Why not make is a configuration option whether to enable the DRM in Firefox? People who only want to see non-DRM content (much like people running GNU/Linux with "libre" software only) can simply disable the DRM, and the users that are not actually tech savvy won't have to resort to, say, shudders MSIE.
Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
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Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#12I understand Mozilla's philosophical objections to the EME, but if the alternative is Flash/Silverlight (and it's pretty clear that is, in fact, the alternative), I don't think Mozilla's mission loses out by implementing the EME.
Flash works on the three major desktop/laptop OS', ChromeOS, all the consoles afaik, and Android. EME will probably result in balkanized DRM that will never work on a bunch of those things (or you'll have to worry about whether the content you want to watch supports your platform). EME is a step down from Flash for consumer choice. A big fat one.
Flash DRM has never worked on Linux, AFAIK.
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#13I understand Mozilla's philosophical objections to the EME, but if the alternative is Flash/Silverlight (and it's pretty clear that is, in fact, the alternative), I don't think Mozilla's mission loses out by implementing the EME.
Flash works on the three major desktop/laptop OS', ChromeOS, all the consoles afaik, and Android. EME will probably result in balkanized DRM that will never work on a bunch of those things (or you'll have to worry about whether the content you want to watch supports your platform). EME is a step down from Flash for consumer choice. A big fat one.
The Flash browser plugin is NOT available on current versions of Android. There is some Flash available for Adobe AIR apps, but that's something different.
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#14Why not make is a configuration option whether to enable the DRM in Firefox? People who only want to see non-DRM content (much like people running GNU/Linux with "libre" software only) can simply disable the DRM, and the users that are not actually tech savvy won't have to resort to, say, shudders MSIE.
I'm wondering this as well - why can it not be implemented (from the browser perspective) as a plugin that is downloaded upon first use?
Isn't this what Iceweasel on Debian will have to do anyway, since Debian cannot ship non-free software in their main repositories?
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#15Why not make is a configuration option whether to enable the DRM in Firefox? People who only want to see non-DRM content (much like people running GNU/Linux with "libre" software only) can simply disable the DRM, and the users that are not actually tech savvy won't have to resort to, say, shudders MSIE.
I think that's what they are doing by requiring consent to add the sandboxed support for Adobe's DRM crap.
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#16>preventing users from saving the content How can an open source software prevent users from saving the content? If the CDM decrypts to plaintext, it should be trivial to modify the open source sandbox to save the plaintext data. (Obviously the software can prevent saving the content by default).
According to Mozilla's official statement[0], it will not be open-source (it will be an open-source wrapper around the closed-source binary)
There is still the question of the analog hole[1], but that's a separate matter (unrelated to open source vs. proprietary binary blob).
[0] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challen...
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#17The writing was on the wall a while ago once Google implemented this into Chrome(Netflix on Chromebooks was the first real world use of this IIRC). Firefox no longer has the market power it once used to have thanks to Chrome being bundled and installed by default with Flash, Acrobat and Java updates etc. Google has been spending massively on pushing Chrome even bundled as default on new machines with OEM agreements to reduce payments to Mozilla in the long term and it's working since the past few years.
Pluginless HTML5 support for H.264 followed a similar path, in which Google promised to remove support from Chrome in favor of WebM(which FF and Opera added support for) but never did, in the meantime Firefox and Opera relied on the promise and then were forced to start implementing support once they realized Google was not going to keep the promise and it was hurting them and then included support(I don't think Opera ever did?).
Three of the four major browsers, Chrome, IE, Safari are owned by huge corporate interests and Mozilla is pretty much powerless since users blame FF if it doesn't support something, so I expect more of such things to happen in the future. It's pretty much game over at this point and I fear this is only the tip of the coming iceberg with all these companies having huge media deals for Play Store, XBox Music/Video and iTunes.
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#18Why not make is a configuration option whether to enable the DRM in Firefox? People who only want to see non-DRM content (much like people running GNU/Linux with "libre" software only) can simply disable the DRM, and the users that are not actually tech savvy won't have to resort to, say, shudders MSIE.
Isn't that what the following portion of the blog post is all about?
"As plugins today, the CDM itself will be distributed by Adobe and will not be included in Firefox. The browser will download the CDM from Adobe and activate it based on user consent."
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#19Why not make is a configuration option whether to enable the DRM in Firefox? People who only want to see non-DRM content (much like people running GNU/Linux with "libre" software only) can simply disable the DRM, and the users that are not actually tech savvy won't have to resort to, say, shudders MSIE.
I'm wondering this as well - why can it not be implemented (from the browser perspective) as a plugin that is downloaded upon first use? Isn't this what Iceweasel on Debian will have to do anyway, since Debian cannot ship non-free software in their main repositories?
Yes, it will be a plugin that is downloaded on first use. That's exactly what the blog post describes.
Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME
#20It is naive to expect that decrypted media stream will ever be leaving CDM module as so optimistically shown on that illustration.
Microsoft dropped and neglected a bunch of great features when shipping Vista, but it went out of its way to drag Protected Media Path into it. PMP is fronting a major industry effort to create trusted software and hardware framework that on one end accepts encrypted stream and on other draws video pixels on the screen, all the while showing a middle finger instead of raw data to the user on whose system this whole circus unfolds.
It will be laughable to think that CDM won't be PMP-based. Getting access to the raw data with CDM in picture is a pipe dream. Mozilla, sandbox, open source - no matter. CDM exists to prevent raw data leaks.