Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 77 posts

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

#31

Post by cpeterso »

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…

Matchstick is not a Mozilla project. The Matchstick company has been (deliberately?) fast and loose with its marketing around Mozilla's and content providers' brand names.

http://www.matchstick.tv/about/

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

#32

Post by AnthonyMouse »

quonn wrote: post #27
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 reasonable.

> 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.

I'm not sure what point you're making... that Flash sucks and died for multiple reasons? Granted. But it was still dying before EME existed and DRM wasn't enough to save it.

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

#33

Post by cpeterso »

azakai wrote: post #19
passwordreset wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matchstick/matchstick-t... Update 16. It went out on Friday.

Thanks for the link. This is kind of surprising to me, that Microsoft would license PlayReady for a non-Microsoft platform, in this case Matchstick. I wonder if their policy was always that way, but it just didn't happen, or if it changed?

Microsoft wants its DRM to be supported on all platforms, otherwise it would irrelevant on mobile. PlayReady is available on Android, iOS, smart TVs, and set-top boxes (which most likely run Linux instead of Windows CE these days :)

http://www.microsoft.com/playready/features/

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

#34

Post by JupiterMoon »

TylerE wrote: post #26
JupiterMoon wrote: post #22

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.

Yeah the UI is clunky. They should make it easier to use.

Try setting up an alias in your bashrc? If you really want to point-and-click just add the appropriate entries to your launcher/menu?

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

#35

Post by cpeterso »

This is an interesting reframing of Cory Doctorow's position in his EFF post about YouTube last week. I assume the conversations with Mozilla's Mitchell Baker and Andreas Gal were arranged in response to the EFF piece. Is he playing "bad cop" on the EFF's site and "good cop" on the The Guardian?

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

#36

Post by iwwr »

jasonthevillain wrote: post #13

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.

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

#37

Post by Caspy7 »

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.

Here's an addon that allows you to sandbox sites like Facebook. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/priv8/

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

#38

Post by Caspy7 »

TylerE wrote: post #26
JupiterMoon wrote: post #22

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.

I'm not on Linux, but don't they allow you to create shortcuts with command line options like Windows?

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

#39

Post by geofft »

nitrogen wrote: post #28
geofft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plug…

> Most people disabled or uninstalled Java

I think this needs data. From my foot in the enterprise world, this doesn't seem even close to true; random SSL VPNs and the like require Java. If anything, most people are running an out-of-date version of Java because corporate IT hasn't approved the one that fixes ten exploits yet.

> and Flash was only required for some video and animation sites.

Due, largely, to (EME-free) HTML5 video and other HTML5 features. EME is not replacing HTML5 video, nor is anyone talking about using EME to replace Flash-played videos that weren't using DRM inside Flash.

There's a lot of implication running around that Flash is being replaced with EME video. It isn't. The vast majority of Flash is being replaced with non-EME HTML5 features. A fraction that was previously implementing DRM in Flash is now implementing DRM in EME.

NPAPI plugin usage, specifically Flash video, was going to continue to be a thing for Flash videos that were using DRM. (You could make the argument that these things would just drop DRM if it were too hard, but given how long Flash stuck around until there was a high-quality replacement that was objectively better than Flash from the content-publisher's side, it's a hard argument to make.)

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

#40

Post by roblabla »

jasonthevillain wrote: post #13

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.

Is DRM really inevitable for streaming video ? I can listen to my music as much as I want, unrestricted, without DRM, through deezer. And that's a premium service. They seem to be doing just fine.

Besides, spotify uses flash for their webplayer, probably for DRM as well. Yet there exists an open source spotify client, despotify, that probably would make it very easy to download the music as MP3.

In the end, DRM just means making your client's life a pain.

Post reply on HN