21 ms·

Translation: Netflix successfully lobied DRM into what is supposed to be the OPEN web standard, to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support i

Translation: Netflix successfully lobied DRM into what is supposed to be the OPEN web standard, to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it. Dark days for the free exchange of information enabled by the web.

jasonmp85 10y ago
Yes, the world was better when Flash and Silverlight were the media of choice for delivering video.
- mmagin 10y ago
  Nevermind that the binary blobs come from pretty much the same place: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/EME#Platform_Support https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/EME#Platform_Support (Ok, I guess on Linux it's a blob from a Google-owned company.)
  - hsivonen 10y ago
    The previous DRM plug-in (Silverlight) was made by Microsoft. The new one (Widevine CDM) is made by Google.
    - OhSoHumble 10y ago
      I was hopeful that the announcement from Mozilla applied to BSD. If Widevine is used, then this will be Linux only. Still good news, however.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  It was indeed, since people had started recognizing the problems with Flash and Silverlight, and they'd have been much easier to kill off. DRM should have stayed second-class, leaving the way open for competitors to offer a first-class web experience as long as they left DRM behind.
  - cmsimike 10y ago
    > leaving the way open for competitors to offer a first-class web experience as long as they left DRM behind. Competitors already exist in this area. Here is GoG's listening of DRM-free movies: https://www.gog.com/movies?sort=bestselling&page=1 https://www.gog.com/movies?sort=bestselling&page=1 It is very rare that I find something I want to watch here, where as the content I generally want to watch, sadly, exists behind a DRM-wall. Services/competitors are a dime a dozen, but the issue is driving users to your service, and I don't believe users will run to watch content they don't want to watch just because it is DRM free. I also don't feel like we will force content creators to go DRM free since, as we're seeing, everyone is releasing their own streaming service, which would include DRM.
  - mozumder 10y ago
    Sorry, but Hollywood has the upper hand here. Hollywood has no desire to enter an open platform. They're completely happy if none of their movies are online, ever. Really. They already have a massively profitable distribution system in the theaters. The problem is that people want to watch Hollywood movies on their computer, including people that use Linux. So what do you tell those people to do? Tell them run Windows? Have them go watch it in the theater? And they have copyright controls that can force offline sites that host copyrighted content in various countries. So DRM is the tech industry's way to kiss these people ass. It may be flawed or may not work, but it's still ass-kissing. They're the artists, they get to decide what they do with their art. The consumer has no right to an artists creation. Their only choice is to pay up or ignore it. And you'll find that this happens to other art mediums as well. There are many, many art galleries that won't sell certain works of art if they deem your ownership as insufficient. Literally - the customer is wrong.
    - yuhong 10y ago
      I wonder why Hollywood was taken over by lawyers in the first place. Yes, I am going back to before Sony vs Universal.
      - ethbro 10y ago
- noir_lord 10y ago
  That wasn't his central point I don't think, also Flash and Silverlight where largely beaten by the Open Web because they never got the adoption sufficient to rival it. So instead they lobbied for it to be built in, the day will come when view source won't work anymore because everything fed down will protected by DRM and we moved another step closer to turning the web into a gigantic walled garden for whoever the incumbents are at that point in time.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    Flash's peak marketshare was over 99%. They had the adoption.
    - Razengan 10y ago
      Until Steve Jobs slew it, or so I'm told.
  - camus2 10y ago
    > That wasn't his central point I don't think, also Flash and Silverlight where largely beaten by the Open Web because they never got the adoption sufficient to rival it. this is a false statement, Flash was ubiquitous. Still today every chrome user on desktop has a flash player. Obviously, this isn't true for mobile, but before the mobile era flash was basically on every Windows and Mac computer with a browser.
    - noir_lord 10y ago
      Merely been installed isn't adoption, if 99% of my web time is using HTML/JS to render content and 1% of that time Flash then do the web browser and flash have the same adoption?. By that metric notepad would be the most adopted programmer text editor in the world..
  - frik 10y ago
    > the day will come when view source won't work Yes, with WebAssembly. (With ASM.js, the predecessor it was still JS, but hard to read as human.) that's why WebAssembly is bad for the open web. In near future we will see binary blob SaaS like full Office running in browser. So the 1990s vision of vendor lock-in come to a full circle.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  It would be better if the platforms that wanted DRM just made their own damn desktop apps, just like they make their own iOS apps, Android apps, Roku apps, smart tv apps, etc. There's no reason for them to be embedded in a browser.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtgx 10y ago
    The irony is that Netflix does have a desktop application as well.
    - jasonkostempski 10y ago
      Not for Linux and I know first had that the Windows Store one is complete garbage because I really wanted it to work. The Hulu one is just as bad.
