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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

#391

Post by CamperBob2 »

ktm5j wrote: post #347
danShumway wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a single company can effectively decide whether a bunch of 3rd party sites that they don't control work on your browser, how is that any different? Google is effectively deciding that anyone other than pre-approved browsers can't play Netflix content. If an ISP fully embraced the Net Neutrality repeal and started blocking video content, and someone posted on HN that ISPs were "blocking them from building a streami…

I never meant to suggest that this wasn't a big deal, just that the title was intentionally dramatic to get more views.

Which has proved, time and again, to be the only way a lowly user can appeal or seek redress for grievances with Google. If you don't -- or can't -- raise a shitstorm on social media, you have no voice in their decisionmaking process.

Break them up. They are no different from a competing government at this point.

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

#392

Post by dd36 »

freedomben wrote: post #282
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…

Completely agree. Those government believe that protecting intellectual property is necessary to further human and societal progress. I won't take a position on whether I agree with that or not. However, based on that premise they've instituted rules to "protect" intellectual property, but unfortunately they're so weighted toward the "owner" of the IP that they do (IMHO serious) harm to regular users and consumers. I…

The government is propping up the companies because that's what the companies made happen. Your framing suggests that government did this on its own. It did not. The outsized ability of companies to influence the government is the core problem that must first be solved. It is the root of most people's gripes with the government.

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

#393

Post by dTal »

r3bl wrote: post #357
freedomben wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Those government believe that protecting intellectual property is necessary to further human and societal progress. I won't take a position on whether I agree with that or not. However, based on that premise they've instituted rules to "protect" intellectual property, but unfortunately they're so weighted toward the "owner" of the IP that they do (IMHO serious) harm to regular users and consumers. I…

> ...but unfortunately they're so weighted toward the "owner" of the IP that they do (IMHO serious) harm to regular users and consumers. To the established owners of IP. If you're not an established creator, you're going to be on the side that gets hurt by the IP. Some IP claims are gonna hit you sooner or later, and even if they're complete bullshit, you won't be able to do anything about them. Established owners ca…

s/established/rich

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

#394

Post by 0815test »

jedberg wrote: post #388
0815test wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, that can't possibly be right. If they can get shows sold "exclusively" to them, why can't they get shows sold to them without DRM requirements? (The closest I can get to an explanation is that the "exclusivity" deal might be limited to online streaming platforms only , and whoever is selling the content still worries about everything else. But streaming is a significant and growing portion of all media consu…

They probably did negotiate DRM free licenses. But the cost for implementing a separate DRM free pipeline is very high, and there would be little ROI to the business. Not having DRM on just the Netflix content would get very few new customers, if any, especially given that this whole argument only applies to web streaming anyway.

> ...and there would be little ROI to the business. Not having DRM on just the Netflix content would get very few new customers, if any...

This is where your narrative is strategically short-sighted. It would be a very significant leverage point for their own proprietary content over the traditional media companies' - the kind of thing that 'disruption' is built on!

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

#395

Post by Faark »

lucb1e wrote: post #340
krzyk wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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)

We have kind of the same in Germany, and our overview on Wikipedia[1] looks even more complicated and expensive than yours[1]. You're still not allowed to circumvent effective copyright protections to make your private copy. But I'd be surprised if e.g. music only available with DRM would be excluded from earning a share of that fee.

Interestingly, before the recent EU copyright reform, this fee benefited only authors directly, instead of the rights holder.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauschalabgabe [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuiskopieheffing

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

#396

Post by lostmyoldone »

KorematsuFred wrote: post #322

Can someone please give me a Tl;dr for this post ? Why would google have any say in someone making a web browser ? Where does their path have to cross ?

This certainly isn't short, but I don't know how to make it shorter, as I don't know what you don't know, and what you want to know.

You need a DRM "capable" video component to be allowed to play most internet video content that isn't directly user generated, or news.

The consequence is that the giants holding the rights to these components are effectively holding the keys to a decent chunk of the internet. For a browser specifically made for synced playback of movies, they essentially hold the keys to all of it. The big movie studios simply won't allow either streaming or download without you using one of these solutions on both ends of the stream.

