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Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

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Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#401

Post by rapnie »

gniv wrote: post #399
rapnie wrote: post #60

We all let it come this far, because of how we treat the services Google provides: As nice free and helpful tools. Talking about "Chrome this and that" all the time we forget what that really means, namely: Using the strategic tools of the largest Advertising Agency in the world, that allows them to ever grow their dominance. Chrome, GMail and all that jazz all fit into a global-scale ad-tech framework to push shady…

How did you get from Advertising Agency to Shady Business? Agencies on Madison Avenue are not generally thought of as shady.

They aren't exploiting global monopolies and oligopolies either, forcing technologies down people's throat that will cement and further expand their already overly dominant position. For the most part they aren't pushing ostensibly benign tools that lure and capture people in their web (i.e. Google Web literally).

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#402

Post by charcircuit »

daurentius523 wrote: post #392
charcircuit wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>strikes a deal with select few hardware vendors That isn't what is happening. Anyone can become a manufacturer for Windows PCs or Android certified phones.

Right because Microsoft and Google don't mandate what can and cannot be installed by manufacturer… oh wait.

The whole point of Android certification is that you are following Google's rules. If you make something that is not certified you can not get play services.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#404

Post by zb3 »

charcircuit wrote: post #388
zb3 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is anticompetitive, if a given service (which is defacto mandatory) strikes a deal with select few hardware vendors to artificially make it impossible to access the service using different hardware (for purely business reasons), then it obviously is anticompetitive.

>strikes a deal with select few hardware vendors That isn't what is happening. Anyone can become a manufacturer for Windows PCs or Android certified phones.

That's not the competition I really meant, replace hardware vendors with OS vendors / Google.

"Android certified" means it follows Google's rules, so there's no way to compete by creating alternative security model (for example where the user has more power).

So the anticompetitive part is the attestation part, which artificially makes it impossible to run an app that'd otherwise work on the system that doesn't follow Google's rules.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#405

Post by daurentius523 »

charcircuit wrote: post #402
daurentius523 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right because Microsoft and Google don't mandate what can and cannot be installed by manufacturer… oh wait.

The whole point of Android certification is that you are following Google's rules. If you make something that is not certified you can not get play services.

>The whole point of Android certification is that you are following Google's rules.

Whole point of WEI is that you are following Google's rules.

You essentially acknowledged that YOU CANNOT become manufacturer - you become subcontractor for corporation that dictates what you can and cannot do.

Which from point of trust is precisely that - anticompetitive behaviour.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#406

Post by cowl »

zb3 wrote: post #348
cowl wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube can and in some measure is already doing it without this new API. If google wanted to be sneaky they can provide whatever data they want to Youtube alone without making it a public standard. you see how all of these fears are contorted reasoning because you want to try to find something wrong with the proposal because all fo your fears do not require this proposals and would be easier and with much less backl…

How can they get hardware attestation right now? They can't, that's why WEI is proposed.

Chrome has access to all kind of hardware information. they could have implemented that hidden in Chrome without all of this dust raising for a public Standard that gets scrutinized by everyone. Note that all discussion about chain of trust is there only because of all actors involved in a public standard, in case they wanted to just do this themselves they would just trust whatever the hidden chrome api would answer and that's that. much simpler, total control, no noise.

For all that we know all kinds of closed source software are already doing something like this (especially ones who do a lot of natural network traffic so you cant even distinguish from the capturing raw data what is legit and what not.)

For example, Netflix allows you to download a movie from their native apps but not from the browser, this is only because in the native Apps they have access to all kinds of hardware information and they can attest themselves about the "environment"

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#407

Post by zb3 »

cowl wrote: post #406
zb3 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they get hardware attestation right now? They can't, that's why WEI is proposed.

Chrome has access to all kind of hardware information. they could have implemented that hidden in Chrome without all of this dust raising for a public Standard that gets scrutinized by everyone. Note that all discussion about chain of trust is there only because of all actors involved in a public standard, in case they wanted to just do this themselves they would just trust whatever the hidden chrome api would answer…

Having access to hardware information doesn't imply being able to transfer them to websites in a trusted way that the user can't modify.