      - flukus 10y ago
        I've used the windows one a fair bit and would take it over the browser one any day. The desktop one wins for resource usage alone.
        jasonkostempski 10y ago
        For me, it usually wouldn't start up (some oddball Windows Store error, probably because I don't sign into my machine with a Microsoft ID) and streaming quality was horrible, especially at the beginning, and there was no way to tell it to wait longer for buffering.
    - futurix 10y ago
      This is mostly a side effect of their development efforts for Xbox and Windows 10 Mobile.
  - hsivonen 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
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- Yver 10y ago
  How is that even an argument? That's a false dilemma. The choice isn't limited to binary blob Flash/Silverlight vs binary blob DRM plugin.
  - acdha 10y ago
    What other option was seriously on offer? I buy DRM-free music but the video options are extremely limited to a few committed proponents — I love them for that but it's like saying nobody should buy conventional agribusiness food because you can buy organic free-trade kombucha.
- greenhouse_gas 10y ago
  The thing is that there is (for all intents and purposes) no difference between ECE and plugins. Actually, ECE is a plugin. The only difference is that it helps web-designers switch plugin providers. That's it. No more security. No more standardization. As a user, you still depend on the goodwill of the ECE provider throw you a bone. If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM), you're out of luck. If Adobe decides that it's not worth their time to develop a plugin for PaleMoon, they won't and you're out of luck (or will MS let their ECE plugin run on Linux, or Google's run on FF?). You (as a user) won't be able to switch to another provider. It all depends on the provider.
  - djrogers 10y ago
    I completely understand and sympathize with your point, however this: "If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM)" Is rather hilarious - calling OpenBSD on ARM a 'slightly niche' OS in the context of 'operating systems people use to watch video on the web' is rather ambitious, don't you think? OpenBSD on ARM would have to increase it's user base in this arena by a couple orders of magnitude to elevate itself to 'slightly niche'....
    - greenhouse_gas 10y ago
      I picked two relativity popular platforms, though niche together to focus on the danger. All the more so would something like the rust os have problems. The bigger issue will be when these providers will start holding OS's hostage (well, you want to view half the web? You've got to have a locked bootloader and only I have the key. You want to index our sites? Google has permission (the unlocking key) but not you).
    - merb 10y ago
      isn't the Nintendo Switch based on either OpenBSD or FreeBSD and uses ARM? woudn't that be a good reason to have a plugin for that? > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...
      - 10y ago
- nikcub 10y ago
  One of the only positives to come out of these new standards was that NPAPI could be deprecated. We've arguably replaced an insecure and general purpose open interface to proprietary blobs with more narrow and single purpose open interfaces to proprietary blobs.
- blitmap 10y ago
  The problem is DRM has been used for more than digital rights management. We've seen it used to surveill the user and collect information - and restrict actions on the users' computer when it thinks you're doing something illicit (not allowing you to burn things to disc, restricting the ability to screenshot videos, uninstalling/deleting programs, adding rootkits, etc). Far outside the scope of providing authorized access to protected content. What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. EME - as I understand it - allows them to create a closed-source program that runs in a sandbox to authorize and reproduce content we've paid to view. It should have very limited ability to do this - but breaking out of sandboxes is what some software engineers are employed to figure out. We're trusting those companies with the ability to run their programs on our computer so we can watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop. We hope it works as it's defined, but it's not a guarantee. It's not worth it and pirates don't rip from Netflix anyway. They usually work for the industry as some part of the distribution/theater network. This hurts the customer. Our computers are not our own.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    The idea that Netflix could tell the movie and TV industries what to do is laughable and woefully ignorant of how those industries work. Why do you think Netflix et al invests so much in original content ? Because they have zero leverage and are beholden to the whims of Hollywood.
  - daenney 10y ago
    > What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. Why do you assume they didn't? And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Walk away, lose access to all its content, see a large part of their subscriber base move to different services that do support DRM and therefor get the content and eventually have to start firing employees as their income drops? Just about any streaming service has this exact same problem. They don't love DRM nor want to support it, it's annoying and cumbersome. But it's how you get access to the content. And unless you can survive purely on your own content you don't really have the option to walk away over your ideals. If you want DRM out of the system, convince the content/rights holders that DRM isn't in their best interests, i.e they can make more money without it or at the very least won't lose money over not having it. If you're hoping that somehow a significant enough size of the population will boycott it for the industry to change, based on the ideals of the open web and open access, you'll be waiting a long time.