The author applied for some form of license of the purportedly free and open Widevine DRM component which is used/approved by almost all big streaming sites. The request was rejected citing a somewhat odd reason: That the project was open source.

This is odd because https://github.com/castlabs/electron-releases is open source, apparently "blessed" by Google/Widevine, and available to use on the only condition you get a license from Widevine. Which should then be impossible?

Which leads us to several somewhat plausible conclusions. Either the author requested the wrong licence/needs a feature not available in previously mentioned projects, someone at Widevine made a mistake, or there is a lot of smoke and mirrors going on to either make it seem Widevine is accessible to anyone when it truly isn't.

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

#397

Post by gsnedders »

geofft wrote: post #374
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, yes, but why would they do that? So that they're not beholden to adversarial corporations. > You're assuming that content is fungible. If I want to watch Game of Thrones , I want to watch Game of Thrones , not "Winter Dragon," and "Winter Dragon" being DRM-free won't incentivize me to watch it. Except that it is fungible, it's just not universally fungible. The reason Winter Dragon isn't fungible with Game…

> So that they're not beholden to adversarial corporations. What is so adversarial about these corporations to the browser makers ? What benefit, concretely, do Microsoft or Google or Apple get from being free of the shackles of Disney or CBS? One concrete benefit I see is less risk of the third-party code destabilizing your code because it has bugs and is running within your address space, but there's an easy soluti…

Only in the case of Firefox is it really third-party code; both Chrome, Edge, and Safari ship with the EME modules developed by the respective companies, but they still sandbox it.

Plugins like Flash, which are the historic answer for DRM on the web, have a huge surface space and can interact in the browser in all kinds of odd ways. These EME modules are much smaller, they are much less powerful (AFAIK they either return a frame to the browser to composite or directly to the OS compositor, so you don't need to worry about how they change layout and then change layout again as you reflow), and as a result of that can be put in stricter sandboxes. That's a clear win from a browser security and stability point-of-view, which is a concrete benefit for browser vendors in making it viable to drop Flash (and dropping Flash without providing a replacement for encumbered video isn't an option: breaking websites like Netflix will cause users to use other/older browsers that do support Flash).

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

#398

Post by Dylan16807 »

fixermark wrote: post #390
radisb wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pop-Corn Time would like to have a word with you

I don't think it would, unless it begins playing within thirty seconds of the user choosing a video and provides an uninterrupted streaming experience? Last I checked, the BitTorrent protocol didn't provide packet sorting that would allow for this behavior (by forcing the beginning of the movie's bytestream to be the first data downloaded), so my mistake if the protocol has improved and I was unaware it provided this…

The downloading client is in charge of which parts of the file it gets first. It can easily go in order.

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

#399

Post by gsnedders »

the8472 wrote: post #345
ktm5j wrote: post #253

I also find the title to be rather sensational.. "I tried creating a web browser" ^ "Google blocked me" implies that Google blocked them from creating a web browser.. which is not the case.

EME is part of web standards. So for some value of standards compliant web browser google can block you from implementing it. https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-encrypted-media-20170918/

EME does not require Widevine; you can implement EME in its entirety yourself, in open code.

Widevine is only one of several implementations of a Content Decryption Module; it just so happens to be by far the easiest to license (though that doesn't mean that's easy!).

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

#400

Post by fixermark »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #398
fixermark wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it would, unless it begins playing within thirty seconds of the user choosing a video and provides an uninterrupted streaming experience? Last I checked, the BitTorrent protocol didn't provide packet sorting that would allow for this behavior (by forcing the beginning of the movie's bytestream to be the first data downloaded), so my mistake if the protocol has improved and I was unaware it provided this…

The downloading client is in charge of which parts of the file it gets first. It can easily go in order.

How easily, and how much setup is necessary? Remember, we're talking about competing with a service that doesn't even make the end-user consider whether that is a problem that needs to be solved (just plug in a credit card and off you go).
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