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Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

theguardian.com

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Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#21

Post by yohui »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

There is an unintuitive takeaway from this. The reason Firefox is allowing this is that browsers and operating systems produced by nonprofits acting in the public interest don't have enough market share to resist being dictated to by for-profit corporations. Imagine FirefoxOS had the market share of Android and Debian had the market share of Windows. Would we still be having this conversation? The free software peopl…

Even if Firefox were a monopoly, content owners would still desire DRM. Without the option to deliver that in harmony with HTML5, they'd just continue to use Flash, Silverlight, etc.

We don't need counterfactuals to imagine a world without EME; we've lived it.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#22

Post by JupiterMoon »

quonn wrote: post #11
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

There is an unintuitive takeaway from this. The reason Firefox is allowing this is that browsers and operating systems produced by nonprofits acting in the public interest don't have enough market share to resist being dictated to by for-profit corporations. Imagine FirefoxOS had the market share of Android and Debian had the market share of Windows. Would we still be having this conversation? The free software peopl…

Firefox has improved a lot, since I switched to Chrome. What I'm waiting for is proper sandboxing using a multi-process architecture (they are working on it) and rubberband scrolling. Recently, Chrome has also improved profiles a lot, and I use that to isolate Facebook. I don't think Firefox has a comparable UI for this.

Firefox profiles allow this functionality simply type "firefox -ProfileManager" into your terminal...

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#23

Post by TylerE »

netflix_blows wrote: post #3

I expect this to be downvoted soon as the folks here plainly seem to prefer to be able to consume visual junk food via netflix rather than opt or push for open standards. Don't come crying back later when netfucks change the standards again, and the WC3 roll over and blindly accept it, and your computer becomes an expensive locked down media player.

A locked down media player is more useful than an open paperweight.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#24

Post by AnthonyMouse »

yohui wrote: post #21
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

There is an unintuitive takeaway from this. The reason Firefox is allowing this is that browsers and operating systems produced by nonprofits acting in the public interest don't have enough market share to resist being dictated to by for-profit corporations. Imagine FirefoxOS had the market share of Android and Debian had the market share of Windows. Would we still be having this conversation? The free software peopl…

Even if Firefox were a monopoly, content owners would still desire DRM. Without the option to deliver that in harmony with HTML5, they'd just continue to use Flash, Silverlight, etc. We don't need counterfactuals to imagine a world without EME; we've lived it.

Flash and Silverlight were both dying before EME existed. Basically all it took was for Apple to say "no Flash" and Flash was as good as dead. I don't understand why you think that a free software infrastructure with a strong market position would be incapable of doing the same thing.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#25

Post by Manishearth »

azakai wrote: post #5
wmf wrote: post #2

(2014) Although this is relevant again since they also decided to put DRM in Firefox OS for the Matchstick (curiously, the plan is Adobe DRM for desktop Firefox and Microsoft DRM for Matchstick; corrections/clarifications are welcome).

Matchstick isn't a Mozilla project, is it? It happens to be built on Firefox OS code, but anyone can use that code, and Matchstick is made by a third party. Mozilla can't prevent someone from building a Firefox OS product and adding Microsoft DRM to it. So I think the "they" in your statement there might be confusing, as it seems to imply Mozilla is doing something here. (btw, I hadn't heard about this latest develop…

Firefox OS itself needs a lot of proprietary stuff (Drivers, etc), however.

But meh, drivers.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#26

Post by TylerE »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #22
quonn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has improved a lot, since I switched to Chrome. What I'm waiting for is proper sandboxing using a multi-process architecture (they are working on it) and rubberband scrolling. Recently, Chrome has also improved profiles a lot, and I use that to isolate Facebook. I don't think Firefox has a comparable UI for this.

Firefox profiles allow this functionality simply type "firefox -ProfileManager" into your terminal...

Functionality that involves invoking a command line for a web browser isn't.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#27

Post by quonn »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24
yohui wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if Firefox were a monopoly, content owners would still desire DRM. Without the option to deliver that in harmony with HTML5, they'd just continue to use Flash, Silverlight, etc. We don't need counterfactuals to imagine a world without EME; we've lived it.

