10 ms·

DRM enabled Google to have an open source browser still under its control

174 points by phowat 7y ago

jrockway 7y ago
I think the blame needs to be directed at the video streaming companies, not at Google. Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope. That's on them, not Google. If Netflix cared about a cross-browser experience or open standards, the tools are available to them. With that in mind, they should really hire someone that has access to Usenet or a private Bittorrent tracker. All of Netflix's shows are available for free in 4k there. Google sold them DRM that doesn't actually work. Netflix paid their employees millions of dollars to have meetings and develop code to work with the idea in mind that Google's magic beans would save their content from piracy. It didn't work, though. You should be mad at Netflix. Netflix should be mad at Google. But everyone just carries on like everything is great. It's weird.
- mises 7y ago
  And you know where you can? Warez sites. For all the garbage people throw at there users, it doesn't help. Last I checked, a cheap chinese HDMI splitter can strip the protection, though I heard murmurs about a newer version which stopped that? Anyway, I almost (almost) understand on software with the critical one-month-after-release window, but it doesn't help video one whit. I wish they would just stop. Maybe some one with more industry knowledge can enlighten me as to why they do it? Is it just to discourage the average person? Terrarium TV, Kodi, etc. have made it idiot-proof.
- tareqak 7y ago
  Is YouTube not a video-streaming company inside of Google?
  - jrockway 7y ago
    YouTube doesn't require Widevine DRM.
    - wmf 7y ago
      From a previous thread, YouTube movie rentals (that everybody forgot exists) do require DRM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554594
      - est31 7y ago
        Interesting. But if Google wanted to hurt browsers that don't have DRM they could put DRM onto every YouTube video "just because".
        harry8 7y ago
        and they will. You have to make sure the bait is taken before you do the switch or they all get a away.
        floatboth 7y ago
        Companies do shit because it's profitable, not "just because". YouTube's business model is centered around ads. (There's also Premium, superchats, the new paid subscription mini-Patreon thing.. but it's still mostly ads.) If they needed more money, they would fight ad blockers harder, e.g. by fusing the ads and the video into one stream. But they aren't doing this. DRM is antithetical to the ad-supported model, because you want to spread content with ads as far as possible, make it as accessible as possible, to get more views and clicks. Restrictive crap gets in the way of that.
- writepub 7y ago
  > Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope You're fundamentally questioning the need for DRM - which is naive. Netflix AND the studios would go out of business in no time without the ability to protect their work. I'm not sympathetic to the Studios who've historically been sharks, but Netflix (with DRM) is an equitable model - stream anywhere for a fixed monthly fee. FYI - you can save Netflix shows for offline consumption, within the app
  - bradstewart 7y ago
    I pay Netflix for convenience. I most certainly would not cancel my subscription if they removed DRM. In fact, I'd probably pay a bit more for the ability to download content for the rare occasions I want watch it on a different device.
    - writepub 7y ago
      An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators
      - joshuamorton 7y ago
        > An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators Could you give an example (or many) since as you say the evidence is vast. I did a cursory search, and couldn't find sources, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.
        coretx 7y ago
        Torrentfreak.com tends to cover all sides of the story in a human readable format.
      - ken 7y ago
        Amazon Music went DRM-free in 2008. The iTunes Store went DRM-free in 2009. Bandcamp has always (AFAICT) been DRM-free. Were musicians harmed by these? I can't find any musician, economist, or researcher who has ever complained about this, or suggested that DRM would help their financials.
- wmf 7y ago
  Browsers could have said no to Netflix. Netflix/Amazon/Hulu could have written native apps instead of shoehorning DRM into the browser. I'm pretty sure nobody at Netflix has illusions that DRM actually works; it's checkbox security. Hollywood requires them to have DRM so they have DRM and everybody moves on.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    > Browsers could have said no to Netflix They tried (namely FireFox), but most users don't care about DRM, but they do care about Netflix and Hulu working, so the user pushback was just too much for them to not do it.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    It was pretty nice when there were native apps for Netflix. I'm pretty sure I'm not halucinating, and this was a real thing, back in the old days when Netflix still used Silverlight.
    - ronsor 7y ago
      Netflix still has native apps. They always have.
      - thrower123 7y ago
        Do they, or are they Electron ports? I just remember that there was a nice, very performant Windows client at one time, and then there was a newer version released at some point which was much, much worse, and I switched to using the browser all the time.
        vitorgrs 7y ago
        Yes, the Windows 10 app is a HTML/JS app. The Windows 8 app is a native app.
- jedberg 7y ago
