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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

#231

Post by BigChiefSmokem »

rbanffy wrote: post #130
barrkel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the wrong choice. It's the same BS I remember reading on slides from graphics card vendors excusing some other way of selling the user down the river. Content can adapt to reach their customers. Bend here and the web itself is under threat. Mozilla needs a social contract like Debian, since it seems clear they can't rely on leadership for backbone.

> 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?

Mozilla was compromised the day they started taking money from Google.

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

#232

Post by spacelizard »

mmanfrin wrote: post #107
wolfgke wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who want DRM there are already enough browser choices. On the other hand for people who refuse DRM there's only one choice - and soon zero.

People don't want DRM, people want content . That content is demanding DRM (via Youtube, Netflix). If Mozilla denied the DRM, Firefox users would be denied Youtube. In response to this, some of you might say 'well then people would go elsewhere for their content', to which I would ask: did people leave Netflix because of Silverlight?

>did people leave Netflix because of Silverlight?

They did, actually. If not by their own doing then by the fact that Netflix is just not available on certain devices and operating systems. As long as Netflix is a DRM platform, this trend will likely continue.

The irony here is that Mozilla is apparently being badgered into supporting DRM for "compatibility reasons" when the whole point of DRM is to strictly limit compatibility with whatever arbitrary restrictions the publisher wants.

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

#233

Post by takluyver »

xxs wrote: post #100
klodolph wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you do is you use the DRM API to negotiate a way to transfer a decryption key to a secure hardware module in the consumer's device. Having the source code to the Firefox component doesn't give you access to the firmware or keys stored in the module. (Yes, you can hack hardware. But it's way more expensive.)

You can always screen capture the VGA port, DRM will never/ever work.

This is a neat summary of an idea that always turns up on every DRM thread. If the best way to copy a movie is to buy some extra hardware to plug into your VGA port, and then play the movie back at regular speed while you record it, then DRM is working. Joe Bloggs isn't going to do that to give his mates copies of a movie he enjoyed.

Of course, someone out there will go through that and put it on the internet. But Joe's mate is worried that the government will track his downloads, or his computer will get a virus from these dodgy downloads. And every few weeks, the source he's using shuts down and he has to find a new one. Before long, he'll just decide it's worth giving Netflix a few dollars a month to get movies the easy way.

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

#234

Post by res0nat0r »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #157
res0nat0r wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Since when have Hollywood movie studios been government created monopolies?

Copyright is a government-created monopoly.

Is there something inherently wrong with content creators controlling how their content is consumed?

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

#235

Post by CHY872 »

zimbatm wrote: post #208
verbin217 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. Sometimes you're forced to either do something shitty or be competitively displaced by actors that will do it anyway. Do you really want Mozilla to fall on their sword and leave us with worse alternatives? I don't understand how you could be upset with Mozilla about this. The decision is basically being made for them.

Give me one site whose videos you can't watch on Firefox for Windows or Mac currently. The only real contender is Netflix but only once the Silverlight plugins reaches EOL. At that point Netflix will have to choose if they want to risk loosing 16% (est.) of their Firefox customers. Of course if Mozilla decides to implement DRM right now it won't be an issue for them.

That's only if in the toss up between losing Netflix and changing browser, they pick changing browser every single time. Which they won't.

One thing you might not have thought about, is that at the moment, we have Flash, Java, Silverlight, etc which all periodically are found to have mahoosive security flaws - because they can do general purpose things. If Firefox moves to supporting a plugin which is used for exactly the same thing, but that can only do decryption, then suddenly the browser becomes much more secure. If anything, it's an advantage.

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

#236

Post by pcwalton »

isomorphic wrote: post #29
michaelt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of replacing Flash with HTML5 video is to get rid of buggy third party plugins that crash all the time and have shitty cross-platform support. If HTML5 video is going to rely on buggy third party DRM plugins, we lose the benefit that was the whole point of HTML5 video.

I run my browsers without Flash in order to avoid Adobe's exploit-du-jour crapware. This means, for example, that I don't run Chrome. If this binary blob from Adobe isn't presented with a similar UI as regular "plugins" (that the user can disable or uninstall), then I will look into writing an extension to disable it, or perhaps rely on a Firefox fork to give me a Flash-lite(tm) free browser.

> If this binary blob from Adobe isn't presented with a similar UI as regular "plugins" (that the user can disable or uninstall), then I will look into writing an extension to disable it, or perhaps rely on a Firefox fork to give me a Flash-lite(tm) free browser.

Again, it's been stated that you will be clearly given the choice to disable the CDM entirely.

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

#238

Post by hetman »

pdeuchler wrote: post #218

Seriously, who is building this DRM software/hardware? If you are a software developer you have no excuse but ignorance, and as someone who makes a living on a computer (where the Internet resides) that excuse is waning extremely thin. I harbor a hairs breadth more grace for the hardware engineers designing locked down chips, but that's no more than a rhetorical nicety due to the fact that I'm am not very familiar wi…

It's must be easy to tell others what they must sacrifice. Or did you take this stance your self and quit your job on moral grounds?

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

#239

Post by camus2 »

Fascinating how people accept handcuffs so easily.Because it' better than flash...not,you'll still need a plugin for the DRM and you're going to have to download a few different plugins because of course different vendors will have different DRM schemes,so back to 1999,realplayer,windows media plugin,ect...

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

#240

Post by rectangletangle »

aestetix wrote: post #168

I am curious whether this would have happened if Eich were still the CEO.

I doubt it. The media outlets who led the smear campaign against Eich, benefit financially from stronger DRM. If you follow the money and influence there are many suspicious coincidences.
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