- camus2 10y ago
  How about the DRM stays out of the free web entirely? You want DRM? develop your own desktop app.
deleted 10y ago
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davexunit 10y ago
Dark days, indeed. Sacrificing the open web so some can watch movies.
- MBCook 10y ago
  To a huge chunk of users video IS the web. If Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube didn't work (assume YT adopts DRM) the browser would basically be DOA for a HUGE chunk of people.
  - cgearhart 10y ago
    So...the _entire_ web should be saddled with DRM because people who don't care about the web wouldn't use it otherwise? Is the web better now because all those people now have _another_ way to passively consume video content?
    - MBCook 10y ago
      That argument works both ways. _NO ONE_ should have the option to view copyrighted videos because you don't want it? Yes, I think this improves the web. You no longer need the unmaintained disaster that was silverlight or the resource vampire and exploit factory that was flash. Users can choose to view this content in a safeER way than before. The only good argument against this is the 'we don't need DRM ' argument, but that hinges on the ability to get content you want in a non-DRM format and it seems clear that isn't happening anytime soon thanks to Hollywood et. al and I don't blame them.
- kefka 10y ago
  I wonder how long it will be for newsprint media companies to use this to "secure" their websites so that Adblockers cannot process the 'encrypted but you can't see' data?
- rimliu 10y ago
  How does it sacrifice the open web again? Is there a law being passed that entire web should be DRMed?
futurix 10y ago
When the choice is between proprietary apps or DRM for multimedia content inside open web environment, I'd rather have the latter. Yes, in ideal world there will be DRM-free streaming - but unfortunately that's unrealistic.
- josteink 10y ago
  > When the choice is between proprietary apps or DRM for multimedia content inside open web environment Why? That puts the cost of DRM on everyone except the ones who want to freeload on our open tech to take our freedom away. And that's ass backwards. You want non-free and closed? Cool deal. Go build it yourself.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Free as in freedom means companies are free to add things like DRM if the want and consumers are free to choose services that don't go down that path.
    - aurelianito 10y ago
      Mmmmmmm, only if I can edit the source of the DRM program and make my own modified version.
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    You want free and open? Go build that yourself. People do build Firefox and chrome without this, go download them and enjoy yourself.
    - hsivonen 10y ago
      If you don't want Widevine, you can simply uncheck the “Play DRM content” checkbox in Mozilla-distributed Firefox, and the CDM doesn’t get downloaded and gets deleted if it was already downloaded. No need for a different build. Be sure to uninstall Flash and Silverlight, too.
  - 10y ago
snakeanus 10y ago
>to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it Mozilla did not seem to care that much actually. And as long as torrents exist I do not think that there is any reason to support it.
- riquito 10y ago
  It was either support EME or become the browser where you can't see any video. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...
  - snakeanus 10y ago
    More like "It was either support EME or become the browser where you can't use any useless service like Netflix." As long as torrents exist Netflix is useless.
criddell 10y ago
I thought that the only change was that the DRM mechanism was turned into an open standard. How is this worse than before? As someone that occasionally uses Linux, I think it's great that Netflix works there now. Previously, the audience on Linux wasn't worth the development effort for Netflix. Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard is a bad thing?
- josteink 10y ago
  > Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard Yes. The bit where this is an "open standard" to implement completely closed, non-standard plugins, which cannot be implemented by reading the spec. With this "open standard" any browser or OS not blessed by Hollywood can't have a full web experience. And I take great issues with that.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Another way to look at it is that Netflix isn't part of the web. I suppose that viewpoint admits that obstinance on the part of Firefox was not going to get Netflix to offer their service without DRM.
    - cgearhart 10y ago
      Only insofar as Netflix was opting not to put their content on the web. Netflix was _not_ prevented from being on the web pre-DRM -- it's just that responsibility for meeting their requirements for access to content rested with them rather than browser developers. edit: not really sure how I messed up the original comment, which was an incoherent mess.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        Huh? If a browser developer doesn't bother to implement an EME interface and get access to DRM components for their users, all that happens is that some sites don't work. It doesn't force any burden on the developer. I understand the argument about this making it harder to develop new browsers and so on, but eschewing EME probably wasn't going to prevent that from happening, it would just happen in flash or other closed code.
appleflaxen 10y ago
This is so true that the title should be changed. I propose: Online video services get DRM added to browser in order to "protect content".
scythe 10y ago
