4 ms·

I don't have much to add here, just wanted to say that I think this is a tremendous gift to the Internet that we loved. It would suffice to say that after many

by jchw 2y ago

I don't have much to add here, just wanted to say that I think this is a tremendous gift to the Internet that we loved. It would suffice to say that after many hard reality checks I don't really feel like there are any browser vendors that feel like good stewards of the open web, and it seemed like a new browser that actually managed to break out would be infeasible... until Ladybird showed up. And now, I'm typing this reply in Ladybird. Of course, it has a long way to go before it is going to be a good daily driver, but I truly believe this is the beginning of something great. I've been consistently surprised by what works, and the rate of improvement is staggering at times. My question: Has anyone given any thoughts regarding the stance to take with DRM features, e.g. Widevine/Encrypted Media Extensions? It seems like since our previous stewards of the open web didn't care enough, now making a browser with substantial marketshare without this may be hard. Seems like a hard problem, I really do wonder where Ladybird will stand if it continues on its current lightning fast trajectory.

tracker1 2y ago
I think it should be possible to have some sort of open extension to allow side band canvas rendering to allow for such extensions as optionally provided by the OS. Possibly with an API for custom engines in WASM. I don't think it should have to be in the browser. I would like the option to watch the content. I know the while process of DRM is stupid and will be side stepped somewhere.
- jchw 2y ago
  Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all. If the web was not controlled by corporations, DRM as part of the platform 100% would have simply never happened. From my point of view, putting DRM into web browsers is actively bad for a couple of reasons beyond the usual arguments against DRM. The greatest asset the web platform has is that it's a unified, open platform that anyone can participate in; Of course, DRM harms users too, but specifically DRM harms the web as a platform. You can't simply have a "full" web browser that can browse the entirety of the web (as ordinary users understand it) without licensing Widevine. To date, only large corporate web browsers have ever gotten this privilege[1]; community web browsers are shit out of luck, almost certainly forever. Not only that, but Widevine will only officially support a small subset of the operating systems that are out there, ensuring that you can't get a "full" web browsing experience on, for example, any BSD (at least not without manual work and violating several license agreements on the way.) Even if Ladybird bucks the trend and manages to get a Widevine license somehow, it will only be possible to make this work on Windows, Linux and macOS. Yes, I understand this covers the vast majority of users, but if you can't see how this is extraordinarily antithetical to the open web I don't really know what else to say. The web didn't even begin on any of those platforms! Of course, I seriously can't blame Ladybird if they want to go this route. After all, in the position that Ladybird is in, pragmatism is a stance that is hard to beat. Ladybird currently doesn't have the muscle to flex to try to influence the future of the web platform in such a way, especially not against the will of the mega-corp overlords that currently control the web platform. If I had to guess, I'd guess the lack of an answer to my question is because taking the pragmatic stance on this particular issue will prove controversial, though I hope if that is the case that people continue to direct their ire towards W3C and Mozilla who pretty much immediately folded when the issue came up in the first place. In the moment when Flash and Silverlight died, there was a small sliver of hope that DRM on the web would die with it, but instead we wove DRM directly into the fabric of the web, and Mozilla, no doubt afraid to watch their marketshare dwindle even further, (which it has continued to do anyways, mind you,) played a huge part in that. Issues like this are why there is guaranteed to be vile toxicity when something like WEI comes up. We know that there is no entity out there holding the line to protect the web platform; once one of these technologies like WEI makes it into Chrome, the era of the open web will have essentially ended. If you believe that the open web is important, then any technology that's vaguely WEI shaped is enemy #1, and when there is no other option, people will choose violence, again and again. DRM on the web isn't really quite as dire of a situation, but it isn't particularly great either. (One might wonder what the point of keeping DRM out of the browser is, forcing users to use separate software, making their overall experience worse... but that's kind of the thing: Why in the fuck should these vendors and this DRM'd content, that is antithetical to the open web, get to benefit from the web platform built and used mostly by people who stand to gain nothing from it? If you want the benefit of the web platform and all it offers, you should be forced to lose the DRM. Otherwise, have fun deploying your own native software.) [1]: https://developers.google.com/widevine/drm/overview https://developers.google.com/widevine/drm/overview
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all. A web browser is a user agent. Why is the browser deciding anything one way or another? Let the user decide by providing options one way or another. If the user wants DRM access, let them; why is it the browser's business? Again, the two important words: User agent. The freedom to decide and choose is what helped Firefox take out IE6 and led to most subsequent browsers featuring some form or another of extensibility (which incidentally is now regressing because web browsers are increasingly developer and publisher agents).
    - jchw 2y ago
      Firstly, I object to DRM being added to the web platform in the first place. It is antithetical to the platform. This goes above the definition of what a user agent is and goes into what the web even is in the first place. Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary.
      - mike_d 2y ago
        If Netflix doesn't work in the browser users aren't going to lean back in their chairs and think fondly of the freedom fighter jchw that protected them from working against their own interests, they are going to open Edge and watch Netflix. No matter how much you opine the outcome is not going to change, the end users have spoken in what they want in their user agent.
        jchw 2y ago
        Yes... that's pretty much exactly what I said. Users will indeed just do what they need to do to watch Netflix, whether or not DRM is good for them or the web platform. > Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary. That's why it shouldn't be a part of the web platform in the first place. Because we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests. Here are some other examples of where we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests: - Users should not have to give up their rights to be able to access legally-mandated warranty services or replacement parts. - Users should not be forced to accept being tracked. - Users should not be forced to forfeit their right to be a part of a class action lawsuit to use a product or service. Try as you might, you're never going to convince anyone that the free market will just magically make all of the incentives align and make "the right choice", these are things that ultimately have to be solved with policy. The closest thing to "policy" on the web is standards, and W3C put EME in the standards despite widespread outcry, and that's why we're at where we're at. Now the thing is, we have DRM in browsers, but we still don't have Web Environment Integrity, a complete and utter bastardization of the open web that would've made it cryptographically impossible for an open source browser to really meaningfully exist (since compiling it yourself would likely make it impossible for you to e.g. do banking or watch Twitch streams, since it would then fail attestation.) The reason we don't have WEI is because it was widely rejected by the community. Not because users made a choice. It's nice to think that you can just leave it to the users to pick and they'll always do the right thing, but at the end of the day most people don't have time to care about DRM or WEI. Most people are not technical and just simply don't have the capacity in their day to be concerned about things like that. That's why it's literally the job of people who do have that capacity to fight for the user's best interests and try to avoid users being put into positions where they are basically guaranteed to be fucked. And frankly, we're not winning the fight. (This is no different from anything else. The vast majority of people can't be expected to fight for e.g. free speech rights either; it's always going to be a minority of people who hold the line.)

