I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me • Hacker News Board

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

#581

Post by gsnedders » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

Reelin wrote: post #453

gsnedders wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!).

So... I can technically implement my own EME standards compliant web browser, but that browser won't actually be able to interoperate with the existing set of websites that make use of EME. What's the point of the standard again?

Certainly complying with EME isn't enough for web compatibility, but EME plus any given CDM isn't in reality interoperable either: sure, Firefox and Chrome both use a Widevine CDM, but Safari and Edge do their own things. As such, in principle a website could easily not support Safari and Edge (given you get the two larger browsers with one CDM).

To be fair, you can make a similar argument about what's the point of a standard for the video element: in reality, you need to support H.264 encoded video, so just supporting Ogg/Theora/Vorbis (as some early implementations did) doesn't suffice, so what's the point of that standard? (Also the img element, the object element, etc.)

But yes, EME is different because it fails to fulfil its use-cases in a fully free implementation (one can imagine, potentially in the future, a free software implementation that passes encrypted content to a hardware module that implements the decoding, but that seems like little gain and unlikely to happen).

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

#582

Post by gsnedders » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 2:21 PM UTC

RidingPegasus wrote: post #205

jerf wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"when Netflix came begging for a solution to their DRM conundrum" Does Netflix DRM even "work"? I've never personally seriously looked around for how to break it, but I note there are still plenty of people who seem to manage to review Netflix-based shows on YouTube with video clips of sufficient quality [1], and at least some of the reviewers in question I am fairly confident aren't getting any sort of privileged ba…

A researcher on twitter recently cracked widevine level 1 quite quickly according to himself. No proof of concept was offered but he seemed to be claiming it was fairly simple. Netflix uses level 3. The browser has to decrypt it somewhere along the line to play. Always was interested in tinkering around with it. For a starting point I'd be going through chromium and checking out how they implement widevine. For a whi…

Netflix only requires level 2 for HD streams, IIRC. SD streams can be level 1, I think.

Level 3 requires a secure path all the way to the display (so the decryption happens in a Trusted Execution Environment, the keys are stored in a Trusted Platform Module, and HDCP or similar to the display). Level 3 practically only exists on mobile currently, as Intel's SGX (their TEE) is typically disabled by default on what processors do support it.

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

#583

Post by hluska » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #426

hluska wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you’re right, I wasn’t my usual self. I’d edit it to soften my words, but then your comment will lose its value and I’d rather not do that to you. If I could point out one thing that separates our accounts, I don’t use this account to recruit or advertise. I have an email address in my profile because I mostly like talking to interesting people about interesting things. That’s not an excuse for my reply - my re…

No worries. I've been there, too :) You're not necessarily wrong to evaluate the GP's company based on the GP's views. HN is one of those weird grey areas where lots of people implicitly represent the companies for which they work (and don't do the normal "the views expressed herein are not representative of $COMPANY") without necessarily realizing it. While I don't believe the comment was particularly out of line, I…

Thank you for your kindness. You are 100% correct in everything you say, but your kindness is truly inspiring. I owe you - you taught me a lot.

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

#584

Post by Sharparam » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

jonas21 wrote: post #352

Endy wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of that, it's turned pirates into heroes of the common person. After all, why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free?

> why pay and be limited in the way you can watch the thing you paid for when unlimited access exists for free? Oh I dunno... have you tried asking one of Netflix's 140M subscribers? Or the 26M people who use Amazon prime video? The point of DRM isn't to make it impossible to pirate things -- it's to make it difficult enough to get pirated content that most people would prefer to pay a few bucks a month to watch thin…

I'm not sure for how much longer it will keep working though. With the increased fragmentation of streaming services (and geoblocking), pirating content is starting to feel more convenient yet again.

When it comes to music, I can most of the time listen to it legally via Spotify or Google Play Music/YouTube Music. When it comes to movies (and especially for older movies), the rights holders give me no choice but to pirate because they simply don't make it available for me to obtain in a legal way.

As an extreme example: I was looking up an old childhood movie "Hugo: Djungeldjuret". The rights holder have stopped distributing the movie and they no longer sell it, but they do issue copyright claims and take-down requests towards anyone who hosts it. How am I supposed to watch a movie like that in a legal way when the only distributor has stopped distributing it?