It's true but it doesn't make sense IMO for the buck to stop at Netflix. If Netflix could have talked content providers into allowing them to use an open-source "DRM" that worked for ordinary users but which could probably be circumvented by someone with programming skills, this wouldn't happen. The problem is that legally Netflix could be on the hook for any copyright infringement that may have been facilitated by their service. Crucially, the definition of "facilitated" can include not taking enough precautions to prevent it, and apparently using an open-source script that imperfectly prevents copying is still enough to expose Netflix to liability. The laws must be ordered in a way that allows streaming video to be sold to users of open-source software. It's not like the current scheme is entirely resistant to pirates anyway. It's very much like the Drug War in that externalities affecting individuals who have done nothing wrong begin to exceed the damage caused by the "crime".
- nikcub 10y ago
  This argument was more true in the early days of the web DRM debate, but the Netflix of today is largely publishing its own content rather than distributing the content of others, so it is setting the terms of how its content will be protected. I don't think it is a coincidence that Netflix's more aggressive anti-piracy actions and rollout of more DRM-enabled platform choices has come at a time that they're distributing more of their own content.
- algesten 10y ago
  Even if I don't like DRM, I don't believe a closed source DRM is any more perfect than an open source one. There's a strong link to cryptography here, and in that area an open source encryption is no less perfect than a closed one. Whatever DRM was required to please the suffering media conglomerates, it could at least have been open source.
deleted 10y ago
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dkonofalski 10y ago
I don't know if I'm just looking too far into your comment, but I don't see why you're blaming Netflix (or it seems you are) or how you got to them being the bad guys for this? They're not the ones that make the content. If it was up to Netflix, they would just release their shows DRM-free on Netflix for any platform. Unfortunately, that's not how things work and they have to bow to the demands of the content distributors (not creators, like some people have stated in other comments).
- teej 10y ago
  I get your argument but a larger portion than ever of Netflix's catalog is first party content.
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    That doesn't mean that the majority of their catalog is. Everything they do will be optimized for what they have the most of.
- ndesaulniers 10y ago
  > If it was up to Netflix, they would just release their shows DRM-free on Netflix for any platform. That is SO UNTRUE. Netflix would never want their content to be distributed by anyone other than them, which is the point of DRM; absolute control over distribution, not copy protection. If Netflix was against DRM, then why release their first party content DRM ensnared?
  - dkonofalski 10y ago
    That's not necessarily true. It may just be a matter of efficiency. Because all the other content requires DRM, they may have a processing workflow or other technology that just DRMs any and all content in a single, unified manner. Changing that workflow to bypass DRM may actually make it more complicated. You also have to consider that their first party content is rather new so this could absolutely be something that they're working on doing but never implemented because it wasn't an option when they weren't producing their own content.
throwanem 10y ago
All frontiers close. The response suggested by history, if you prefer life on the frontier, is to find a new one.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
If it becomes a problem the internet will find a way to evolve around it.
dasil003 10y ago
Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free software everywhere. Technically that might be true, but a few true believers martyring themselves is not going to change the social and political forces that drive software over time. Here's the bottom line: browser makers have absolutely zero leverage over DRM. Firefox refusing to implement DRM would have been 1000 times more likely to lead to Firefox's irrelevance and death than it would lead to rightsholders caving on DRM requirements. Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps. It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here. The fact is content producers would restrict themselves to licensed devices in a heartbeat, and they would get away with it to, because at the end of the day, people want to watch what they want to watch. EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards. It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.
- franciscop 10y ago
  I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch." IMO the 2005-2015 wave of pirated content was due to the exact opposite; users (people in the living room) not going the extra literal mile to buy/rent a DVD. With the coming of Spotify & Co the music pirate scene has pretty much died off and it's because the physical CDs are replaces by something orders of magnitude easier. Same thing is happening with video content now that most houses have the capability of streaming it. What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software.
  - bearcobra 10y ago
    > What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software. Maybe, but Roku, Fire Sticks, Apple TV & Chromecast all seem to indicate that people are willing to put in some effort to set up a platform for video consumption. That combined with pre-installed solutions like iTunes and Microsoft Movies & TV give users some pretty easy options to compete with their browser.

