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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

#331

Post by jedberg »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #295
jedberg wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix doesn’t make most of their content. They just have exclusive license to show it. The studio that makes it still demands DRM. In the rare case of content that is actually made by Netflix, it’s easier to just put DRM on it, because otherwise every system dedicated to encoding and playback would have to have a code branch that was special for non-DRM content. It would be a maintenance nightmare. It’s a lot easie…

Netflix only content isn't "rare" anymore, sorry if I don't purchase this particular red herring. DRM benefits Netflix just as much, if not even more than it does traditional media companies.

It’s very rare. I’ll bet you can’t name a single show that Netflix produces. Remember all those big name shows are produced by other people and then sold exclusively to Netflix.

DRM does not benefit Netflix. It’s complicated and takes a lot of resources to run. They’d much rather not have to deal with it at all. Having DRM does not gain them any customers — in fact it loses them some. But it’s the only way they can get content.

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

#333

Post by EB66 »

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…

> Umm... expecting any kind of response from a vendor with such a large percentage of the market is... kinda arrogant.

How is expecting a response in less than 4 months arrogant? If anything, the OP has been extremely patient.

> Thinking that Google should kowtow to your desire to build a product is pretty foolish.

Is open and fair competition in the marketplace also foolish? Regardless of what current regulations are, I wouldn't describe open DRM as "kowtowing" to a competitor -- if we value open and fair marketplace competition, then DRM ought to be open.

> 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 relationship with Google.

Your response seems to suggest that the OP should happily grovel at the feet of Google and be ever so thankful if Google manages to find the time to make a reply.

If Google wants to be a gatekeeper for DRM, then that's not how things should work.

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

#334

Post by the8472 »

krzyk wrote: post #277
kwindla wrote: post #256

Let's add the US Congress and the EU to the long list of parties to blame for the DRM situation. "Reverse engineering" software for the purposes of "circumventing" copyright is illegal. "Circumventing" is much more broadly defined than it should be. It's not just illegal to redistribute copyrighted material. That's the point of copyright and has been the case for a long time. It's also illegal to watch/consume conten…

The above is most probably for US based clients. E.g. in Poland it is perfectly legal to watch copyrighted material as long as you don't redistribute it. It is also legal to do a reverse engineering of software to allow it to run on your system, software, hardware (so I think a browser also applies). (I'm not a lawyer, just reading some of the more technical law articles)

Poland is an EU member, so your government must have some implementation of the EU Copyright directive, which includes somewhat similar anti-circumvention clauses as the DMCA[0].

There are lots of differences in the details, but I wouldn't make a blanket statement that it's completely legal without actually checking the corresponding laws.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Directive#Technologi...

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

#335

Post by danShumway »

Spivak wrote: post #329
danShumway wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a problem that they had to ask. This line of thought is exactly how companies take over open markets and kill them. Google proposes: A) "It's fine for DRM to be standardized, because anyone can just ask us to use implementations like Widevine." then follows up with B) "We can't possibly be expected to handle every single request that we're given! Give us a break, this is hard." If Google wants to be the web's g…

How does Firefox accomplish it? They (appear) to download the module on-demand.

I'm pretty sure that Firefox has a license to do so, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

I suspect the download-on-demand behavior is less about licensing and more about not installing DRM onto a user's computer without their permission.

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

#336

Post by spear »

sherincall wrote: post #116
mcv wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do open source browsers like Chromium and Firefox do this? Surely if they have access to the blackbox, then anyone does? And if they don't, it means you can't watch Netflix on some major browsers.

Not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be that Firefox on Linux could only stream 720p videos.

For Netflix on Linux, both Firefox and Chrome are limited to 720p. However, there's an extension to enable 1080p playback: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/force-1080p-n...

You can also find a link to the Chrome extension there. I'm not sure if there's a cat-and-mouse game here -- the first time I tried it, the Firefox extension didn't work. However, it started working a few months later.

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

#337

Post by NewsAware »

glennpratt wrote: post #317
RandomBacon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> expecting any kind of response from a vendor with such a large percentage of the market is... kinda arrogant. Are you saying Google is too big to be responsible? Amazon is huge, and I'm able to get a customer service represenatitve in seconds.

I don't see your point. For products you pay for, you can get Google support in seconds as well. This really isn't a customer support question.

