Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix on Linux with Chrome

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#51

Post by jiggy2011 »

fafner wrote: post #46
jiggy2011 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The openness of the browser has nothing to do with it, the browser provides an interface to the DRM mechanism which could be open or closed source. Open source browsers like firefox already support proprietary plugins such as Flash. If anything this makes Linux support easier, because you no longer have to provide support for an entire virtual machine and all APIs such as Flash or Silverlight. The only software requi…

The DRM mechanism can't really be open source. You could simply change it to write the unencrypted video data to the disk if it were. A plugin DRM module will also have to do all of the video rendering and displaying. Because if it just hands the unencrypted stream back to the browser then you could change the browser to simply write it to disk. The relevant DRM mechanisms will come from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and…

Having an EME spec allows for competition in the DRM market, it creates a business opportunity for a company (or potentially a solo dev) to develop a cross platform solution.

EME means you rely less on Adobe code than you did previously as they are no longer shipping an entire runtime, just the content protection module.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#52

Post by fafner »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #51
fafner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DRM mechanism can't really be open source. You could simply change it to write the unencrypted video data to the disk if it were. A plugin DRM module will also have to do all of the video rendering and displaying. Because if it just hands the unencrypted stream back to the browser then you could change the browser to simply write it to disk. The relevant DRM mechanisms will come from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and…

Having an EME spec allows for competition in the DRM market, it creates a business opportunity for a company (or potentially a solo dev) to develop a cross platform solution. EME means you rely less on Adobe code than you did previously as they are no longer shipping an entire runtime, just the content protection module.

You are completely wrong here. Please note that the EME proposal does _not_ specify a plugin interface for the Restriction module! It only specifies how the Restriction module is exposed to JavaScript. How the Restriction module is implemented or connected to the browser is up to the browser developer. Both Google and Microsoft are involved in the creation of the spec and Apple is also supporting it. All three companies make up a large share of the web browser market. And all three companies have their existing DRM solutions which they are using for their EME implementation. None of them have announced a plugin interface to allow other companies to provide a DRM module.

The only browser vendor who wants to implement EME via a plugin is Mozilla. Simply because there can't be a free software Restriction module implementation (and consequently due to the W3C's efforts there defacto can't be a fully free software web implementation). And Mozilla already made a deal with Adobe to provide the Restriction module.

So no, there won't be a market. It will actually close down the market. Content providers will have to support those four DRM solutions if they want to offer their content on all those platforms. They won't have any choice.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#53

Post by fafner »

DrJokepu wrote: post #32
themartorana wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including participating in massive copyright infringement. I struggle with the sentiment that if offered no other way to legally consume media, BitTorrent will show them! I can't find "The Money Pit" anywhere but BT. Does that make it ok to download? I don't know. Morally, legally, etc., I've never been quite so torn for quite so long.

I think OP's point was that DRM pushes people to pirate content, regardless of whether this is morally acceptable or not.

I sadly don't think that's true any more. Not that I want to promote piracy or am sad about the decline. But I fear that the upcoming generation of DRM will be good enough not to annoy the users. And that was really the issue with most DRM in the past. E.g., music is more commonly shared and copied to different devices. DRM there really had an impact. Flash/Silverlight are horrible plugins and they impact the viewing pleasure. But now that Restriction is integrated on top of the regular HTML5 stack in the top three proprietary browsers it will be as flawless as watching a HTML5 video for most users. Sure they can't save the video. But most users don't know how to do that even if the video doesn't have DRM. And as long as the business model of the content hosts is decent enough they won't feel bothered by the DRM. And unlike music where sharing and copying to different devices is what users expected long before MP3s, for videos the renting model is widely accepted and common since before computer video.

