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I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

blog.samuelmaddock.com

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Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#301

Post by tracker1 »

CodeCube wrote: post #286
numbsafari wrote: post #285

> Waiting 4 months for a minimal response from a vendor with > such a large percentage of the market is unacceptable. Umm... expecting any kind of response from a vendor with such a large percentage of the market is... kinda arrogant. Who are you to demand any kind of response from anyone? Big project or small? You'd probably be less offended if you had a better sense of self awareness about the nature of your relati…

He addresses this point specifically in his post ... developing it as an extension would reduce the features he can support, and further entrench it in google's walled garden (since he'd have to publish it on the chrome store). I don't have much more context in this person's project than anyone else, but your response is kind of the point, one vendor has too much power because they can't be expected to support any ki…

Worse still, if this offers an enhanced interface or "unwanted" options over YouTube, it's likely the extension itself may well not make it into the store. To make matters worse is side-loading of extensions is pretty much a non-starter for Chrome now that dev-mode is a nag screen on each start (at least last time I used it).

I had a couple side loaded extensions, and the nag got me to do what google wanted, stop using them altogether.

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#302

Post by dancek »

Townley wrote: post #225
_bxg1 wrote: post #7

DRM often results in a whitelist of media clients, killing standards in favor of a centralized authority. HDCP does the same for video feeds (HDMI, etc.). DRM-protected boxes can only output to DRM-protected displays, giving a central authority the ability to effectively deny new client devices from being made: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Conte...

Mind helping me understand this a bit better? The link mentions that to produce a HDCP-compatible device (eg one that has an HDMI port) it needs to be licensed, pay an annual fee, and make promises to frustrate DRM-mitigation efforts. If I wanted to make my own monitor with a VGA input (or, more practically, pipe the signals coming from VGA into a program that does something with the feed) I would just have to find a…

Outputting an image via HDMI using an FPGA is relatively straightforward, almost as easy as VGA. I don't know about HDCP but expect it to be next to impossible.

Inputting any pulse-based high-frequency signal is more difficult, be it VGA or Ethernet or HDMI.

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#303

Post by crysin »

heroic wrote: post #281
JoshTriplett wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium can download and install the Widevine module, just as Firefox can. The Widevine module, however, is closed source and proprietary.

I use Brave and Netflix and PrimeVideo work fine. How does that happen?

Doesn't Brave have Widevine in it?

https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/31

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#304

Post by floatboth »

quotemstr wrote: post #275
floatboth wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's getting somewhat out of date though (e.g. current versions of Steam can't connect to the network)

Out of curiosity: is it that FreeBSD has the old socketcall(2) but not the newer fine-grained system calls?

Possibly. I don't remember what it was, maybe it was actually some new arguments or something

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#305

Post by throwaway2048 »

lghh wrote: post #81
gcb0 wrote: post #19

let's address the elephant in the room. Google got the authority from everyone here who accepted chrome and IE DRM by default, to the point that even Firefox was forced to give in, so you all could be sedated by Netflix and other DRMed content.

> Google got the authority from everyone here who accepted chrome and IE DRM by default, to the point that even Firefox was forced to give in, so you all could be sedated by Netflix and other DRMed content. Do you really, REALLY think that the very small number of people who are ever AWARE of this issue were enough to make a dent in it? So we could be sedated by Netflix? This attitude is intolerable and more harmful…

Plenty of people here were cheering on EME DRM

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#306

Post by rndgermandude »

GuB-42 wrote: post #179
mmastrac wrote: post #12

The blame for this sits squarely on the w3c for their efforts in trying to replace flash by letting the content companies dictate standards for encrypted playback. If they had held fast, we could have forced the companies to do their key management in something like WebAssembly and avoided this gatekeeping mess.

The W3C isn't to blame. No one is to blame, really. We have DRM, we hate it but it's there, and it serves a purpose. If it is your intellectual property, you get to decide how it is used. And if you don't want to make copying too easy because you think that it will get you more money, that's your right. The goal of the W3C is not to make to make a political statement about the rightness or wrongness of DRM. They are…

The W3C, Google, Apple and MS and the TV manufacturers could have said "OK then, keep your content to yourself, let's see how your business does without us providing ways to deliver your crippled content to the eyes and ears of your customers."

But of course they didn't say that, because most of them got some direct or indirect interest in DRM, enough so that the few remaining players did have no choice than to hop on board, too.

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#307

Post by tracker1 »

cmsimike wrote: post #40

I don't know if this will be helpful to you but an open source media player, Kodi, recently added support for Netflix in the latest version of the app (by implementing a DRM engine for people to use). This requires the use of the widevine library which then downloads things behind the scenes upon use (I believe). https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=329767 I can't imagine Google gave the OK to Kodi to use widevin…

Interesting... I mostly use Kodi for NAS media and run it under NVidia Shield TV because running it on an HTPC was so limiting of an experience for Netflix, etc. Almost ironically also have a Fire stick, because Hulu won't port the updated interface (for live tv) to the Android TV version despite working on Fire devices.

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#308

Post by tellak »

tomxor wrote: post #250
sli wrote: post #239

> ...the creators of the open source browser Chrome, ... This assumption is a mistake the author is making. Chrome is, for all practical purposes, closed-source and proprietary. It's Chromium that is open-source. So far as I know, Chromium does not have Widevine included by default.

This is correct, I use chromium - netflix and amazon do not work... the rest of the web is perfectly fine though. It may have been a stupid decision for W£C to include DRM in the spec, but frankly the rest of the internet doesn't give a shit - As far as OSS is concerned it's another 3rd party blob like flash and not a true part of the web. As far as I can tell the author is trying to use this third party blob specifi…

I use chromium and Widevine works fine (Netflix works fine)

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#309

Post by ben509 »

If you had to run this stuff on another platform, you'd just spin up a VM or container, right?

To get around the legal issue that they won't do this for an open source project, just create a shell corporation.

That shell corp then writes a closed-source plugin wrapper in another project entirely.

Put widevine in that wrapper. Then your open source project just has to include that plugin.

Re: I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

#310

Post by avmich »

darkpuma wrote: post #252
avmich wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Can't you have Chromium browser work with that software? And modified Chromium browser, e.g. Firefox? I don't remember I accept licenses at least as a user.

> "And modified Chromium browser, e.g. Firefox?" (Firefox is not a chromium derivative.)

Any browser could be made from Chromium by sufficient modification.

I mean, if something open source works, anything else open source can also be made to work.

Even if something that works includes binary blobs, you can still modify open source parts while keeping that blob and keeping the system working. So I'm not sure what is the original problem.

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