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Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#361

Post by CalRobert »

wraptile wrote: post #298
CalRobert wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But of course search engines are fine

Having your cake and eating it too is a natural goal of every business and honestly it was just a matter of time till web pages figured out they can have the benefits of public data and avoid the costs. Web scraping and botting is basically a solved problem too - just put a login gate for the data which allows you to legally litigate against scrapers and bots. Done. However, nobody wants to lose the benefits of publi…

I used to care about respecting robots.txt until it was clear that established search engines are fine but any newcomers can go right to hell.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#362

Post by GordonS »

codedokode wrote: post #47

> Google's plan is that, during a webpage transaction, the web server could require you to pass an "environment attestation" test before you get any data. There is no value in this "attestation" for me as a user. I want to be able to do whatever I want with the browser (for example, remove ads or block access to canvas and webgl) and I want sites to be unable to know this. And probably this attestation will provide a…

Attestation can have value in a corporate network, ensuring only patched company laptops can connect to certain services, for example.

But software already exists to do this kind of thing for private networks. I really, strongly believe that this kind of functionality has no place on the open web.

This proposal is user-hostile, and could be very dangerous to the future of the web.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#363

Post by bayindirh »

grishka wrote: post #330
bayindirh wrote: post #279

That's wrong on so many levels, I don't know even where to start. First of all I hate this "proposals" which is actually, "we implemented this in our flagship product, and kindly force it on our users, you don't have to use it, if you have a choice", stance. Then comes all the "ensuring they aren't a robot and that the browser hasn't been modified or tampered with in any unapproved ways." part. I'm using an open sour…

> It's 90s DRM wave all over again. Except in the 90s you controlled 100% of the code running on your computer. Now there are all kinds of treacherous computing with all those "trusted" execution environments and TPMs and all the other bullshit that can't be avoided, with someone else's public keys burned into the silicon.

Nope. In the 90s we also had tons of closed code on our computers, namely the BIOS, proper firmware embedded in plethora of peripherals (Disks, Ethernet cards, Microcode in the CPU, etc.), yet due to computing constraints, this has been only tried in forms of Pentium 3 Serial Numbers + Windows APIs + IE6.

However; courts, Free Software Movement and alternative operating systems plus Mozilla stopped this.

Now all of them are under attack. Esp. Free and Open Software Movement is being enshittified with a process which we can call as "Rewrite it in Permissive Licenses, so companies can hire you while closing down the ecosystem".

We really need a flood to clear this mess.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#364

Post by darreninthenet »

bayindirh wrote: post #357
darreninthenet wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that and weirdly nothing seems to be excessive... indeed the Macs own performance monitor doesn't suggest anything is particular excessively using cpu or ram but here it is juddering away especially when scrolling pages. Three year old Mac btw... everything else runs pretty well... if I get a chance I might fire up Firefox in Parallels and see if it's a Mac issue

When you write "about:performance" to your address bar, and press enter, you should access to the internal performance monitoring page of Firefox. That should list every tab and extension by RAM use and power impact. Give it a go.

Umm yes I did that and nothing seemed to be doing anything excessive

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#365

Post by nvm0n1 »

urda wrote: post #249
voramok wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I am concerned the reputation of this Ben Wiser guy is so far down the toilet that there’s practically nothing he can do or say to recover it. Like the old joke goes “you screw a goat once…”

Both RupertBenWiser and yoavweiss reputations are fully gone from this. Pretty much the moment they closed an issue without a single comment [1], locked the repo from everyone else, and then a much later time claiming it was "spam" is a pretty dirty tactic [2]. [1] https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/... [2] https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

Lol yep sure, almost every website out there uses Recaptcha, Cloudflare and similar services, but they all totally hate the guys who work on stuff like that.

The bubblethink here is out of control. A clear majority of website operators would love this tech to exist because the pile of hacks and user-hostile verification systems that currently keep bots and fraud at bay are time limited, and always have been.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#366

Post by nvm0n1 »

wraptile wrote: post #206
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #200

The people involved in this concept/idea/proposal should be shamed into retirement. They should never work in the tech sector again. They should be afraid to use their names before first knowing their audience (an agricultural audience would likely be OK).

It's really perplexing how people in such privilidged positions would put their name on this. Either their not as smart as they appear or somehow manipulated/corrupted.

Nah, they just realize that the sort of rank ideological hatred they're gonna get from the sort of people posting here isn't representative of the software industry as a whole let alone the wider world.

