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Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

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Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#251

Post by delfinom »

pyrale wrote: post #200
mike_hearn wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point nothing would stop AdCorp from cutting a deal with the new ChromeCorp that says "you get incentive payments for each page load that presents a remote attestation that no ad blockers are present". It wouldn't be seen as anti-competitive then because there are multiple ad serving companies and multiple browser companies, and anyway, legislators would expect and find it reasonable that browsers only get pa…

> At that point nothing would stop AdCorp from cutting a deal with the new ChromeCorp that says... I suspect judges that just ordered an antitrust would not be kind to people to people who essentially ignore the order by recreating an informal structure.

1. Judges don't order an "antitrust" case, a prosecutor must do that start a case. A judge can then rule on it OR a jury (the DOJ in fact requested an anti-trust jury trial this year)

2. Your theory was basically proven broke by the fact that ATT which was broken up in anti-trust, became ATT, again.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#252

Post by [deleted] »

TekMol wrote: post #3

As I understand it, Google wants to add some signal to http requests which tell the server that the user is using a system made from some specific software. For example an unaltered stock Android phone. What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#253

Post by delfinom »

rapnie wrote: post #60

We all let it come this far, because of how we treat the services Google provides: As nice free and helpful tools. Talking about "Chrome this and that" all the time we forget what that really means, namely: Using the strategic tools of the largest Advertising Agency in the world, that allows them to ever grow their dominance. Chrome, GMail and all that jazz all fit into a global-scale ad-tech framework to push shady…

Google is just copying Apple, this is the entire funny part. Apple is over 50% of US market share of phones

https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-att...

You should be more afraid of banks soon requiring Apple devices only

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#254

Post by bee_rider »

o1y32 wrote: post #148
Joeri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money for developing chrome is not an issue. Google search could pay chrome to be the primary search engine just like they pay mozilla. Microsoft could fund chromium based on their use in Edge. Etc…

I guess you have no idea how much money it costs to develop something like Chrome, especially at Google's salary.

It might be nice to have less web browser development, fewer engineers who need to add a new feature to get a bullet point for their review.

Rendering a website should not be a huge project. Websites are a medium for transmitting ideas; communication. A communication scheme that requires a massive engineering effort to interpret it is bad. A web browser should be something that a small community team can throw together in a couple months.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#255

Post by qwytw »

bregma wrote: post #171
DeathArrow wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wishful thinking. Politicians will never break up Google since they benefit from it.

Politicians would never break up Standard Oil or Bell Telephone either.

Why? It's pretty straightforward to show how Standard Oil or Bell Telephone were harmful to consumer interests. With Google.. well they are giving away half+ of their products for free which they wouldn't able to if broken up. Antitrust laws from the 1900s were just not designed with that in mind, they were trying to solve quite different issues.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#256

Post by chx »

pydry wrote: post #165
samwillis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, that is where a change needs to happen. Splitting everything else off doesn't solve the core problem. Within Search + Search Ads you have a platform where Google are/have: - the sole vendor of a digital asset - ads - the sole marketplace for that asset - a closed…

The ideal breakup would be between search engine and index. The index should be treated as a utility like water or electric that search engines purchase access to for a regulated fee. You can then have a thousand competing search engines started in garages with their own ranking algorithms and ads but realistically there are only ever going to be a few indexes. Thats the part that requires enormous data centers and d…

I doubt this is feasible, there's a lot that goes into the index which determines which kinds of queries you can even run.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#257

Post by andsoitis »

edgyquant wrote: post #245
pocketarc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google currently plays Apple billions ($15B supposedly) to be the default search engine on Safari, and another half a billion a year for Firefox. For Chrome, with their gigantic market share, they'd pay billions (just like they pay Apple). Browsers are complicated, but let's not pretend that that kind of money wouldn't be enough.

I’m not sure what you mean. Google would continue to pay chrome to advertise?

They’re saying: Google (the search company) would pay ChromeCorp (company behind Chrome/Chromium) big money to be the default search engine in the browser. Google already pays both Mozilla and Apple in this way.

Theoretically this money should be enough to finance the continued investment in Chrome.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#258

Post by roywiggins »

cowl wrote: post #162
Adverblessly wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know this is about DRM because that is explicitly the stated goal of this move. Apologies for just repeating a previous post I made about this but: The first goal of the proposal is to > Allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device. That is, to give web servers the ability to Digitally restrict (or Manage) a user's Rig…

DRM is not about access or not (that can and is being done with simple authenticated content). DRM is about what you can do with SPECIFIC contents. The MANAGE part in DRM. Netflix requiring you to login to view a movie is not DRM. Netflix offering a way to content owners to specify for example this movie can be seen but not download or this movie can be seen only once or this movie can not be fastforwarded, that is D…

Okay, but as far as I can tell, "trusted" can be defined however the attestor chooses, and one way could be "the user is really using Chrome, on Windows, and isn't running any extensions or other applications that we don't like."

Same way HDCP can tell an application whether the video is being played on a screen rather than a capture card. No trusted screen? No video for you. That's DRM.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#259

Post by roywiggins »

cowl wrote: post #153
dns_snek wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems Everyone is taking for granted the claim that this is about DRM. The claim is that websites (not Google) will use this signal to allow or deny access but this is already possible with various means. How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint? It's hard to see this, at best, as anything other than an extremely naive viewpoint. Every feature that can be used to lock down content and/or spy on users,…

> How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint Read the proposal: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/... >That's settled then. Full filesystem, location, camera, and microphone access should therefore come on by default without a permission dialog. Why not bring back Java and Flash while we're at it! It's not the browser vendor's fault that websites are misusing it. Now who is arguing…

> anyone can become an "attester".

Good luck getting your bank to trust any ol' attester and not just FAANGs.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#260

Post by bee_rider »

Joeri wrote: post #54
hutzlibu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Chrome - browsers" And the money is coming from where? Chrome exists mostly, so the ad buisness gets more data and they can influence the direction of the web. Seperate that and there will be no more chrome as there is no other source of income. (Except maybe a little bit from ChromeOS). Otherwise I get it, it is mostly politics to threaten google to reach this.: "It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal,…

Money for developing chrome is not an issue. Google search could pay chrome to be the primary search engine just like they pay mozilla. Microsoft could fund chromium based on their use in Edge. Etc…

It shouldn’t be necessary to pay so much to develop Chrome in the first place. Web standards have gotten so unimaginably complex that only two of the richest companies in history can produce a web browser (and then somehow, inexplicably, Mozilla manages to almost keep up; wildly impressive on their part).

That figuring out the funding required to draw a website is seen as a big issue is a symptom of the problem.

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