM can't be removed if I own the device that can play it.

You don't understand how this works. Firefox just provides some APIs that the DRM blob can use. All the decryption is done by the blob, not Firefox. You can reverse engineer the blob itself to an extent, but that will also become impossible with SGX (hence 4k on kabylake + edge only).
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