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

theguardian.com

51–60 of 77 posts

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

#51
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reputat…

> They were dying for most uses, but not for DRM-based video streaming. It is a tautology that DRM-based video streaming is going to use some kind of DRM. The point is that if several major platforms provide no support for any form of DRM then DRM will be removed from video streaming. The idea that video providers are going to give up a majority of their customers because their devices support no DRM is not reasonabl…

Lol, no. If every web browser said "no DRM in video, freedom or death!" then the movie studios would say ..... OK. We'll ask users to download an app instead. Or use Apple TV/Xbox/PlayStation to watch things rather than their browsers. And consumers would. End of story.

Browser makers don't have some crippling monopoly power over how computers work that they can use to force submission on an entire industry (thank god).

The idea that the movie industry will give up on something they view as a fundamental requirement for them to earn money, just because browser makers throw a hissy fit, is not reasonable. The movie industry will find a way because they believe their industry must, or else it will wither and die.

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

#52

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…

Mozilla has a loooooong history of not doing the right thing.

Mozilla is made of google money and advertising money.

Doing the right thing means doing it regardless of market share and piles of money.

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

#53

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…

Unfortunately Firefox has 5x the code exploit bugs vs Chrome. If we just take 2014 Firefox had 13x code exploits over Chrome. http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v... http://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?... Until that number changes I'm not switching to back to Firefox.

Unfortunately Chrome is a google product. I'm not using chrome ever, why would I voluntarily install spyware ? One that bundles itself with many freeware.

Firefox sucks a lot (no usable UI integration, missing many basic modern features, changes stripping user of choice, and more) but chrome sucks to infinity and is automatically disqualified, I would consider Iron but not chrome. Now my hopes are for vivaldi, I'm waiting for it to get out of tech preview.

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

#54
post #36

Well, I'm a 1. web developer, 2. independent filmmaker, and 3. work in media full-time, and this doesn't really bother me. I want to be able to rent any movie for streaming. For better or worse, that means some kind of DRM is inevitable. I'd rather Mozilla and the standards advocates have a seat at the table, where they can be a moderating influence, than pretend the table doesn't exist.

DRM isn't preventing people from pirating the works, it just makes life harder for paying customers and potentially presenting a security hole to them as well.

I don't disagree; the piracy firehose is already on and this is all a moot point. But if you want the distributors to play ball with web standards instead of sticking to Flash, you have to address their concerns.

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

#55

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…

It's not about being the best browser, opera has long been the best browser as almost every innovation got copied from opera. It still failed to get a global market share and only came to lead some local markets.

Besides chrome didn't get its market share on technical merit alone, but mostly by paying for its installation and targeted PR.

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were dying for most uses, but not for DRM-based video streaming. It is a tautology that DRM-based video streaming is going to use some kind of DRM. The point is that if several major platforms provide no support for any form of DRM then DRM will be removed from video streaming. The idea that video providers are going to give up a majority of their customers because their devices support no DRM is not reasonabl…

Lol, no. If every web browser said "no DRM in video, freedom or death!" then the movie studios would say ..... OK. We'll ask users to download an app instead. Or use Apple TV/Xbox/PlayStation to watch things rather than their browsers. And consumers would. End of story. Browser makers don't have some crippling monopoly power over how computers work that they can use to force submission on an entire industry (thank go…

Not sure what imaginary world you live in, but in the real world internet users just provide themselves for what the studios refuse to do, see piracy.

Video on the web was a reality before flash came to be.

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

#57
post #11

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.

The Profilist add-on dramatically improves the multi-profile experience in Firefox. It's effectively as seamless as Chrome's. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/profilist/

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

#58

Well, I'm a 1. web developer, 2. independent filmmaker, and 3. work in media full-time, and this doesn't really bother me. I want to be able to rent any movie for streaming. For better or worse, that means some kind of DRM is inevitable. I'd rather Mozilla and the standards advocates have a seat at the table, where they can be a moderating influence, than pretend the table doesn't exist.

DRM will not make it possible to rent any movie for streaming. Most of the recent and blockbusters one certainly but any is not gonna happen. Only way to get any movie is through file sharing from people, it's not legal everywhere yet but at some point a global license will come to be.

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

#59

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…

Mozilla has a loooooong history of not doing the right thing. Mozilla is made of google money and advertising money. Doing the right thing means doing it regardless of market share and piles of money.

Downvote me to oblivion but the facts are mozilla has long been funded by google and advertising, thus actively contributed (and still contributing) to turn the web into a surveillance tool. You may have forgotten but I still remember how mozilla alienated developers around the time firefox was still firebird (or was it when it was phoenix?). How they killed the mozilla suite that turned out to perform better than the unbloated replacement for it. Then there's the legal threats towards debian.

These are only a few examples off the top of my head, but one does not have to look very deep to find a trail of not doing the right thing at mozilla along its history. Sorry if pointing this out infuriates the fanboï in you, but mozilla has done its share of wrong along the otherwise good stuff.

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

#60
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure functions when I use it.
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