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

#585

Post by dec0dedab0de » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #367

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #33

Right, thats the whole thing that sucks about DRM and these video providers in general. Not only do they want to protect their content from unauthorized viewers, they want to control how it is consumed. Which to me is especially outrageous because netflix and youtube are the only two with a good user experience. (I used to count Hulu, but at some point they really fell off) I would think that Amazon would lead the ch…

The entire idea behind DRM is to gain control over the user experience of legitimate users. Pirates will always break whatever DRM scheme you use. Wasting energy on them will always be futile. Controlling the user experience? That's where you can make a lot of money by pushing out competitors.

exactly, but my point is that most of the players don't have a good product, so why would they force people to use it? In the last few months I've used Prime Video, Crackle, FXNOW, WWE Network, NJPWWorld, and HonorClub. All of them are awwwwful, and it would only benefit them if they could come up with an api standard for content, and let other vendors take care of the front end.

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

#586

Post by sonnyblarney » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

Mindwipe wrote: post #537

sonnyblarney wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the most important point. Consumers are not going to put up with all sorts of shenanigans regarding browsers, monitor support etc. etc. - it's an ugly mess. If it 'just works' - then I think most people will accept 'paying for content' as a premise. But when the pieces don't fit together because industry players don't see the 'big picture' ... it will just be bad for everyone and ironically encourage…

Looking at Netflix's numbers, they are. Bluntly I expect Netflix could stop supporting PCs and browsers entirely and feel very few negative effects.

Actually I think it would be painful. They could get away with it, but not without remorse.

There are just tons of people who watch netflix on their laptops and mobile, it's part of the promise I think.

It'd be bad.

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

#587

Post by yellowapple » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:15 PM UTC

hluska wrote: post #583

yellowapple wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worries. I've been there, too :) You're not necessarily wrong to evaluate the GP's company based on the GP's views. HN is one of those weird grey areas where lots of people implicitly represent the companies for which they work (and don't do the normal "the views expressed herein are not representative of $COMPANY") without necessarily realizing it. While I don't believe the comment was particularly out of line, I…

Thank you for your kindness. You are 100% correct in everything you say, but your kindness is truly inspiring. I owe you - you taught me a lot.

Haha, thanks! I've been called a lot of things on the World Wide Web, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time "kind" is one of them ;)

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

#588

Post by sigi45 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #255

sigi45 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world doesn't rotate around netflix and co. You do not need to consume them if you don't want to. There is also no right from yourside to how you wish you like to consume it. I would prefer to have NO DRM of course don't get me wrong. But still in this case, it is not your decision and apparently most people really don't care for that at all. They wanna see netflix in there browser. Thats why google and co did it…

I wanted to be sure that there were multiple instance of this in your posting history (there are) before I commented, but you regularly use "there" in place of possessive "their". I would want someone to correct me on a fundamental grammar mistake in Spanish, so I felt it would be useful to correct you here.

Thank you for the effort on checking my previous comments as well :-).

Really appreciate it as a non native english writer! :)

I sometimes think it would be nice to have a community correct feature which allows anyone to make simple corrections in a way you, as the author, also become aware of it.

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

#589

Post by chongli » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

tux1968 wrote: post #418

djsumdog wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a dangerous precedent. Think about adblock. You're just choosing to render the data websites give to you differently. What if you design a web browser that just ignores most blobs of CSS/Javascript and renders content in a very different way. Are you now breaking copyright? Because you're rendering the data differently than the W3C standard or blocking certain elements? I realize this is specifically about DRM c…

Pretty soon web traffic will be decrypted and rendered via site specific web assembly blobs that will do everything in their power to defeat custom rendering. The modern web has just begun, and the powers that be are still grappling with its control. So we're still living in a comparative wild-west, but you can see the writing on the wall in every direction you look online right now.

This is why we need to build a JavaScript-free web. Just plain old HTML and CSS. With no cookies either. And a search engine that only indexes pages that conform to these rules.

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

#590

Post by jedberg » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #575

jedberg wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don’t stream 4K on a computer. And most people don’t have the bandwidth to stream at 4K. Ie most customers would never notice.

Netflix 4k streams are like 25Mbps at best. The US average broadband speed in 2017 was around 50Mbps. There is no problem getting 4k to consumers. Whether or not they have a 4k display... that is probably the blocker. I have a 4k display but it's not my primary display (instead opting for a 165Hz 1440p panel) and I never bothered to buy a 4k TV, given how dirt-cheap high-end 1080p TVs are. Would much rather have the…

That average broadband speed is deceptive, because it includes people who have gigabit at home. The more interesting number is the median speed. But even using averages, not a lot of countries yet have the speed to support 4K streaming[0], and like you said, even if they have the bandwidth, they need the equipment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_...