Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME • Hacker News Board

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#21

Post by ygjb » Wed, May 14, 2014, 5:54 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #16

nawitus wrote: post #7

>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... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

You got [0] wrong. It is an open source wrapper around a closed source CDM.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#22

Post by JoshTriplett » Wed, May 14, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #4

and in the near future this should allow us to retire plugins altogether. I don't see this as a universally "Good Thing". The Web has evolved to a comprehensive and performant technology platform and no longer depends on native code extensions through plugins. You mean the Web has evolved into a Doctor Frankenstein's monster like hodge-podge of kluged together hacks, layered on top of layers of other hacks, layered o…

Replacing unsandboxed plugin APIs like NPAPI that can directly access the OS with sandboxed plugin systems like NaCl and emscripten that support sandboxed native code seems like a major improvement. The browser is quite enough attack surface area; let's not expand it further by having plugins.

That said, while the article's described sandboxing approach to EME works better than the alternatives (assuming content providers will support it), that's a lot like saying "at least the arrow through your eye wasn't on fire". Gee, thanks.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#23

Post by wmf » Wed, May 14, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #2

I'd be interested to see if any content providers actually make use of this; it seems to be missing certain technical requirements they claimed their partners required during the EME design phase. (In particular, a secure hardware video path and robust node-locking support. This design doesn't appear to actually be able to lock content playback to particular hardware at all if anyone makes even the most trivial attem…

The history of SDMI vs. iTunes and AACS vs. Windows XP has taught me that DRM "requirements" are just the opening position in a negotiation. Apparently Mozilla doesn't have enough leverage to get rid of DRM completely but they have enough to water it down a bit.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#24

Post by wmf » Wed, May 14, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

abcd_f wrote: post #20

It 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 d…

It will be laughable to think that CDM won't be PMP-based.

Even on Linux and OS X?

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#25

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

ygjb wrote: post #21

chimeracoder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

You got [0] wrong. It is an open source wrapper around a closed source CDM.

Thanks, that's what I meant (and cited). That's what I get for typing quickly on my phone, haha.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#26

Post by rlx0x » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #7

>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).

I guess thats pseudo DRM. On the other end you have things like RTMPe, a proprietary highly complex binary protocol that is only implemented in the adobe flash plugin binary blob. Or something like HDCP (the copy protection part of HDMI) that builds a hardware encryption platform, with an central authority and certified hardware vendors.

Those are just 2 examples of "strong" DRM, but since even those two have been so thoroughly broken, we can just assert that any DRM that is based on W3C EME is gonna be childsplay. I don't think anyone actually believes that this W3C crap is gonna be "secure".

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#27

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #22

mindcrime wrote: post #4

and in the near future this should allow us to retire plugins altogether. I don't see this as a universally "Good Thing". The Web has evolved to a comprehensive and performant technology platform and no longer depends on native code extensions through plugins. You mean the Web has evolved into a Doctor Frankenstein's monster like hodge-podge of kluged together hacks, layered on top of layers of other hacks, layered o…

Replacing unsandboxed plugin APIs like NPAPI that can directly access the OS with sandboxed plugin systems like NaCl and emscripten that support sandboxed native code seems like a major improvement. The browser is quite enough attack surface area; let's not expand it further by having plugins. That said, while the article's described sandboxing approach to EME works better than the alternatives (assuming content prov…

> Replacing unsandboxed plugin APIs like NPAPI that can directly access the OS with sandboxed plugin systems like NaCl and emscripten that support sandboxed native code seems like a major improvement.

Until you want to write a plugin with a legitimate reason to directly access the OS.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#28

Post by stormbrew » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

tedmielczarek wrote: post #12

stormbrew wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It definitely does. Proof by troubleshooting: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-pro...

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#29

Post by JoshTriplett » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:09 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #7

>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).

Some Open Source PDF readers respect the "don't copy" and "don't print" bits, even though you can trivially disable them.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#30

Post by smacktoward » Wed, May 14, 2014, 6:11 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #4

and in the near future this should allow us to retire plugins altogether. I don't see this as a universally "Good Thing". The Web has evolved to a comprehensive and performant technology platform and no longer depends on native code extensions through plugins. You mean the Web has evolved into a Doctor Frankenstein's monster like hodge-podge of kluged together hacks, layered on top of layers of other hacks, layered o…

> You mean the Web has evolved into a Doctor Frankenstein's monster like hodge-podge of kluged together hacks, layered on top of layers of other hacks, layered on top of still more hacks

So it's like every other successful platform in history, then.