Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

andreasgal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 195 posts

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#91

Post by callahad »

mlissner wrote: post #62
gcp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope Mozilla manages to become financially independent of Google, whether through donations or some other revenue stream. They announced Directory Tiles a while ago, which is a step in that direction.

that plan was canceled.

Unfortunately, there was a fair amount of misreporting over the weekend in response to Johnathan Nightingale's blog post here: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-e...

The point of the post is that Mozilla is going ahead with experiments like Directory Tiles, but that no money will change hands during testing and development of those experiments. The commitment is that Mozilla will only move forward with seeking revenue if the experiments actually demonstrate added value for users, and that any revenue is collected in a way consistent with the Manifesto.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#92

Post by zanny »

shmerl wrote: post #84
eridius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming that rentals don't make sense in the digital age is focusing far too heavily on the technical fact of how digital data works, and completely ignoring the legality of things, including intellectual property. If I make a movie and sell you a DVD, the terms of the sale prohibit you from, say, showing this movie in a theater to a bunch of strangers and charging them money. Yes, you own the physical DVD, but you…

> yes, you own the physical DVD, but you don't own the intellectual property of the movie itself. This holds true for physical copies, and it holds true for digital distribution as well. This is really irrelevant. When you buy a book you also own the book, and not the intellectual property it contains. Same thing with files - you can own the file, but not the intellectual property it represents. So legally nothing is…

> you can own the file, but not he intellectual property it represents.

So I'm allowed to distribute files I own freely, as long as I take the file extension off of it? Or the metadata?

I agree, the long string of the presence or absence of electric charge that make up A New Hope is not the concept of a "A New Hope". Too bad nobody else sees it that way, because when you put that number through a math function named (and patented) h.264, and you draw the outputs of one stream to a pixel grid on a fixed update cycle and you output the other stream as a sine wave of PCM values, you get "A New Hope", the visual and audible experience.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#93

Post by zanny »

ds9 wrote: post #38
wmf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be laughable to think that CDM won't be PMP-based. Even on Linux and OS X?

Edit: It's said to be a downloadable extra at user option. The Moz page description of the sandbox says the CDM won't have any system access, so it could not distinguish whether PMP is there or not, except maybe by flags in the input from the browser. So either the Mozilla sandbox-CDM can't work as described or PMP won't be required. Someone correct me if I've missed something there.

So were about to see Iceweasel fork a bit more from base firefox and add a button to render the "encrypted" content to file?

10/10 media industry, you guys are just the absolute best about sticking your fingers in your ears and singing lalala while substituting reality with your own where electrical charge isn't replicable.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#94

Post by shmerl »

zanny wrote: post #92
shmerl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yes, you own the physical DVD, but you don't own the intellectual property of the movie itself. This holds true for physical copies, and it holds true for digital distribution as well. This is really irrelevant. When you buy a book you also own the book, and not the intellectual property it contains. Same thing with files - you can own the file, but not the intellectual property it represents. So legally nothing is…

> you can own the file, but not he intellectual property it represents. So I'm allowed to distribute files I own freely, as long as I take the file extension off of it? Or the metadata? I agree, the long string of the presence or absence of electric charge that make up A New Hope is not the concept of a "A New Hope". Too bad nobody else sees it that way, because when you put that number through a math function named…

> So I'm allowed to distribute files I own freely, as long as I take the file extension off of it?

Who said you are allowed to distribute them freely? You are not. Same way you aren't allowed making photo copies of books and distributing them freely (except fair use cases). Making personal copies is fine (it's fair use). It's not relevant to the discussion above really.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#95

Post by makomk »

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.

In theory it does. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get it to work because the way in which it obtains a hardware ID to tie playback to doesn't work on the Linux distro I use and I can't feasibly debug or fix it. Assuming it were actually secure as stated, the Mozilla solution would have the same problem - if you can modify how it obtains the hardware ID, you can bypass the DRM in ways that content providers wouldn't accept.

(The really stupid thing is, I was trying to watch online streaming video that was available to the whole of the UK, with access controlled through IP geolocation. There was no need to tie decryption to a particular device ID in the first place. EME seems to be taking exactly the same approach though with support from Mozilla.)

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#96

Post by atopal »

gsnedders wrote: post #49
wfjackson wrote: post #17

The 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 t…

Opera still doesn't ship H.264 support, except on mobile and some embedded products (TVs, settop boxes, etc.).

In other words: except where they have any market share at all.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#97

Post by makomk »

wmf wrote: post #23
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.

Possibly, but they've already managed to get the W3C and several of the other big browser vendors to agree to meet those requirements, which gives them some pretty strong leverage.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#98

Post by josteink »

This is terrible news from end to end.

To solve it, we need to tackle the root problem and not blame the browsers: those who want to infect our open web with DRM.

Cancel your Netflix subscription. Let them know why. Same with Hulu. Same with amazon video. same with anyone who tells you to that your open web is less important than their unwillingness to embrace the new, digital frontier.

Don't give money to the asshats who push this crap. Simple as that.

This is only the beginning if you let them in. What will you accept next? Drm infected Images? HTML infected source which can only be decoded on windows? This is not the end. The line must be drawn and it must be drawn now.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#99

Post by karussell »

shmerl wrote: post #75
nileshtrivedi wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would renting cost any different than buying? So that you can segment the buyers into two: Those who want to see a movie only once and those who want to see it more than once. This way, you can double charge the second segment and use those funds to reduce the price for the first segment. Classic market segmentation. As long as there are customers of both kind, rentals (even for digital goods) will make sense.

No, it doesn't. My point is there is no need for such segmenting and overcharging those who want to see it more than once (except greed). Because there is no big difference in expenses for the distributor between these two use cases, except for the fact that the second can use the service more. But they already charge the monthly fee. Anyway, it's not even the case here! Netflix has no plans for purchasing, so there…

The same arguments you have for 'renting' apply for 'buying' software. Why has software a cost associated at all when the copy (to download) is produced via 0$?

It doesn't make 'sense' too. Maybe in the very long term you are right and software as well as digital goods can be consumed for free (or via paying a special tax)

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#100

Post by zanny »

davexunit wrote: post #47
ygjb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improving and defending the open web is not just about fighting the good fight on DRM. The Mozilla mission also calls for us to fight for users right to make choices[0] as well. Mozilla could choose not to implement EME, and draw that line in the sand, but that means denying users the option of continuing to use Firefox to access content they choose to access . My preference (both as a long time Firefox user, and a M…

Sure, the user may want to access DRM-encumbered content, but we shouldn't promote such a thing. You're not denying the users anything by refusing to implement EME, the media companies are denying the users freedom by insisting on using malware to deliver content! Just because users want Netflix in Firefox doesn't mean that it's the right thing to provide.

The problem is nobody actually understands how digial media works. They have lived for decades now where on personal computers audio and video were scarce resources you got through curated gatekeepers.

Whenever I just copy stuff between computers everyone in my extended family is bowled over. It is literal shell shock to find out that this stuff is literally electricity that you can do whatever you want with if it isn't behind uncrackable encryption.

Post reply on HN