The iPhone is a bastion of remote attestation. You can't just rock up and download apps from the iPhone app store using a convenient API, it's restricted so only the iPhone itself can do it. Do Apple engineers hesitate to use their real names? No, because nobody cares and heck HN threads often fill up with praise over the fact that you can't even install apps outside the app store, let alone download apps from it and emulate them on a PC.

Games consoles are fully based on remote attestation. You can't connect a PC to the Xbox or PS gaming networks because they do RA to keep you out. Do the engineers who work on games consoles have to go into hiding? No, because nobody cares. HN never discusses it because it works and lots of gamers, especially the casual ones, prefer it.

Fact is that users like this tech because it solves problems that they'd otherwise have. The web lacks it and therefore has to rely on user hostile stuff like CAPTCHAs, phone codes, magic JavaScripts and social network logins which people hate, so they switch to native apps instead. And devs hate dealing with all the automated abuse they get, so that pushes them towards app-only services too.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#367

Post by nvm0n1 »

afandian wrote: post #17
pmontra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad but how is it going to affect the usefulness of my personal web site, that will never use that API to check who's reading it, not or human? Same thing for a lot of sites, probably the vast majority of them.

One day Google may well flag your sure as lower security, refuse to let you show ads, or disappear you from search results.

Google do that all the time simply because they dislike your opinions or even your fact based arguments.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#368

Post by jeltz »

sanxiyn wrote: post #271
smaudet wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari is just Apples Opera (before they went Blink and made themselves irrelevant). They aren't great, just another proprietary browser. Every time I've used it has been sub-par. It reminded me a lot of Opera in that it was very opinionated, even if it tried to offer some feature. Apple makes money off of apps, not websites, though, so it makes sense they don't invest much into their browser.

Safari has the fastest JavaScript engine. In many respects, Safari's implementation is top notch. Apple makes money off phones and people use Safari a lot on phones. I don't understand why people think Apple don't invest on Safari.

And Opera had the fastest rendering engine. Still did not make it a good browser.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#369

Post by archerx »

Avamander wrote: post #345
userbinator wrote: post #131

It's great to see this getting more attention. User-agent discrimination (i.e. "go away if you're not using the latest version of Chrome") needs to become illegal. As long as I'm not overloading your service or similar, what hardware or software I use must not be restricted. The same goes for other deliberate obstacles to accessibility and interoperability --- creating a "standard" that's so complex and churned frequ…

> It's great to see this getting more attention. User-agent discrimination (i.e. "go away if you're not using the latest version of Chrome") needs to become illegal. UA should be fully deprecated already. It rarely achieves its goals at this point. There are better alternatives.

No, it helps me find scrapers and bots too lazy to spoof their UA, oh you’re using “curl”, “go-http-client”, or whatever non browser client? You get an instant block.

Re: Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web

#370

Post by allarm »

archerx wrote: post #333
allarm wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, I am the bad guy What's the point of asking a question (...does this make me a bad person for discriminating?) if you're not ready to accept some of the answers? Yes, geoblocking totally makes the internet a shittier place. In the same way as the hackers and scriptkiddies make it the shittier place. It's a chicken and egg situation. You're blocking part of the world because it's dangerous waters. I am blocking…

I wonder if locking my doors as well is discrimination according to you? No geoblocking doesn't make the internet a shittier place, you're blaming the symptoms/victims not the true cause. What is actually making the internet a shittier place is the bad actors, bots, scammers, scrapers, psychopaths and etc. Maybe those countries that get blocked should do more to stop those bad actors in the first place. Has China or…

Hey, quick question - why in your holy rage you’ve decided to ignore an important part of my previous comment? I don’t normally waste my time on people who act like this. If you read it and pay attention to it you’d get some answers you’ve raised.

> Has China or Turkey ever contributed or paid for one of my projects/services?

Have other countries? What about the countries that haven’t? Isn’t it completely unrelated to the “bad actors” question?

Internet is the best thing that we have now. It’s great because it’s open. You’re ruining it. As well as the other bad actors, attackers, etc. You’re just one of them, even though you’re also the victim. So no, you’ve completely missed my point. I’m not blaming the victim. I’m blaming everybody in this particular situation. You are the part of the problem just as well as the attackers.

> I know it's a very hard concept to grasp.

Calm down. Take it as a grown up. You’ve asked for opinion yourself, don’t forget it.

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