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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

#331

Post by greatbigtable »

azakai wrote: post #320
dingaling wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People will not use a browser that does not support Netflix. It's a simple as that. Netflix ended 2013 with 44 million subscribers, by their own numbers [1], with a target of reaching and stablilising at 90 million. That's it: 90 million out of an online population of around 2.5 billion, or around 4%. Do you make business decisions on the basis of 4% of your potential ( non-paying ) audience? 1: http://business.tim…

1. This isn't a Netflix module. It's for anyone who views DRM'd video content. 2. This is a growing area - we don't need to care just about current numbers but the trend. The trend is clear: Hollywood wants EME DRM on all content. 3. 44 million out of 2.5 billion sounds like a little, but is not the best way to calculate things. Netflix doesn't even sell a service in most of the countries those 2.5 billion are in. In…

Who gives a crap what Hollywood wants. Bending to Hollywood's will has brought us our current endless copyright renewal and the Digital Millennium copyright Act.

How have those worked out for us?

Not to well...

Mozilla should do some A/B testing; release a browser with the module and without. See which gets the most traction.

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

#332

Post by bzbarsky »

iopq wrote: post #327
StavrosK wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if platform A compromises until it becomes B, in which case you don't care anymore.

That's true, but note that Mozilla's proposed EME implementation is quite different from the ones that have shipped so far in terms of how much power it grants the CDM, for example.

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

#333

Post by lern_too_spel »

vitno wrote: post #295
lern_too_spel wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody taking Snowden's revelations seriously would switch to Chrome or another Chromium build. The leaks contained information on exploited vulnerabilities in Firefox. Chrome's sandboxing makes it a safer browser than Firefox. This is opposite the choice somebody would make if they were philosophically opposed to DRM.

are you kidding? all builds contain a dial-home to google. Why would you ever switch to something that contains that?

All Firefox builds contain a dial home to Mozilla. Both of these are user-controlled options.

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

#334

Post by bzbarsky »

yp_all wrote: post #318
suprgeek wrote: post #9

Mozilla had to be dragged into this acceptance kicking and screaming (metaphorically). They were faced with a hard choice, Not implement EME (HTML5 DRM) and risk users moving to other browsers (user loss) or implement EME and risk looking like they are contradicting their core mission (trust loss). They figured a little loss of trust is worth keeping most of the users on the Mozilla platform - which in my view is the…

Mozilla is an organization that has hundreds of millions in revenue but does not pay taxes? How many employees? What are their salaries? Whatever, I don't care about that stuff. Here's my question: Does Mozilla still portend to be "open source"? Because if it was "open source" in the sense to which I am accustomed, then I could simply compile a Mozilla browser without DRM. For example, if I never had any need to watc…

> but does not pay taxes?

What makes you think Mozilla does not pay taxes? It most certainly pays taxes. I'll save you the web searching: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... is the latest set of financials that are public; see pages 4 and 5. For 2012, the Mozilla Corporation had $311 million in revenue, $208.5 million in expenses, and paid $37.6 million in income taxes. The federal corporate income tax rate in the US is 35%, fwiw, and California's is 8.84%, so it's not like Mozilla is trying particularly hard to evade that tax liability (0.4384 * (311 - 208.5 - depreciation) likely comes out pretty close to 37.6).

> then I could simply compile a Mozilla browser without DRM.

Sure. And you can and will be able to.

> How does one achieve "trust" through closed source (e.g., the binary blob from Adobe)?

Don't install it? The blob won't be shipped with the browser by default and will require explicit user action to install.

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

#335

Post by loup-vaillant »

joaren wrote: post #292
loup-vaillant wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. Are those problems so bad, that even you stooped as low as using a proprietary browser? Was that a sufficient price for your freedom? Mozilla made mistakes, but it doesn't excuse the blindness of its users. Reminds me of GNU/Linux vs OSX. Apple made a shiny new OS that "just works" on their own hardware, and a good chunk of the tech community went drooling over this, instead of getting its act together and fix…

Are you for real? Mozilla gets $300 million per year from Google to maintain the pretense of freedom. Meanwhile I have to pay my own bills and deliver projects that my clients will pay for. To bring money into this argument and somehow blame "the users" for this string of epic mess ups is fucking rich. Was I supposed to not diagnose jank using Chrome's frame analysis tools? Not profile memory allocations in its timel…

> Was I supposed to not diagnose jank using Chrome's frame analysis tools?

'Course not. Even Richard Stalmann used UNIX in the process of replacing it with GNU.

But you do use a free browser for your day to day browsing, right?

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

#336

Post by bzbarsky »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #284
kevincrane wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many users would stick around when YouTube or Netflix stop working though?

Wait, since when YouTube is supposed to use DRM? I just downloaded 5 videos with DownloadHelper today.

Some, but not all, YouTube videos use DRM. It's up to the person posting the video.

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

#337

Post by spacelizard »

matart wrote: post #306
spacelizard wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't switch to another browser just because Mozilla doesn't implement DRM. In fact that strikes me as completely the wrong reason to switch to another browser. Continuing to use Mozilla and boycotting services that use DRM is a more reasonable approach. The good news is there will likely be an extension and/or custom build of Firefox that removes the DRM. Of course this means we won't be able to watch the DRMed…

The content providers start blocking firefox from accessing their content. It will eventually be easier to use chrome, IE, or whatever instead of using a work around to keep on firefox. It will lose a large portion of its user base and then its funding as it won't bring in as much from default search provider contracts etc

That's even more of a reason to boycott them and keep using Firefox.

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

#338

Post by bzbarsky »

higherpurpose wrote: post #93
mcpherrinm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla has explicitly said the DRM plugin won't run without user consent. How this prompt exactly looks isn't clear to me, but it seems like you're getting the option you want today.

Pretty sure it means it will run by default, and you'd have a to be part of a minority group on HN to know that you can even do that in Firefox.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi... is pretty clear:

  As plugins today, the CDM itself will be distributed by
  Adobe and will not be included in Firefox. The browser
  will download the CDM from Adobe and activate it based on
  user consent.
The point being that you will be asked whether to download this thing, and if you say no it won't be downloaded.

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

#339

Post by bzbarsky »

CHY872 wrote: post #254

So I'm guessing that this will backfire. Mozilla say that Adobe will create the software, which will presumably be bundled with the browser. This means that if Adobe's DRM gets cracked, suddenly every site using that DRM is vulnerable. At the moment, one just updates the client to obfuscate a bit better, which is then downloaded on next launch of the software. If it's all client side, surely then the DRM will have to…

> which will presumably be bundled with the browser.

It won't be bundled with the browser. It'll be a separate download users need to explicitly opt into.

In the sysadmin case, of course, the sysadmin could choose to preinstall it...

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