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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

#111

Post by DigitalSea »

This is most certainly the wrong choice, but people need to understand they essentially had no choice. Their options were rather limited:

Option 1) Stick to your laurels and refuse to implement DRM. Other browser vendors implement DRM, certain parts of the web become inaccessible via Firefox as DRM is implemented into more and more web services (think Youtube, Vimeo, Netflix, Hulu). Firefox's lack of DRM means its users are being disadvantaged.

Option 2) Implement DRM. Accept temporary defeat, don't lose browser share to Chrome and continue fighting from within against DRM.

Which option do you think sounds more appealing to Mozilla? Die on your sword, keep the trust of your dwindling user base or implement DRM and retain most of your user base (minus the people that will leave because of this decision). I think someone needs to create a fork and build a DRM-less browser, that's the beautiful thing about open source, don't like something, change it.

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

#112

Post by hadoukenio »

13throwaway wrote: post #46

If all major browsers support eme, every website will use it. Say goodbye to youtube-dl. Maybe next year eme will be updated to "protect" html. Soon the entire web may be a closed system. It doesn't matter what the FCC decides on Friday, today is the day the web dies, at mozilla's hands. There is always a choice mozilla, please make the right one.

Unfortunately your comment sounds about right.

The bright side is that information wants to be free. If one day we have a closed web on a two-tier Internet, there will always be a group of people wanting to make it work like the old way. Unless they somehow made it illegal, the libre internet with an open ecosystem will always be available.

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

#113

Post by marcosdumay »

klodolph wrote: post #78
wyager wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely can be disassembled. It's information-theoretically impossible to have a video format that people can watch, but can't transcode.

So what you do is you use the DRM API to negotiate a way to transfer a decryption key to a secure hardware module in the consumer's device. Having the source code to the Firefox component doesn't give you access to the firmware or keys stored in the module. (Yes, you can hack hardware. But it's way more expensive.)

It's still your computer... Capture the firmware when loading, and decompile it.

The problem starts only when "they" decide to mandate in our hardware. (And yep, "they" are already doing it, for several values of "they". We are fighting the wrong war here.)

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

#114

Post by felipebueno »

I'm done with Mozilla but I think the problem is not just the browser we choose anymore. The whole thing is compromised. We need a new internet, "new" ways to share and consume information. There are many people who think so as well.

e.g.: http://electronician.hubpages.com/hub/Why-We-Need-a-New-Inte...

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

#115

Post by IgorPartola »

Silhouette wrote: post #104
barrkel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the wrong choice. It's the same BS I remember reading on slides from graphics card vendors excusing some other way of selling the user down the river. Content can adapt to reach their customers. Bend here and the web itself is under threat. Mozilla needs a social contract like Debian, since it seems clear they can't rely on leadership for backbone.

Bend here and the web itself is under threat. Don't bend here and Mozilla itself could be under threat. DRM exists, many major content providers have shown little interest in releasing their material without a mechanism for preventing casual copying (and you can hardly blame them), and accessing multimedia downloads is an increasingly important function of the Web. Denying that reality isn't going to achieve anything…

What's more important Mozilla or the web? This is a case where Mozilla thinks that by sticking around they can do more good than by killing this particular attack on the free web. Can we justify this completely? IMHO, no. Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it. Of course nobody at Mozilla will see it that way. Organizations are made of people and whatever the organization's mission is, the people are foremost concerned with one thing: self-preservation through preservation of the organization.

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

#116

Post by xymostech »

isomorphic wrote: post #29
michaelt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of replacing Flash with HTML5 video is to get rid of buggy third party plugins that crash all the time and have shitty cross-platform support. If HTML5 video is going to rely on buggy third party DRM plugins, we lose the benefit that was the whole point of HTML5 video.

I run my browsers without Flash in order to avoid Adobe's exploit-du-jour crapware. This means, for example, that I don't run Chrome. If this binary blob from Adobe isn't presented with a similar UI as regular "plugins" (that the user can disable or uninstall), then I will look into writing an extension to disable it, or perhaps rely on a Firefox fork to give me a Flash-lite(tm) free browser.

You could use Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome. It comes without flash, which needs to be explicitly installed to make flash work. Not sure what OS you use, but this is what I do on Linux.

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

#117

Post by makomk »

themoonbus wrote: post #3

Can some one explain to me why having, say, an HTML 5 based video player with DRM would be worse than one implemented in a closed platform like Silverlight or Flash? I'm genuinely curious, and not trying to make an argument here.

The various content providers have used HTML5 EME to demand stricter DRM than they could generally achieve before with closed source plugins, and they've got their wish. In particular, the EME implementations they're currently willing to license content for are Microsoft's (locked to Windows, unlike Silverlight/Flash) and Google's (locked to Chromebook hardware with its full protections against unauthorised software enabled).

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

#118

Post by wolfgke »

snird wrote: post #63
michaelt wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by that logic, if a site creator wants their site in powerpoint 97 .ppt format instead of using HTML, are browsers obligated to support it?

you are right, I haven't stated my point correctly. The missing point is that of the market demand. DRM is out there, it's too late. It will be used anyway, with flash\silverlight or what have you. So, this demand should be answered, using flash is no overhead for the site, but rather a bad thing for the end user. not implementing DRM isn't hurting the sites wants it, at that point, it only hurts the end users. so im…

> The missing point is that of the market demand. DRM is out there, it's too late. It will be used anyway, with flash\silverlight or what have you.

Flash is out there and will be used anyway. Luckily since mobile devices didn't (iPhone) support is or supported it badly (Android) it became out of favor. This was eased a lot by the situation that many people already disliked Flash in their browser.

May DRM become out of favor, too. Thus as a first step, you - as a customer - should never accept websites that use any DRM mechanism. Write to their customer support and if they don't offer a DRM-free version cancel subscriptions. Closing your purse is a powerful tool.

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

#119

Post by pdkl95 »

GuiA wrote: post #45
howeyc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, they are using "their power to influence the development of the open web" by supporting DRM. What's the point in having this power if you immediately cave?

Ding ding ding! You've hit the nail on the head. Mozilla has no real power over the web. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have the power (look at the names associated with EME DRM - what a surprise). Mozilla has an illusion of power, which is tolerated by the other actors because it makes everyone happy. But no one should mistake it for real leverage.

"pride goeth before a a fall"

It was just a few years ago that Mozilla though so highly of themselves that they thought they could use their market position to force the world to change from h.264 to VP3 (with hopes that Google would gift the world VP8 later on).

They failed at reading the situation then, and are failing again now.

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

#120

Post by brownbat »

rayiner wrote: post #39
stormbrew wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could make the choice of what content to watch and what to watch it with independently, this could be said to be a free market decision. As is, my decision to support or not support DRM dictates the content I can watch. That for most people the content is more important gives the false signal that people are choosing DRM (which, in reality, pretty much nobody would). That's not a functional free market. There…

I feel like this is a rationalization. The fact that a market is free doesn't mean that producers can't sell on the terms they want. There is DRM-free content, just not the content you want. Content creators choose to use DRM because very few users object to it, and I bet with modern DRM most don't even know it exists. That's a perfectly functional free market. Its like saying that there isn't a functional free marke…

> The fact that a market is free...

We're talking about a government-created monopoly though.

If there is competition over distribution, rather than content, better delivery mechanisms eventually win.

We had this when FM displaced AM radio. There was a compulsory licensing regime, which means that anyone can distribute any content they want for a reasonable fixed fee. FM was a better distribution technology, so it won, but only because it was allowed to compete on the same terms, with the same content.

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