jasonmp85 10y ago

Yes, the world was better when Flash and Silverlight were the media of choice for delivering video.

mmagin 10y ago
Nevermind that the binary blobs come from pretty much the same place: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/EME#Platform_Support https://wiki.mozilla.org/Media/EME#Platform_Support (Ok, I guess on Linux it's a blob from a Google-owned company.)
- hsivonen 10y ago
  The previous DRM plug-in (Silverlight) was made by Microsoft. The new one (Widevine CDM) is made by Google.
  - OhSoHumble 10y ago
    I was hopeful that the announcement from Mozilla applied to BSD. If Widevine is used, then this will be Linux only. Still good news, however.
JoshTriplett 10y ago
It was indeed, since people had started recognizing the problems with Flash and Silverlight, and they'd have been much easier to kill off. DRM should have stayed second-class, leaving the way open for competitors to offer a first-class web experience as long as they left DRM behind.
- cmsimike 10y ago
  > leaving the way open for competitors to offer a first-class web experience as long as they left DRM behind. Competitors already exist in this area. Here is GoG's listening of DRM-free movies: https://www.gog.com/movies?sort=bestselling&page=1 https://www.gog.com/movies?sort=bestselling&page=1 It is very rare that I find something I want to watch here, where as the content I generally want to watch, sadly, exists behind a DRM-wall. Services/competitors are a dime a dozen, but the issue is driving users to your service, and I don't believe users will run to watch content they don't want to watch just because it is DRM free. I also don't feel like we will force content creators to go DRM free since, as we're seeing, everyone is releasing their own streaming service, which would include DRM.
- mozumder 10y ago
  Sorry, but Hollywood has the upper hand here. Hollywood has no desire to enter an open platform. They're completely happy if none of their movies are online, ever. Really. They already have a massively profitable distribution system in the theaters. The problem is that people want to watch Hollywood movies on their computer, including people that use Linux. So what do you tell those people to do? Tell them run Windows? Have them go watch it in the theater? And they have copyright controls that can force offline sites that host copyrighted content in various countries. So DRM is the tech industry's way to kiss these people ass. It may be flawed or may not work, but it's still ass-kissing. They're the artists, they get to decide what they do with their art. The consumer has no right to an artists creation. Their only choice is to pay up or ignore it. And you'll find that this happens to other art mediums as well. There are many, many art galleries that won't sell certain works of art if they deem your ownership as insufficient. Literally - the customer is wrong.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    I wonder why Hollywood was taken over by lawyers in the first place. Yes, I am going back to before Sony vs Universal.
    - ethbro 10y ago
noir_lord 10y ago
That wasn't his central point I don't think, also Flash and Silverlight where largely beaten by the Open Web because they never got the adoption sufficient to rival it. So instead they lobbied for it to be built in, the day will come when view source won't work anymore because everything fed down will protected by DRM and we moved another step closer to turning the web into a gigantic walled garden for whoever the incumbents are at that point in time.
- gsnedders 10y ago
  Flash's peak marketshare was over 99%. They had the adoption.
  - Razengan 10y ago
    Until Steve Jobs slew it, or so I'm told.
- camus2 10y ago
  > That wasn't his central point I don't think, also Flash and Silverlight where largely beaten by the Open Web because they never got the adoption sufficient to rival it. this is a false statement, Flash was ubiquitous. Still today every chrome user on desktop has a flash player. Obviously, this isn't true for mobile, but before the mobile era flash was basically on every Windows and Mac computer with a browser.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    Merely been installed isn't adoption, if 99% of my web time is using HTML/JS to render content and 1% of that time Flash then do the web browser and flash have the same adoption?. By that metric notepad would be the most adopted programmer text editor in the world..
- frik 10y ago
  > the day will come when view source won't work Yes, with WebAssembly. (With ASM.js, the predecessor it was still JS, but hard to read as human.) that's why WebAssembly is bad for the open web. In near future we will see binary blob SaaS like full Office running in browser. So the 1990s vision of vendor lock-in come to a full circle.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
It would be better if the platforms that wanted DRM just made their own damn desktop apps, just like they make their own iOS apps, Android apps, Roku apps, smart tv apps, etc. There's no reason for them to be embedded in a browser.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mtgx 10y ago
  The irony is that Netflix does have a desktop application as well.
  - jasonkostempski 10y ago
    Not for Linux and I know first had that the Windows Store one is complete garbage because I really wanted it to work. The Hulu one is just as bad.
    - flukus 10y ago
      I've used the windows one a fair bit and would take it over the browser one any day. The desktop one wins for resource usage alone.
      - jasonkostempski 10y ago