  This is wrong on so many levels. First off, everyone at Netflix knew that DRM wouldn't stop piracy. They knew what Bittorrent was after all. Google didn't sell Netflix anything. Netflix does care about cross browser experience. But you know who doesn't? The content owners. They wouldn't sign contracts without DRM, because for some reason they think DRM works. Or at least it stops the causal pirates. The ones who would just do a Save As... And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road, for one, Netflix doesn't make those, other studios make them and then sell it to Netflix exclusively, so once again, it's up to the movie studios as to what goes into their contracts. And secondly, even for the stuff Netflix makes itself, the entire streaming infrastructure is set up for DRM. It would actually be really complicated to offer just a couple of items DRM free, with lots of if/then code branches. Disclaimer: I worked at Netflix but this is all my own opinion, not the company's.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
    > And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason). I might have put up with it for third party content, but certainly not for the Originals.
    - bscphil 7y ago
      >This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason). I don't know about the individual you spoke to (in general I'm skeptical that support agents are up to date on "technical" issues), but Netflix's own support docs explicitly say that Chrome and Firefox (at least) don't get more than 720p streams. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 The reason for this is DRM: in Edge and other software that gets 1080p and above, the decryption is done in hardware that is tougher for pirates to break. Widevine is a software DRM scheme that pirates are generally believed to have already broken. So Netflix limits Chrome and Firefox users to 720p.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
est31 7y ago
A majority of websites doesn't use the EME DRM. It's Netflix and some other streaming portals. Any Chrome fork would work with almost all web sites beyond those few. And with the new edge, there even will be a Chrome fork that supports EME DRM as well, and most likely it will support higher resolutions than Chrome itself as it's using OS built in DRM mechanisms that the studios love. DRM is not the source of Google's control over Chrome. They use a different mechanism: manpower. They have an insane amount of developers working on Chrome, constantly changing it. Any smaller project forking Chrome and changing some major part won't be able to keep up with the changes unless they upstream. And ultimately, Google employees have control over what gets upstreamed and which contribution gets rejected.
- wnevets 7y ago
  Don't forget about customer outreach, you can't visit a major google property without being ask to switch.
  - lucasmullens 7y ago
    Does YouTube tell Firefox/Safari/Edge users to install Chrome?
    - half-kh-hacker 7y ago
      I use Firefox Nightly and I haven't seen an 'install Chrome' banner on YouTube. The use of Shadow DOM v0 is a pretty good push, though. Chrome is way faster to load a YouTube page than FF. I hope they update their version of Polymer soon.
      - est31 7y ago
        IDK about your setup, but for me, youtube is using Polymer 3.2.0 since a few weeks already. You can try out by evaluating Polymer.version in the dev console.
    - wnevets 7y ago
      It does for Edge
notaboutdave 7y ago
Google's massive browser market share has opened the door to some ugly things. I can't help but shake my head whenever I come across a "Chrome only" SaaS startup.
cracauer 7y ago
Always surprised how few people realize this. Yes, on a random OS with no binary builds by Google I can have the Chromium browser. It does not have the ability to watch Netflix, though. To get that you need to run a Linux binary chrome in a Linux API translator.
cracauer 7y ago
The other large binary blob in the non-opensource builds, apart from DRM, is the wifi network detection module. It will look at what wifi networks are close to you, and Google finds out your physical location that way without your computer having a GPS chip or a cellphone network chip (Google has the full database of the center of gravity for every wifi network from the streetview cars, so the information of which network is how strong for your computer allows location by something like +- 10 meters).
- millstone 7y ago
  This is concerning; do you have any reference or sources?
  - cracauer 7y ago
    strings /opt/google/chrome/chrome | grep -i wifi | grep -i loca ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider_linux.cc ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider.cc ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider_common.cc
  - cracauer 7y ago
    Using wifi networks around a device is Google's standard, low-power way to determine a device's location. In a cellphone it is used so that you don't have to fire up the power-hungry GPS chip. Since they built the entire infrastructure and database of wifi access points and locations (by scanning from the streetview vehicles and syncing with GPS) they also use it for the desktop browsers. Which if you legitimately need the location of a "desktop" (which here includes Laptops) would be a nice way to go. It's just a bit of an unclear situation with regards to consent, especially informed consent. (this is not to be confused with Chrome's private API chrome.networkingPrivate, which is used by the device owner to be able to pick and configure wifi networks without leaving Chrome)
- floatboth 7y ago
  Why would the location service client be a blob? o_0 It's just a web API, there's no reason to not publish the client code, Mozilla's location service client is https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/system/NetworkGeolocationProvider.jsm https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/system/N...
skybrian 7y ago
Although it's limited, there is still a chance of competition. This prevents pure open source browsers, but it doesn't prevent a large software company from forking Chromium and adding DRM themselves (as Microsoft is doing).
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I may have the minority opinion here, but I don’t even think DRM should be in web browsers, rather, use vendor provided apps to consume Netflix, Google Play Movies, Hulu, etc. On mobile, I prefer using web versions of services and not using apps. I make an exception when consuming content that I pay for. The web should be free and unencumbered.

