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Save Firefox

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Re: Save Firefox

#251

Post by brianpgordon »

> users want to sit in the driver's seat.

> We need more Firefoxes.

> We need more browsers that treat their users, rather than publishers, as their customers.

Until they started talking about DRM I was hoping that we were "saving Firefox" from mandatory extension signing.

As of Firefox 47, you will not be able to install any extension which hasn't been digitally signed by Mozilla. There will be no about:config setting to override this. They claim that this will prevent adware from disabling the digital signature requirement. But it's also taking power out of the hands of users, with the justification that supposedly Mozilla knows better than their users do what code they want to run.

This is the death-knell of Firefox for me. I'll be switching to an unbranded fork and hoping that the security updates keep coming.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing

Re: Save Firefox

#252

Post by slrz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #250
thomasz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which clearly cannot both be true at the same time. They meant that all they can do is delay the inevitable for some time by security-through-obscurity. And yes, the IP holders are perfectly aware of that, but preventing piracy even for a few weeks after release can have a measurable impact on their profits.

If that argument was supposed to mean anything then DRM would only be required in the first few weeks after release. And it assumes that it currently takes weeks before new content makes it to torrent sites, which is not the case.

Years ago, Ian Hickson wrote a perfect analysis of why we have DRM. It's as relevant as ever, and anyone should read it.

https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2

Re: Save Firefox

#253

Post by slrz »

incompatible wrote: post #153
icebraining wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

closed source DRM module that can do arbitrary things on the host platform I don't know about other browsers, but at least Firefox is sandboxing EME modules so that they can only do a few approved things (security bugs aside, of course).

Perhaps the new browsers can implement the Firfox interfaces and install the same proprietary modules if they are so inclined.

Back then, Mozilla's plan was for the CDM to inspect the running Firefox and deny playback if it detects tampering of the relevant browser parts.

How the hell that is supposed to work if the CDM is oh-so-sandboxed is left as an exercise for the reader.

Did anyone actually check that own builds of vanilla Firefox sources are able to use the Adobe CDM? Wouldn't surprise me at all if it only worked with the official Mozilla-signed Windows binaries (yep, at least the Mozilla flavour of the "portable" and "interoperable" EME is provided for Windows and Windows only).

Re: Save Firefox

#254

Post by slrz »

mynameislegion wrote: post #104
wmf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a CDM can theoretically work in any browser implementing the EME standard Nope, it's the opposite. The CDM API is not standardized and in practice every browser uses a different CDM: Chrome has Widevine, Firefox has Adobe, IE/Edge has PlayReady, and it's not clear what Safari uses.

The CDM API is called "EME" and it is a standard. That's why Widevine can be made to work with Firefox ( https://github.com/i-rinat/gmp-widevine ). EDIT: Firefox now supports Widevine > Beginning in version 47, Firefox desktop also supports the Google Widevine CDM. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm The issue with browser-specific CDMs at this time seems to be only because of varying completeness of EME…

Bullshit. EME specifies a Javascript API for use by websites.

What Firefox uses to talk with a CDM is right there in the name of that Github repo: it's an interface called GMP and was created by Mozilla specifically for video/media-type browser plugins.

It's not used by Chrome, Safari or any other non-Mozilla browser.

Re: Save Firefox

#255

Post by timlyo »

Grishnakh wrote: post #241
developer2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar boat here. I abandoned Firefox back in the day due to the memory and freezing problems, and general lack of responsiveness compared to Chrome. The difference in everyday use was massive here; we went from having a browser that could hardly handle having 3 tabs open while using a gigabyte of memory, to one that worked flawlessly and used a fraction of the resources. Firefox then put in a lot of effort fixing t…

>I'm not a superfan of the information I imagine Google collects from my using Chrome, but the browser itself is just too good to give up. If you don't want to send information back to Google, don't use Chrome. Use Chromium instead. It's Chrome, but without the spyware, and only has the open-source components. It won't work for Netflix though, but for all your other browsing, it should work exactly the same as Chrome…

I've got chromium working for Netflix on Linux, haven't tried on windows though.

Re: Save Firefox

#256

Post by makomk »

AtticusRex wrote: post #237

Question: He says EME will allow publishers to dictate which browsers can implement CDMs that can interoperate with their content, and therefore control the browser market, and that this will quell innovation. I have questions about this, however. In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?) so it still wasn't possible for a develope…

> In the old but waning status quo, Adobe and Microsoft got to decide which browsers would work with Silverlight and Flash (right?)

Nope. The status quo was that any browser which implemented NPAPI (officially the Mozilla plugin API, but historically used by everyone but IE) could use Silverlight and Flash. That's how Google Chrome got Flash support initially and the reason why obscure browsers that neither Adobe and Microsoft cared about could still support both.

Re: Save Firefox

#257

Post by cpeterso »

vetinari wrote: post #246
cpeterso wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you on Linux? The "Play DRM content" checkbox is shown by default on Windows and Mac OS X.

The default for OSX is hidden - http://imgur.com/3AdT6Vs (46.0.1) On Windows, it is shown indeed (45.1.1 ESR).

Thanks for the correction. I forgot that EME support (using Google's Widevine CDM) won't ship on OS X until Firefox 47, which is still in the Firefox Beta channel for another few weeks.

Re: Save Firefox

#258

Post by literallynone »

dasil003 wrote: post #24
azakai wrote: post #5

> [The W3C] needs to hear from you now. Please share this post, and spread the word. Help the W3C be the organization it is meant to be. This isn't about the W3C. This is about EME, and about the companies that created it and promoted it: Google, Microsoft and Netflix (as you can see on the spec, for example https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ ). Telling the W3C not to do DRM is not going to be effective. The only…

Your last sentence is exactly right. Sure DRM is bad, but you can't tell people not to build things a priori like that, and DRM will be built because the content studios demand it, and the studios hold the content which everyone wants. The EFF greatly overestimates the amount of influence browser makers have. No amount of technical pressure will make an ounce of difference, because browser makers have literally no le…

"browser makers have literally no leverage on rights holders."

Yes they do. They could implement a torrent client directly in the browser, and add a few torrent search engines to the standard search engines, so that searching and streaming a torrent becomes as easy as searching and streaming a youtube video.

Re: Save Firefox

#260

Post by vetinari »

cpeterso wrote: post #257
vetinari wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default for OSX is hidden - http://imgur.com/3AdT6Vs (46.0.1) On Windows, it is shown indeed (45.1.1 ESR).

Thanks for the correction. I forgot that EME support (using Google's Widevine CDM) won't ship on OS X until Firefox 47, which is still in the Firefox Beta channel for another few weeks.

Thanks for the info.
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