        For me, it usually wouldn't start up (some oddball Windows Store error, probably because I don't sign into my machine with a Microsoft ID) and streaming quality was horrible, especially at the beginning, and there was no way to tell it to wait longer for buffering.
  - futurix 10y ago
    This is mostly a side effect of their development efforts for Xbox and Windows 10 Mobile.
- hsivonen 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
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Yver 10y ago
How is that even an argument? That's a false dilemma. The choice isn't limited to binary blob Flash/Silverlight vs binary blob DRM plugin.
- acdha 10y ago
  What other option was seriously on offer? I buy DRM-free music but the video options are extremely limited to a few committed proponents — I love them for that but it's like saying nobody should buy conventional agribusiness food because you can buy organic free-trade kombucha.
greenhouse_gas 10y ago
The thing is that there is (for all intents and purposes) no difference between ECE and plugins. Actually, ECE is a plugin. The only difference is that it helps web-designers switch plugin providers. That's it. No more security. No more standardization. As a user, you still depend on the goodwill of the ECE provider throw you a bone. If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM), you're out of luck. If Adobe decides that it's not worth their time to develop a plugin for PaleMoon, they won't and you're out of luck (or will MS let their ECE plugin run on Linux, or Google's run on FF?). You (as a user) won't be able to switch to another provider. It all depends on the provider.
- djrogers 10y ago
  I completely understand and sympathize with your point, however this: "If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM)" Is rather hilarious - calling OpenBSD on ARM a 'slightly niche' OS in the context of 'operating systems people use to watch video on the web' is rather ambitious, don't you think? OpenBSD on ARM would have to increase it's user base in this arena by a couple orders of magnitude to elevate itself to 'slightly niche'....
  - greenhouse_gas 10y ago
    I picked two relativity popular platforms, though niche together to focus on the danger. All the more so would something like the rust os have problems. The bigger issue will be when these providers will start holding OS's hostage (well, you want to view half the web? You've got to have a locked bootloader and only I have the key. You want to index our sites? Google has permission (the unlocking key) but not you).
  - merb 10y ago
    isn't the Nintendo Switch based on either OpenBSD or FreeBSD and uses ARM? woudn't that be a good reason to have a plugin for that? > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...
    - 10y ago
nikcub 10y ago
One of the only positives to come out of these new standards was that NPAPI could be deprecated. We've arguably replaced an insecure and general purpose open interface to proprietary blobs with more narrow and single purpose open interfaces to proprietary blobs.
blitmap 10y ago
The problem is DRM has been used for more than digital rights management. We've seen it used to surveill the user and collect information - and restrict actions on the users' computer when it thinks you're doing something illicit (not allowing you to burn things to disc, restricting the ability to screenshot videos, uninstalling/deleting programs, adding rootkits, etc). Far outside the scope of providing authorized access to protected content. What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. EME - as I understand it - allows them to create a closed-source program that runs in a sandbox to authorize and reproduce content we've paid to view. It should have very limited ability to do this - but breaking out of sandboxes is what some software engineers are employed to figure out. We're trusting those companies with the ability to run their programs on our computer so we can watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop. We hope it works as it's defined, but it's not a guarantee. It's not worth it and pirates don't rip from Netflix anyway. They usually work for the industry as some part of the distribution/theater network. This hurts the customer. Our computers are not our own.
- threeseed 10y ago
  The idea that Netflix could tell the movie and TV industries what to do is laughable and woefully ignorant of how those industries work. Why do you think Netflix et al invests so much in original content ? Because they have zero leverage and are beholden to the whims of Hollywood.
- daenney 10y ago
  > What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. Why do you assume they didn't? And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Walk away, lose access to all its content, see a large part of their subscriber base move to different services that do support DRM and therefor get the content and eventually have to start firing employees as their income drops? Just about any streaming service has this exact same problem. They don't love DRM nor want to support it, it's annoying and cumbersome. But it's how you get access to the content. And unless you can survive purely on your own content you don't really have the option to walk away over your ideals. If you want DRM out of the system, convince the content/rights holders that DRM isn't in their best interests, i.e they can make more money without it or at the very least won't lose money over not having it. If you're hoping that somehow a significant enough size of the population will boycott it for the industry to change, based on the ideals of the open web and open access, you'll be waiting a long time.
camus2 10y ago
How about the DRM stays out of the free web entirely? You want DRM? develop your own desktop app.

