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Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

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Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#181

Post by shmerl »

azakai wrote: post #165
shmerl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I expect such thing to surface, but it would be nice if Mozilla could provide such options on their own too. That would be some small positive gesture towards those who don't appreciate their move and see it as a betrayal of Mozilla's core values. It would as well make this issue more apparent. Doesn't Mozilla care about educating the public on such matters? It surely would be a positive thing for the Open Web.

As the blog post mentioned, the EME stuff will be an option that the Firefox user would need to agree to install. That would be an opportunity to educate users on the topic, I think.

I meant it a bit further. Not just disabling the EME external module, but disabling all related code in Firefox itself on the build stage. While functionally it won't make much difference, it would have more of a symbolic nature of making a point. Plus such builds would guarantee that it can't even be enabled at all (without user's knowledge for example).

If there would be build switches to disable that, I'm sure Linux distros with similar to Debian policies will ship versions where it will be disabled altogether.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#182

Post by nullc »

felipebueno wrote: post #114

I'm done with Mozilla but I think the problem is not just the browser we choose anymore. The whole thing is compromised. We need a new internet, "new" ways to share and consume information. There are many people who think so as well. e.g.: http://electronician.hubpages.com/hub/Why-We-Need-a-New-Inte...

What browser do you recommend I load that URL with? :)

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#185

Post by Spooky23 »

The EFF stance is a little shrill. Remember how FairPlay and Zune were going to create proprietary music forever? Didn't quite work out that way.

End of the day, content is a commodity, and like any other commodity, prices are falling as the supply expands. Unless it's a Pixar movie, most films in DVD/Blueray are in the $10 range within weeks. Digital rights for new releases are as little as $3 when you buy with physicial media. Access to Netflix's catalog costs less than basic cable.

So I don't care about this, I do care about the trolls under the bridge (ISPs) who want to extract a toll for transit.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#186

Post by shkkmo »

wyager wrote: post #149
rbanffy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the wrong choice. WHat would the web gain if Mozilla lost most of its user base? Could we trust Apple, Microsoft and Google to have a moral backbone?

So you're saying that keeping their userbase and losing their principles is better than losing their userbase and keeping their principles? Why do we care if users go to Apple/Google/etc. if Mozilla is no better than those companies anyway?

Mozilla has not abandoned their principles, they have compromised them.

The have compromised them because they feel they need to do this to maintain relevancy. Principles are of little use without power.

To those that say: Mozilla changed the web once, they can do it again. I say: Mozilla didn't change the web by resisting change, but by embracing it and finding better solutions.

I think we should be spending less time condemning Mozilla for compromising, and more time finding ways that Mozilla can use their power to solve the huge problems that are created by DRM.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#187

Post by klodolph »

wyager wrote: post #171
klodolph wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't work, you'll need to try harder. I have some insider knowledge of how these chips work. First, you get the chips with crypto keys already installed, so having a copy of the firmware source code won't help. Second, the keys are unique to the device, so getting it won't give you much. Third, the firmware is authenticated so modifying the firmware won't help. Fourth, the chip is designed to be resistant to ph…

You don't need to compromise every chip. You just need to compromise one. That's not particularly hard. You can use some fancy equipment to extract the private key, and then you can decode any video the chip could decode. Or, if you want to be lazy, just hook a VGA cable up to a transcoder.

But a particular chip will only have the keys for a small number of videos. When you buy a movie, you download that movie encrypted with a unique key, and the unique key is encrypted with your device key. So compromising one chip won't give you any kind of "master key" or anything especially valuable. The movie can be stored anywhere, when you need to play it you will pass the encrypted key to the device and the device will use it to decrypt, decode, and then send the movie directly to video output (possibly re-encrypted with something like HDCP, although that's a broken scheme).

The chip will also not send high-definition output to VGA, so you will need to do better. Basically, you have to hack the hardware.

I'd like to clarify that I'm not defending DRM, just that circumventing DRM is not as easy as people in this thread intimate. I think the reason why DRM will fail is because of economic pressures: the cost of deploying millions of devices designed to protect ubiquitous data against a small number of highly intelligent and motivated cryptography experts and hardware hackers.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#188

Post by StavrosK »

pessimizer wrote: post #152
rbanffy wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the wrong choice. WHat would the web gain if Mozilla lost most of its user base? Could we trust Apple, Microsoft and Google to have a moral backbone?

What would the web gain if Mozilla could just be pushed into chasing whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google decide to do for fear of some users jumping ship? edit: Mozilla needs to cultivate its brand, and set itself apart from the other browsers through actual differences in philosophy. Maybe they need a John Legere...

If we have platforms A and B, and A is more aligned with your interests than B, then we have an advantage in having everyone on A rather than on B.

You're presenting a false dichotomy: "Either Mozilla doesn't compromise anywhere, or they might as well go away". Things aren't black and white.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#189

Post by IgorPartola »

msbarnett wrote: post #124
IgorPartola wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more important Mozilla or the web? This is a case where Mozilla thinks that by sticking around they can do more good than by killing this particular attack on the free web. Can we justify this completely? IMHO, no. Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it. Of course nobody at Mozilla will see it that way. Or…

> Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it. Except, if Mozilla had committed "ritualistic suicide" over EME, it wouldn't have taken EME with it. Users would move to every other browser with HTML5 DRM implemented, Mozilla would die accomplishing nothing. A world with entrenched HTML5 DRM & Mozilla strikes me as stri…

Or, by forcing developers to provide a DRM-free alternative Mozilla would bring about a competing technology that would at a later date come to dominate and kill the DRM proposal.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#190

Post by spoiler »

Maybe I'm missing something, but what's so bad about EME? I think it's a great idea that copyrighted material will be protected. I understand that it becomes "closed web" in a way, but it's not a big deal for me. Frankly, I can think of a few places where it could be useful, even.
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