174 points by phowat 7y ago

I think the blame needs to be directed at the video streaming companies, not at Google. Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope. That's on them, not Google. If Netflix cared about a cross-browser experience or open standards, the tools are available to them. With that in mind, they should really hire someone that has access to Usenet or a private Bittorrent tracker. All of Netflix's shows are available for free in 4k there. Google sold them DRM that doesn't actually work. Netflix paid their employees millions of dollars to have meetings and develop code to work with the idea in mind that Google's magic beans would save their content from piracy. It didn't work, though. You should be mad at Netflix. Netflix should be mad at Google. But everyone just carries on like everything is great. It's weird.

mises 7y ago
And you know where you can? Warez sites. For all the garbage people throw at there users, it doesn't help. Last I checked, a cheap chinese HDMI splitter can strip the protection, though I heard murmurs about a newer version which stopped that? Anyway, I almost (almost) understand on software with the critical one-month-after-release window, but it doesn't help video one whit. I wish they would just stop. Maybe some one with more industry knowledge can enlighten me as to why they do it? Is it just to discourage the average person? Terrarium TV, Kodi, etc. have made it idiot-proof.
tareqak 7y ago
Is YouTube not a video-streaming company inside of Google?
- jrockway 7y ago
  YouTube doesn't require Widevine DRM.
  - wmf 7y ago
    From a previous thread, YouTube movie rentals (that everybody forgot exists) do require DRM. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19554594
    - est31 7y ago
      Interesting. But if Google wanted to hurt browsers that don't have DRM they could put DRM onto every YouTube video "just because".
      - harry8 7y ago
        and they will. You have to make sure the bait is taken before you do the switch or they all get a away.
      - floatboth 7y ago
        Companies do shit because it's profitable, not "just because". YouTube's business model is centered around ads. (There's also Premium, superchats, the new paid subscription mini-Patreon thing.. but it's still mostly ads.) If they needed more money, they would fight ad blockers harder, e.g. by fusing the ads and the video into one stream. But they aren't doing this. DRM is antithetical to the ad-supported model, because you want to spread content with ads as far as possible, make it as accessible as possible, to get more views and clicks. Restrictive crap gets in the way of that.
writepub 7y ago
> Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope You're fundamentally questioning the need for DRM - which is naive. Netflix AND the studios would go out of business in no time without the ability to protect their work. I'm not sympathetic to the Studios who've historically been sharks, but Netflix (with DRM) is an equitable model - stream anywhere for a fixed monthly fee. FYI - you can save Netflix shows for offline consumption, within the app
- bradstewart 7y ago
  I pay Netflix for convenience. I most certainly would not cancel my subscription if they removed DRM. In fact, I'd probably pay a bit more for the ability to download content for the rare occasions I want watch it on a different device.
  - writepub 7y ago
    An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators
    - joshuamorton 7y ago
      > An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators Could you give an example (or many) since as you say the evidence is vast. I did a cursory search, and couldn't find sources, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.
      - coretx 7y ago
        Torrentfreak.com tends to cover all sides of the story in a human readable format.
    - ken 7y ago
      Amazon Music went DRM-free in 2008. The iTunes Store went DRM-free in 2009. Bandcamp has always (AFAICT) been DRM-free. Were musicians harmed by these? I can't find any musician, economist, or researcher who has ever complained about this, or suggested that DRM would help their financials.
wmf 7y ago
Browsers could have said no to Netflix. Netflix/Amazon/Hulu could have written native apps instead of shoehorning DRM into the browser. I'm pretty sure nobody at Netflix has illusions that DRM actually works; it's checkbox security. Hollywood requires them to have DRM so they have DRM and everybody moves on.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > Browsers could have said no to Netflix They tried (namely FireFox), but most users don't care about DRM, but they do care about Netflix and Hulu working, so the user pushback was just too much for them to not do it.
- thrower123 7y ago
  It was pretty nice when there were native apps for Netflix. I'm pretty sure I'm not halucinating, and this was a real thing, back in the old days when Netflix still used Silverlight.
  - ronsor 7y ago
    Netflix still has native apps. They always have.
    - thrower123 7y ago
      Do they, or are they Electron ports? I just remember that there was a nice, very performant Windows client at one time, and then there was a newer version released at some point which was much, much worse, and I switched to using the browser all the time.
      - vitorgrs 7y ago
        Yes, the Windows 10 app is a HTML/JS app. The Windows 8 app is a native app.
jedberg 7y ago
This is wrong on so many levels. First off, everyone at Netflix knew that DRM wouldn't stop piracy. They knew what Bittorrent was after all. Google didn't sell Netflix anything. Netflix does care about cross browser experience. But you know who doesn't? The content owners. They wouldn't sign contracts without DRM, because for some reason they think DRM works. Or at least it stops the causal pirates. The ones who would just do a Save As... And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road, for one, Netflix doesn't make those, other studios make them and then sell it to Netflix exclusively, so once again, it's up to the movie studios as to what goes into their contracts. And secondly, even for the stuff Netflix makes itself, the entire streaming infrastructure is set up for DRM. It would actually be really complicated to offer just a couple of items DRM free, with lots of if/then code branches. Disclaimer: I worked at Netflix but this is all my own opinion, not the company's.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  > And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason). I might have put up with it for third party content, but certainly not for the Originals.
  - bscphil 7y ago
    >This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason). I don't know about the individual you spoke to (in general I'm skeptical that support agents are up to date on "technical" issues), but Netflix's own support docs explicitly say that Chrome and Firefox (at least) don't get more than 720p streams. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 The reason for this is DRM: in Edge and other software that gets 1080p and above, the decryption is done in hardware that is tougher for pirates to break. Widevine is a software DRM scheme that pirates are generally believed to have already broken. So Netflix limits Chrome and Firefox users to 720p.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