And that's one of the big issues with the EME proposal. It will ensure that DRM remains on video for a long time. It will make it impossible to view legal content in a complete free software stack. It will make the web depend on proprietary binary blobs from the three companies which are already controlling the majority web browser, operating system, and mobile device market share. Which means it will be hard to impossible to innovate in those areas if it's against the interests of those companies. This will have really damaging consequences.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#54

Post by jiggy2011 »

fafner wrote: post #52
jiggy2011 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an EME spec allows for competition in the DRM market, it creates a business opportunity for a company (or potentially a solo dev) to develop a cross platform solution. EME means you rely less on Adobe code than you did previously as they are no longer shipping an entire runtime, just the content protection module.

You are completely wrong here. Please note that the EME proposal does _not_ specify a plugin interface for the Restriction module! It only specifies how the Restriction module is exposed to JavaScript. How the Restriction module is implemented or connected to the browser is up to the browser developer. Both Google and Microsoft are involved in the creation of the spec and Apple is also supporting it. All three compan…

That browser vendors will bundle their own solutions doesn't really close down the market and I don't understand how it would necessarily hurt cross platform adoption?

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#56

Post by fafner »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #54
fafner wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely wrong here. Please note that the EME proposal does _not_ specify a plugin interface for the Restriction module! It only specifies how the Restriction module is exposed to JavaScript. How the Restriction module is implemented or connected to the browser is up to the browser developer. Both Google and Microsoft are involved in the creation of the spec and Apple is also supporting it. All three compan…

That browser vendors will bundle their own solutions doesn't really close down the market and I don't understand how it would necessarily hurt cross platform adoption?

Of course it closes down the market. There won't even be a market. There is not going to be a plugin interface (except for Firefox) to provide a different Restriction module.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#58

Post by belorn »

mpyne wrote: post #36
gcr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a toughie because there are two evils at work here: - DRM is its own kind of evil, but only implicitly because it erodes the rights and privacy of the users; - Copyright infringement is another kind of evil, which is important because the law explicitly says so; - Just not watching TV shows seems like the easiest option here, but it's boring and doesn't support starving artists. Which kind of evil is worse?

> Copyright infringement is another kind of evil, which is important because the law explicitly says so; It's not just the law that makes copyright infringement of various sorts immoral. It is the law, not morals, which gives GPL software strong copyleft, but surely you would agree that it would also be immoral to take GPL software proprietary without the permission of that software's authors?

You are comparing the act of taking a work and exploiting it for profit, and sharing a movie with a friend.

If try to commercial earn illicit profit by exploiting those people in society that gives software away for free and explicit allow you to run, modify and distribute. Then that is immoral. Comparing it to sharing a movie with a friend is just a shameful act of pushing an agenda.

A more correct comparison with GPL would be bootlegging a CD (ie, for profit) during a charity concert that has pay-what-you-want tickets. Anti-copyright people would likely support the claim that such behavior is immoral.

Re: Netflix on Linux with Chrome

#59

Post by mpyne »

belorn wrote: post #58
mpyne wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright infringement is another kind of evil, which is important because the law explicitly says so; It's not just the law that makes copyright infringement of various sorts immoral. It is the law, not morals, which gives GPL software strong copyleft, but surely you would agree that it would also be immoral to take GPL software proprietary without the permission of that software's authors?

You are comparing the act of taking a work and exploiting it for profit, and sharing a movie with a friend. If try to commercial earn illicit profit by exploiting those people in society that gives software away for free and explicit allow you to run, modify and distribute. Then that is immoral. Comparing it to sharing a movie with a friend is just a shameful act of pushing an agenda. A more correct comparison with G…

> Anti-copyright people would likely support the claim that such behavior is immoral.

Yes, that is my point.

But GPL works in practice because the immoral behavior it is meant to defend against is also illegal due to copyright.

The original point was that copyrights merely make things illegal, but that we shouldn't care because what is illegal would be something moral (I mean, is there an easier target to beat up on than RIAA and MPAA?).

I countered that in this case there are instances where copyright makes immoral behavior illegal—it is not simply true to state that any activity illegal under the Copyright Act would be moral to engage in, if not for those pesky IP Nazis oppressing the public.

Post reply on HN