Flash and Silverlight were both dying before EME existed. Basically all it took was for Apple to say "no Flash" and Flash was as good as dead. I don't understand why you think that a free software infrastructure with a strong market position would be incapable of doing the same thing.

They were dying for most uses, but not for DRM-based video streaming.

Also, Flash did not die, just because Apple said so although that certainly had an impact. It also died, because the web was getting better and better; because it was a proprietary tool not available to everyone; because it integrates poorly with the whole architecture of the web - e.g. dynamic generation on the server; because it had a bad reputation due to security and performance issues; and because a plugin, even if widespread, is still a dependency that you want to avoid.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#28

Post by nitrogen »

geofft wrote: post #20
azakai wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a valid point that EME reduces the amount of closed-source code. This was among the arguments used by Google and Microsoft when promoting EME. However, on the other hand: 1. EME is an actual W3C standard. It feels - and is - wrong for an organization like the W3C to promote an API that is not about openness, but rather about the opposite. 2. While EME proponents - and DRM proponents in general - argue "c…

The argument at hand is that Firefox shouldn't support it, not that W3C shouldn't. (The argument is conditioned on it having been spec'd and adopted by the W3C, and concerns what Firefox's response should be.) Is it more wrong for Firefox to support an open interface to proprietary plugins, than a proprietary interface to proprietary plugins (the "N" in "NPAPI" literally means Netscape; this is something they deploye…

NPAPI plugin usage was already declining without the requirement for EME. Most people disabled or uninstalled Java, and Flash was only required for some video and animation sites. Game engine plugins will be replaced by WebGL+JS. Audio/video conferencing plugins can be replaced by WebRTC.

Historically, plugin use was much more widespread, and there were plugins for all kinds of things. You had to have a separate plugin for each of Video for Windows, RealAudio, Quicktime, Shockwave, Java, etc., and there were others for playing different media types like .mod, .xm, .it, displaying image formats, ...

The NPAPI interface was also standard enough that every browser supported it. So yes, it's "more wrong" to add a new interface to new proprietary plugins than it is to continue supporting a dying legacy interface to proprietary plugins. The NPAPI trajectory was downward, while EME's intended trajectory is upward.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#29

Post by cpeterso »

charlieflowers wrote: post #15
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

There is an unintuitive takeaway from this. The reason Firefox is allowing this is that browsers and operating systems produced by nonprofits acting in the public interest don't have enough market share to resist being dictated to by for-profit corporations. Imagine FirefoxOS had the market share of Android and Debian had the market share of Windows. Would we still be having this conversation? The free software peopl…

I'm surprised to realize this: Firefox must be the best browser there is, in order to fulfill its mission. Shouldn't be so surprising in retrospect (like many things), but I never fully got that before. Power comes from being chosen by end users. Firefox needs power to be able to resist this kind of crap. In this case, they didn't quite have enough power (probably because they let memory bloat get away from them a fe…

Similarly, Mozilla tried to take the high road against H.264 in Firefox. Google pledged to drop H.264 from Chrome, too, but reneged on its promise. Mozilla lost users.

Google is trying to do the same with EME over HTTPS. Google wants Mozilla to stand together with Firefox and Chrome resisting EME over unprotected HTTP. But they want Firefox to go first (again), even though Chrome is already shipping EME.

Re: Firefox’s adoption of closed-source DRM breaks my heart (2014)

#30

Post by quonn »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #22
quonn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has improved a lot, since I switched to Chrome. What I'm waiting for is proper sandboxing using a multi-process architecture (they are working on it) and rubberband scrolling. Recently, Chrome has also improved profiles a lot, and I use that to isolate Facebook. I don't think Firefox has a comparable UI for this.

Firefox profiles allow this functionality simply type "firefox -ProfileManager" into your terminal...

Yeah, but Chrome now has a simple menu item that creates a new window for a different profile in just one click. I have skinned that window, so it's easy to distinguish.
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