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davexunit 10y ago

Dark days, indeed. Sacrificing the open web so some can watch movies.

MBCook 10y ago
To a huge chunk of users video IS the web. If Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube didn't work (assume YT adopts DRM) the browser would basically be DOA for a HUGE chunk of people.
- cgearhart 10y ago
  So...the _entire_ web should be saddled with DRM because people who don't care about the web wouldn't use it otherwise? Is the web better now because all those people now have _another_ way to passively consume video content?
  - MBCook 10y ago
    That argument works both ways. _NO ONE_ should have the option to view copyrighted videos because you don't want it? Yes, I think this improves the web. You no longer need the unmaintained disaster that was silverlight or the resource vampire and exploit factory that was flash. Users can choose to view this content in a safeER way than before. The only good argument against this is the 'we don't need DRM ' argument, but that hinges on the ability to get content you want in a non-DRM format and it seems clear that isn't happening anytime soon thanks to Hollywood et. al and I don't blame them.
kefka 10y ago
I wonder how long it will be for newsprint media companies to use this to "secure" their websites so that Adblockers cannot process the 'encrypted but you can't see' data?
rimliu 10y ago
How does it sacrifice the open web again? Is there a law being passed that entire web should be DRMed?

futurix 10y ago

When the choice is between proprietary apps or DRM for multimedia content inside open web environment, I'd rather have the latter. Yes, in ideal world there will be DRM-free streaming - but unfortunately that's unrealistic.

josteink 10y ago
> When the choice is between proprietary apps or DRM for multimedia content inside open web environment Why? That puts the cost of DRM on everyone except the ones who want to freeload on our open tech to take our freedom away. And that's ass backwards. You want non-free and closed? Cool deal. Go build it yourself.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Free as in freedom means companies are free to add things like DRM if the want and consumers are free to choose services that don't go down that path.
  - aurelianito 10y ago
    Mmmmmmm, only if I can edit the source of the DRM program and make my own modified version.
- CJefferson 10y ago
  You want free and open? Go build that yourself. People do build Firefox and chrome without this, go download them and enjoy yourself.
  - hsivonen 10y ago
    If you don't want Widevine, you can simply uncheck the “Play DRM content” checkbox in Mozilla-distributed Firefox, and the CDM doesn’t get downloaded and gets deleted if it was already downloaded. No need for a different build. Be sure to uninstall Flash and Silverlight, too.
- 10y ago

snakeanus 10y ago

>to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it Mozilla did not seem to care that much actually. And as long as torrents exist I do not think that there is any reason to support it.

riquito 10y ago
It was either support EME or become the browser where you can't see any video. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...
- snakeanus 10y ago
  More like "It was either support EME or become the browser where you can't use any useless service like Netflix." As long as torrents exist Netflix is useless.

criddell 10y ago

I thought that the only change was that the DRM mechanism was turned into an open standard. How is this worse than before? As someone that occasionally uses Linux, I think it's great that Netflix works there now. Previously, the audience on Linux wasn't worth the development effort for Netflix. Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard is a bad thing?

josteink 10y ago
> Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard Yes. The bit where this is an "open standard" to implement completely closed, non-standard plugins, which cannot be implemented by reading the spec. With this "open standard" any browser or OS not blessed by Hollywood can't have a full web experience. And I take great issues with that.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Another way to look at it is that Netflix isn't part of the web. I suppose that viewpoint admits that obstinance on the part of Firefox was not going to get Netflix to offer their service without DRM.
  - cgearhart 10y ago
    Only insofar as Netflix was opting not to put their content on the web. Netflix was _not_ prevented from being on the web pre-DRM -- it's just that responsibility for meeting their requirements for access to content rested with them rather than browser developers. edit: not really sure how I messed up the original comment, which was an incoherent mess.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Huh? If a browser developer doesn't bother to implement an EME interface and get access to DRM components for their users, all that happens is that some sites don't work. It doesn't force any burden on the developer. I understand the argument about this making it harder to develop new browsers and so on, but eschewing EME probably wasn't going to prevent that from happening, it would just happen in flash or other closed code.

appleflaxen 10y ago

This is so true that the title should be changed. I propose: Online video services get DRM added to browser in order to "protect content".