est31 7y ago

A majority of websites doesn't use the EME DRM. It's Netflix and some other streaming portals. Any Chrome fork would work with almost all web sites beyond those few. And with the new edge, there even will be a Chrome fork that supports EME DRM as well, and most likely it will support higher resolutions than Chrome itself as it's using OS built in DRM mechanisms that the studios love. DRM is not the source of Google's control over Chrome. They use a different mechanism: manpower. They have an insane amount of developers working on Chrome, constantly changing it. Any smaller project forking Chrome and changing some major part won't be able to keep up with the changes unless they upstream. And ultimately, Google employees have control over what gets upstreamed and which contribution gets rejected.

wnevets 7y ago
Don't forget about customer outreach, you can't visit a major google property without being ask to switch.
- lucasmullens 7y ago
  Does YouTube tell Firefox/Safari/Edge users to install Chrome?
  - half-kh-hacker 7y ago
    I use Firefox Nightly and I haven't seen an 'install Chrome' banner on YouTube. The use of Shadow DOM v0 is a pretty good push, though. Chrome is way faster to load a YouTube page than FF. I hope they update their version of Polymer soon.
    - est31 7y ago
      IDK about your setup, but for me, youtube is using Polymer 3.2.0 since a few weeks already. You can try out by evaluating Polymer.version in the dev console.
  - wnevets 7y ago
    It does for Edge

notaboutdave 7y ago

Google's massive browser market share has opened the door to some ugly things. I can't help but shake my head whenever I come across a "Chrome only" SaaS startup.

cracauer 7y ago

Always surprised how few people realize this. Yes, on a random OS with no binary builds by Google I can have the Chromium browser. It does not have the ability to watch Netflix, though. To get that you need to run a Linux binary chrome in a Linux API translator.

cracauer 7y ago

The other large binary blob in the non-opensource builds, apart from DRM, is the wifi network detection module. It will look at what wifi networks are close to you, and Google finds out your physical location that way without your computer having a GPS chip or a cellphone network chip (Google has the full database of the center of gravity for every wifi network from the streetview cars, so the information of which network is how strong for your computer allows location by something like +- 10 meters).

millstone 7y ago
This is concerning; do you have any reference or sources?
- cracauer 7y ago
  strings /opt/google/chrome/chrome | grep -i wifi | grep -i loca ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider_linux.cc ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider.cc ../../services/device/geolocation/wifi_data_provider_common.cc
- cracauer 7y ago
  Using wifi networks around a device is Google's standard, low-power way to determine a device's location. In a cellphone it is used so that you don't have to fire up the power-hungry GPS chip. Since they built the entire infrastructure and database of wifi access points and locations (by scanning from the streetview vehicles and syncing with GPS) they also use it for the desktop browsers. Which if you legitimately need the location of a "desktop" (which here includes Laptops) would be a nice way to go. It's just a bit of an unclear situation with regards to consent, especially informed consent. (this is not to be confused with Chrome's private API chrome.networkingPrivate, which is used by the device owner to be able to pick and configure wifi networks without leaving Chrome)
floatboth 7y ago
Why would the location service client be a blob? o_0 It's just a web API, there's no reason to not publish the client code, Mozilla's location service client is https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/system/NetworkGeolocationProvider.jsm https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/dom/system/N...

skybrian 7y ago

Although it's limited, there is still a chance of competition. This prevents pure open source browsers, but it doesn't prevent a large software company from forking Chromium and adding DRM themselves (as Microsoft is doing).

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I may have the minority opinion here, but I don’t even think DRM should be in web browsers, rather, use vendor provided apps to consume Netflix, Google Play Movies, Hulu, etc. On mobile, I prefer using web versions of services and not using apps. I make an exception when consuming content that I pay for. The web should be free and unencumbered.