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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

#341

Post by drchaos »

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.

It probably will be once DRM/EME is available in every browser. At least the chances are increasing, and that's exactly why making DRM ubiquituous and easily accessible is such a bad idea.

The problem is not that Mozilla implementing EME removes leverage to force Netflix into abandoning DRM (this won't happen anyway anytime soon), the problem is that once DRM is readily available without a large technological investment and without losing too many users, virtually everyone will use it for virtually everything, simply because there is little to none incentive not to do it, from a publisher's perspective.

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

#342

Post by makomk »

pdpi wrote: post #91
kevingadd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser 1% of the internet uses is a browser nobody can use. We already have extensive problems with mobile sites being tuned to only work against webkit - or even worse, only work against safari - if Firefox's share drops into the single percentage points because things like Netflix, Farmville and Youtube don't work, due to the exclusion of proprietary web features like plugins and H264, it will become so insigifi…

Yes, my point exactly. Battle is lost. There's too much at stake here to cripple the long term for a moral victory.

They haven't just lost this one battle though - they've set themselves up to lose a thousand further battles in the future. This puts Mozilla in a very bad strategic position; once DRM in the form of EME is relied on by a large chunk of the web, they have no way of resisting demands from content providers and their EME module provider to make it more invasive in an attempt to make it more robust. If sites like Youtube start relying on EME, something they will not do without widespread browser support initially, Mozilla will hardly be able to risk losing support for them.

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

#343

Post by makomk »

shkkmo wrote: post #215
Daiz wrote: post #169

Oh, so the web has given up and is now genuflecting at the altar of video DRM. Next up: picture DRM, because since we're protecting videos we should naturally protect still pictures too. You know what? We also have all this professional writing on the web, and anyone can just copy & paste that! That clearly shouldn't fly in our brand new DRM-protected world - authors should be able to control exactly who can view and…

>>Giving in to HTML DRM will only make the situation worse than it currently is Except if you use the new Firefox you may have better privacy and security than you currently do with flash and silverlight. I haven't seen anybody on here argue for DRM, so I don't see the point in this FUD. Instead, lets find more ways for Firefox to fight DRM and reduce it's negative impact. I particularly support one of Doctorow's sug…

Ways for Firefox to fight DRM: don't implement DRM.

Doing this has put Firefox in a really awful strategic position for fighting DRM on the Web in future. Once large swathes of content starts being DRMed - which is only feasible if all major web browsers support it - Mozilla will not be in a position to fight future encroachment, such as demands from their DRM provider for access outside the sandbox to verify the decrypted data isn't being siphoned off. They won't be able to do anything to stop being pictures being DRMed either, should their DRM provider decide to support it. It's not clear they'd even be able to fight DRM on entire HTML pages since doing so may risk losing video DRM support and access to vast swathes of the Web.

To be honest, Apple are more likely to pose an obstacle to web DRM than Mozilla at this point. While they plan to support EME too I suspect their financial terms for using it may well go beyond what content providers are willing to pay.

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

#344

Post by hereonbusiness »

Daiz wrote: post #169

Oh, so the web has given up and is now genuflecting at the altar of video DRM. Next up: picture DRM, because since we're protecting videos we should naturally protect still pictures too. You know what? We also have all this professional writing on the web, and anyone can just copy & paste that! That clearly shouldn't fly in our brand new DRM-protected world - authors should be able to control exactly who can view and…

That's what I'm thinking about too ...

"please install our browser extension or iOS/Android app to read the article"

"become a pro user today and for just $4.99 read up to 30 articles a day without intrusive video ads every 10 minutes!"

I feel like we've opened Pandora's box and are on our way to turn our web browsers into an equivalent of smartphone operating systems and the internet into apps.

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

#345

Post by tragic »

TylerE wrote: post #99
valleyer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how you came to that interpretation?

Where do you think the phrase "sold down the river" came from - from slaves being sold to be sent down the Mississippi River to the slave markets in New Orleans.

I do hope you never use the word 'sinister', which of course comes from the old belief that left-handed people are somehow the spawn of the devil. Or refer to someone getting "their pound of flesh", which is Shakespeare's quaint variant on the blood libel. Etc, etc.

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

#346

Post by andreyf »

erichurkman wrote: post #192
andreyf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to reconsider. Chrome sandboxes the Flash runtime [1], meaning a 0-day exploit in Flash alone doesn't get an attacker access to your machine. 1. http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/11/13/google-declares-flas...

That, of course, does not save you from other problems with Flash and the way developers have (ab)used it. Crappy/useless widgets on screen that serve only to eat your CPU and batteries, including banner ads and the like.

You can search for "Click to play" in the settings and disable plugins until you click on them. This helps a little security-wise, too, in case an attacker is resourceful enough to have both a 0-day for Flash and the Chrome sandbox. Not sure how likely that is, but it's also trivial to white-list sites you trust not to send you exploits from the icon in the URL box.

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

#348

Post by Grue3 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #123
saganus wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that no one can guarantee that the "opt-out" choice will continue to be there in the foreseeable future. What will happen when, suddenly Mozilla starts "feeling the pressure" to remove that option? What then? The problem is the building's foundations, not the decoration.

Who would be pressuring Mozilla to remove the option?

Who pressured Mozilla to remove the option to turn off Javascript? To have tabs on bottom? Nobody complained about these options, they decided to remove them themselves.

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

#349

Post by Grue3 »

pessimizer wrote: post #217
skylan_q wrote: post #155

First gender identity/equality is more important than free speech, and now DRM is more important than freedom from submitting to vendor demands. What's the point of Mozilla?

Gender equality is more important than free speech.

Gender equality would not be even possible without free speech, so no, it isn't.

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

#350

Post by yp_all »

bzbarsky wrote: post #334
yp_all wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 corpora…

"What makes you think Mozilla does not pay taxes?"

Corporate structure. (Mozilla Corp. is wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. Only Mozilla Corporation pays taxes.)

2008 IRS audit.

2012 settlement with IRS.

Perhaps a better statement would have been that Mozilla tries to avoid paying taxes.

Anyway, if what you say is true regarding compilation and exclusion of the DRM code then I'm not sure what everyone in thie thread is complaining about.

Now, how easy is it to compile Firefox these days?

I have not done it in years.

I gave up on X. (Following your exact advice, even with open source: "Don't install it.")

I use UNIX with no graphics layer and simpler text only browsers and even simpler TCP clients to retrieve content. Then if necessary I view it on graphical devices running closed source software.

The interesting thing is when I want to watch video, the last thing I need is a "browser". The core of the video player software I use is the ffmpeg libraries which have nothing to do with web browsers.

I only use HTTP (and other protocols) to transfer content (i.e., to request it), not to watch it.

I see no reason why a single application has to support both (request/transfer and playback).

Why video players have to support "streaming" or why "web browsers" have to play video are still open questions in my mind.

But that's just me. Stuck in the UNIX "one utility, one job" mindset.

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