Not really. Tried to get an invoice for a Playstore Dev account (50€) which didn't show up in Google Wallet 2weeks ago and support was non-responsive

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

#338

Post by saurik »

danShumway wrote: post #324
ryanolsonx wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the same way, part of building a web browser is having the ability to render web content. If Google can block your custom browser from rendering content, then for all practical purposes they are blocking your ability to build a browser. Eh.. in a way, but not really. It can still work as a web browser but a web site can still render however they'd like based on your user agent. If I made a site today, I could ad…

I would still claim two differences on the user agent side of things: First, any browser can report any user agent they want. There are a number of examples of browsers faking or changing user agents to get around sites that try to differentiate based on those strings. Second, while any individual web site can implement logic based on the user agent, that's the sole choice of the web operator. By restricting Widevine…

Right! And when the headline was Google uses user agents to block Windows Phone from accessing Google Maps (along with reports that changing the user agent made the software work fine), we all agreed on swift and decisive action against Google /s.

https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/

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

#339

Post by Roujo »

simias wrote: post #244
GuB-42 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You make good points but: >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. They seem to think that but is there any truth to it? I do pirate some series/movies from time to time (mostly out of convenience) and you can get high quality rips of pretty much anything mere hours after it's available on streaming sites anyway. So what is this DRM supposed…

> So what is this DRM supposed to achieve?

It's a good point, but I believe DRM isn't just about piracy. It's also about control. I read a good article about this once, but I can't find it anywhere right now so I'll summarize what I remember.

As long as DRM exists, if you want to make a Blu-ray player you have to go and ask the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator for their blessing, so that you can decrypt and play (for example) AACS-protected media. It doesn't really matter that AACS has been broken since early 2007 and that pirates can easily circumvent it - as long as you want to sell a player above-board and not risk potential lawsuits, you still have to go and license it.

(This might not be true for AACS in particular, but AFAIK it is generally true of more recent content protection systems.)

That's when the control part kicks in. Good luck getting that Blu-ray player approved for content decryption if it allows the user to skip commercials, or make small clips of movies and send them to your friends, or other such features. I do believe there would be some amount of demand for those features - well, mostly the first one. However, I don't see the AACS LA ever approving such features while having Disney and Warner Bros as founding members[0].

I'll try to find the original article I got those ideas from. I'll reply again if I ever find it.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20120218192257/https://www.aacsl...

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

#340

Post by lucb1e »

krzyk wrote: post #277
kwindla wrote: post #256

Let's add the US Congress and the EU to the long list of parties to blame for the DRM situation. "Reverse engineering" software for the purposes of "circumventing" copyright is illegal. "Circumventing" is much more broadly defined than it should be. It's not just illegal to redistribute copyrighted material. That's the point of copyright and has been the case for a long time. It's also illegal to watch/consume conten…

The above is most probably for US based clients. E.g. in Poland it is perfectly legal to watch copyrighted material as long as you don't redistribute it. It is also legal to do a reverse engineering of software to allow it to run on your system, software, hardware (so I think a browser also applies). (I'm not a lawyer, just reading some of the more technical law articles)

> in Poland it is perfectly legal to watch copyrighted material as long as you don't redistribute it.

Be careful with that one. The Netherlands had that too until some European court decided that our laws were foolish and went "that's all wrong, it's obviously illegal" after which there was case law about it being illegal and now it's illegal. The ministry immediately went "oh, well, we s'ppose it's illegal then from roundabout last week!"

In case you were wondering who's behind this expensive lawsuit that lasted from 2008 to 2014: we had "home copy tax" (thuiskopieheffing), so you pay a few bucks extra for storage devices (hard drives, usb sticks, smartphones) and that was redistributed to rights holders as compensation for "home copies" (copies for personal use in your household, backups, that sort of thing). Shops did not like that they had to pay extra taxes that they did not have to pay in other countries, so they went to court and got us where we are now.

Dutch news about it: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/95332/nederland-mag-illegaal-dow...

> Nederland stelt dat het downloaden van dergelijk materiaal hetzelfde is als het kopiëren van een cd of dvd, maar daar gaat het Europese Hof niet in mee. Volgens het Hof kan een wet die 'geen enkel onderscheid maakt tussen kopieën uit geoorloofde bronnen en kopieën uit vervalste bronnen' niet worden gedoogd, omdat dergelijke wetgeving auteursrechtinbreuk kan bevorderen.

Translated:

~ The Netherlands claims that downloading of such material is the same as copying a cd or dvd, but the EU court does not agree. According to the EU court, a law that makes 'no distinction can be made between copied from allowed sources and from forged sources' can be allowed, because such laws promote copyright infringement.

Dutch news about the government's response: https://tweakers.net/nieuws/95335/kabinet-nederland-heeft-pe...

> Het is in Nederland per direct verboden om auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal te downloaden uit illegale bron, bijvoorbeeld via torrentsites en nieuwsgroepen. Dat stelt het kabinet in een reactie op een uitspraak van het EU-hof.

Translated

~ It is in the Netherlands henceforth prohibited to download copyrighted material from an illegal source, for example through torrent sites and newsgroups. This is the ministry's response to the ruling of the EU court.

So we didn't need any law change, parliamentary debate, nothing. It was in effect right away.

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