Chrome runs in the userspace, whereas I can write a kernel module which chrome can't interfere with (I did that for widevine in 2017!) that will emulate/lie to chrome about the hardware I have, and there's no way that the website owner could know whether I lie or not (this might require some effort on my part, but it's doable).

Hardware based attestation was created precisely because the software based one can be bypassed.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#408

Post by cowl »

zb3 wrote: post #407
cowl wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome has access to all kind of hardware information. they could have implemented that hidden in Chrome without all of this dust raising for a public Standard that gets scrutinized by everyone. Note that all discussion about chain of trust is there only because of all actors involved in a public standard, in case they wanted to just do this themselves they would just trust whatever the hidden chrome api would answer…

Having access to hardware information doesn't imply being able to transfer them to websites in a trusted way that the user can't modify. Chrome runs in the userspace, whereas I can write a kernel module which chrome can't interfere with (I did that for widevine in 2017!) that will emulate/lie to chrome about the hardware I have, and there's no way that the website owner could know whether I lie or not (this might req…

In what universe do you live that Google or anyone else should device this complicated scheme to just capture 2-3 people. Linux has only 3% share of the users. of those maybe 0.1% could write a kernel module (or even install one) and of those maybe 1% would be maniac enough to dedicate time and effort to it just to "stick it to the Pawaaa"

Google could accomplish all of their supposedly nefarirous goals by just ignoring the linux users. Do you really think they are going through all this trouble to make sure that they deliver adds to those 2-3 people? I can already see the next earnings call, "adds impression targets increased by 2".

Notice again the Netflix example. They just don't have a linux App and you cant legally view Netflix movies offline in Linux. it's cheaper to ignore linux users. like it or not, that is a fact.

outside of Linux, if chrome were to provide an API, for hardware information it can be completely trusted and even in linux case I would say that it still can be trusted with 99.99% confidence.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#409

Post by zb3 »

cowl wrote: post #408
zb3 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having access to hardware information doesn't imply being able to transfer them to websites in a trusted way that the user can't modify. Chrome runs in the userspace, whereas I can write a kernel module which chrome can't interfere with (I did that for widevine in 2017!) that will emulate/lie to chrome about the hardware I have, and there's no way that the website owner could know whether I lie or not (this might req…

In what universe do you live that Google or anyone else should device this complicated scheme to just capture 2-3 people. Linux has only 3% share of the users. of those maybe 0.1% could write a kernel module (or even install one) and of those maybe 1% would be maniac enough to dedicate time and effort to it just to "stick it to the Pawaaa" Google could accomplish all of their supposedly nefarirous goals by just ignor…

> Google could accomplish all of their supposedly nefarirous goals by just ignoring the linux users.

No, because in order to ignore linux users you'd need to know that the device in question is actually running linux. But then again, I can run a windows VM inside (sure, this might require effort to patch the windows inside), with no need to write a kernel module because this time I can introduce custom logic in the VM which the virtualized chrome-on-windows process will not be able to interfere with and with enough effort, they have no way to tell whether this setup is "legit".

Of course this will be legit in 99.99% cases, except that the 0.01% case is precisely what causes the damage (bots, fraud, piracy and so on).

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#410

Post by gmerc »

sebastialonso wrote: post #339
gmerc wrote: post #267

It turns out that when the growth stops, companies show their real face. The reason everyone in the world is praying infinite growth is this dynamic, people, companies are alike. You want to know if someone is truly a nice person - put them into a now growth situation for a while. Before that, it’s all talk.

But is this a practical argument in any sense of the word? Don't have a reason to think you're a bad person, but if I abandon you in an island with weaker people, there's a high chance you'll end up eating them to survive. But you're not a bag person. In other words, there's a limit of what you can do in any context, and those limits are imposed by the context. Maybe it's easier to stop projecting our ideas of what "…

for profit vs profit above all else, including planetary level destruction.
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