scythe 10y ago

It's true but it doesn't make sense IMO for the buck to stop at Netflix. If Netflix could have talked content providers into allowing them to use an open-source "DRM" that worked for ordinary users but which could probably be circumvented by someone with programming skills, this wouldn't happen. The problem is that legally Netflix could be on the hook for any copyright infringement that may have been facilitated by their service. Crucially, the definition of "facilitated" can include not taking enough precautions to prevent it, and apparently using an open-source script that imperfectly prevents copying is still enough to expose Netflix to liability. The laws must be ordered in a way that allows streaming video to be sold to users of open-source software. It's not like the current scheme is entirely resistant to pirates anyway. It's very much like the Drug War in that externalities affecting individuals who have done nothing wrong begin to exceed the damage caused by the "crime".

nikcub 10y ago
This argument was more true in the early days of the web DRM debate, but the Netflix of today is largely publishing its own content rather than distributing the content of others, so it is setting the terms of how its content will be protected. I don't think it is a coincidence that Netflix's more aggressive anti-piracy actions and rollout of more DRM-enabled platform choices has come at a time that they're distributing more of their own content.
algesten 10y ago
Even if I don't like DRM, I don't believe a closed source DRM is any more perfect than an open source one. There's a strong link to cryptography here, and in that area an open source encryption is no less perfect than a closed one. Whatever DRM was required to please the suffering media conglomerates, it could at least have been open source.

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dkonofalski 10y ago

I don't know if I'm just looking too far into your comment, but I don't see why you're blaming Netflix (or it seems you are) or how you got to them being the bad guys for this? They're not the ones that make the content. If it was up to Netflix, they would just release their shows DRM-free on Netflix for any platform. Unfortunately, that's not how things work and they have to bow to the demands of the content distributors (not creators, like some people have stated in other comments).

teej 10y ago
I get your argument but a larger portion than ever of Netflix's catalog is first party content.
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  That doesn't mean that the majority of their catalog is. Everything they do will be optimized for what they have the most of.
ndesaulniers 10y ago
> If it was up to Netflix, they would just release their shows DRM-free on Netflix for any platform. That is SO UNTRUE. Netflix would never want their content to be distributed by anyone other than them, which is the point of DRM; absolute control over distribution, not copy protection. If Netflix was against DRM, then why release their first party content DRM ensnared?
- dkonofalski 10y ago
  That's not necessarily true. It may just be a matter of efficiency. Because all the other content requires DRM, they may have a processing workflow or other technology that just DRMs any and all content in a single, unified manner. Changing that workflow to bypass DRM may actually make it more complicated. You also have to consider that their first party content is rather new so this could absolutely be something that they're working on doing but never implemented because it wasn't an option when they weren't producing their own content.

throwanem 10y ago

All frontiers close. The response suggested by history, if you prefer life on the frontier, is to find a new one.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

If it becomes a problem the internet will find a way to evolve around it.

dasil003 10y ago

Sorry, but as someone who spent nearly a decade founding and building a premium content VOD service, and 6 of those years fighting fiercely against DRM and making great content available without DRM, I have both the knowledge and moral authority to say that you're living in a fantasy world. You might as well say that anyone who is not living an RMS-sanctioned ascetic technology lifestyle is hurting the cause of free software everywhere. Technically that might be true, but a few true believers martyring themselves is not going to change the social and political forces that drive software over time. Here's the bottom line: browser makers have absolutely zero leverage over DRM. Firefox refusing to implement DRM would have been 1000 times more likely to lead to Firefox's irrelevance and death than it would lead to rightsholders caving on DRM requirements. Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps. It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here. The fact is content producers would restrict themselves to licensed devices in a heartbeat, and they would get away with it to, because at the end of the day, people want to watch what they want to watch. EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards. It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.

franciscop 10y ago
I don't agree with "people want to watch what they want to watch." IMO the 2005-2015 wave of pirated content was due to the exact opposite; users (people in the living room) not going the extra literal mile to buy/rent a DVD. With the coming of Spotify & Co the music pirate scene has pretty much died off and it's because the physical CDs are replaces by something orders of magnitude easier. Same thing is happening with video content now that most houses have the capability of streaming it. What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software.
- bearcobra 10y ago
  > What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software. Maybe, but Roku, Fire Sticks, Apple TV & Chromecast all seem to indicate that people are willing to put in some effort to set up a platform for video consumption. That combined with pre-installed solutions like iTunes and Microsoft Movies & TV give users some pretty easy options to compete with their browser.