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Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

andreasgal.com

121–130 of 195 posts

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#122
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No, DRM can't enforce it (since this stuff is pirated practically instantaneously). So why is it used?" Strongly suspect this is due to contractual obligations with the studios. The agreements will almost certainly stipulate that content must be sufficiently protected. Hence Netflix plays ball, if it wants access.

one aspect of this - if you don't make an attempt to protect the content, even if it is "pirated practically instantaneously", then the studios can't go after anyone pirating their product in the legal system with any chance of winning. there is great fear of the slippery slope you go down in that world.

> if you don't make an attempt to protect the content, even if it is "pirated practically instantaneously", then the studios can't go after anyone pirating their product in the legal system with any chance of winning.

Why not? Absence of DRM doesn't make infringement legal. Studios can go after it the same way they do now. What they'll lose are various evil perks they get from DMCA-1201. But they weren't entitled to them to begin with. They all exist because of undemocratic and corrupted political process.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody really uses the analog hole. It's actually easier to do it digitally, and will remain so, because securing a device against arbitrarily many attackers with physical access and arbitrarily large amounts of time and resources is a practical impossibility. The analog hole is just the formal proof that DRM can never be effective, because if you can see it or hear it you can record it.

I'm curious: Is it currently possible to load a proprietary OS/Browser in VirtualBox and re-direct the graphics/audio stream to a file?

VirtualBox doesn't support HDCP, so if the app requires HDCP it will either refuse to play or maybe it will play in SD resolution.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#124
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What profit? Netflix offers rentals only, and no sales. And Netflix DRM doesn't prevent any piracy since users who want to illegally retain the copy can do it either way. So what is the reason for them using it? They can simply use sales and have the same profit.

What profit? The profit that comes from actually having content to offer, which wouldn't happen if they didn't have DRM to "protect" the studios' shows and films. Regardless of their opinions on DRM, it's not their decision to make, unless they just want to stream self-produced content.

Engaging in proliferating an unethical practice under pretense that "they have no choice" is a very questionable thing. Netflix had a choice, but they chose to do this.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#125

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 asshat…

Start pirating content. Punish them in their pockets. It's all their care about.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#126
post #115
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question "why" was not pointed at Netflix. It was pointed at publishers (studios, etc.) which demand that DRM. They have no valid answer for that question. While Netfilx aren't an ideological champion for DRM, they are a huge proliferator of it. Compare it to distributors which sell only DRM-free content and actually attempt to influence publishers to sell through them (like GOG for games). Those are actually doin…

It's a form of price discrimination. If you want to watch a movie once ("rental") it costs $5 but it you want to watch it unlimited times it costs $20. As a customer, I appreciate this because it allows me to pay less when I want less.

Why discriminate? Let's say users watch N movies per month on average. They can set average purchase price per movie at $20 / N, not at $5. That's it. They can combine the two to make it more even. Charge X per month for the convenience of streaming and Y per movie for the purchase (and aim to arrive at the same $20 / month roughly). All that doesn't require any DRM.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#127
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that studios would license content to Netflix without DRM? The reason for Netflix to push DRM is simple: you can't offer a streaming service with just House of Cards and a handful of unknown shows.

I understand the situation with studios having crazy demands. My question was equally addressed to their reasoning. And I don't agree in general that Netflix has no way to improve things. Distributors have more influence on publishers than single users. I already wrote elsewhere about GOG. They work with gaming publishers and convince them that DRM is never needed. And it works. Not always, but with some of them. The…

There's a reason why the games on the front page of GOG are Deus Ex and Beyond Good and Evil, and not the latest edition of Call of Duty.

GOG sells old games, which are much past their prime time, and people don't play old games nearly as much as they watch old films and even shows.

Not that Netflix doesn't have influence, of course, but it's still far from being their decision.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#128
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What profit? The profit that comes from actually having content to offer, which wouldn't happen if they didn't have DRM to "protect" the studios' shows and films. Regardless of their opinions on DRM, it's not their decision to make, unless they just want to stream self-produced content.

Engaging in proliferating an unethical practice under pretense that "they have no choice" is a very questionable thing. Netflix had a choice, but they chose to do this.

No argument there, I was just replying to your question. You're right that Netflix had the choice of not existing.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate reasons to directly access the OS are typically "there isn't a browser API for this yet". We have multiple Open Source browsers now; submit a patch to one or more of them to add a new API, and ideally start working to standardize it. The result will be far better and more secure than a one-off custom plugin to pass through specific OS functionality.

If Firefox had an API that allowed you to do anything the OS allows you to do then there would be no sandbox. If it doesn't then there are things you can't do with the browser API that you could do with direct access to the OS.

Browser extensions in Chrome, and particularly in Firefox are very expressive. Things that might have been designed as plugins in the past could be written as extensions.

Re: Reconciling Mozilla’s Mission and the W3C EME

#130
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scuse my ignorance, which JS monopoly? What is Mozilla doing? I love mdn for my js reference needs, something to do with that?

I believe pekk's talking about not supporting any other client-side languages besides JavaScript (e.g. Dart, PNaCl, etc).

I was under the impression this is true of all browsers, don't all client-side languages like Dart or TypeScript compile to JS before they can be run?
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