by jchw 2y ago

tracker1 2y ago

I think it should be possible to have some sort of open extension to allow side band canvas rendering to allow for such extensions as optionally provided by the OS. Possibly with an API for custom engines in WASM. I don't think it should have to be in the browser. I would like the option to watch the content. I know the while process of DRM is stupid and will be side stepped somewhere.

jchw 2y ago
Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all. If the web was not controlled by corporations, DRM as part of the platform 100% would have simply never happened. From my point of view, putting DRM into web browsers is actively bad for a couple of reasons beyond the usual arguments against DRM. The greatest asset the web platform has is that it's a unified, open platform that anyone can participate in; Of course, DRM harms users too, but specifically DRM harms the web as a platform. You can't simply have a "full" web browser that can browse the entirety of the web (as ordinary users understand it) without licensing Widevine. To date, only large corporate web browsers have ever gotten this privilege[1]; community web browsers are shit out of luck, almost certainly forever. Not only that, but Widevine will only officially support a small subset of the operating systems that are out there, ensuring that you can't get a "full" web browsing experience on, for example, any BSD (at least not without manual work and violating several license agreements on the way.) Even if Ladybird bucks the trend and manages to get a Widevine license somehow, it will only be possible to make this work on Windows, Linux and macOS. Yes, I understand this covers the vast majority of users, but if you can't see how this is extraordinarily antithetical to the open web I don't really know what else to say. The web didn't even begin on any of those platforms! Of course, I seriously can't blame Ladybird if they want to go this route. After all, in the position that Ladybird is in, pragmatism is a stance that is hard to beat. Ladybird currently doesn't have the muscle to flex to try to influence the future of the web platform in such a way, especially not against the will of the mega-corp overlords that currently control the web platform. If I had to guess, I'd guess the lack of an answer to my question is because taking the pragmatic stance on this particular issue will prove controversial, though I hope if that is the case that people continue to direct their ire towards W3C and Mozilla who pretty much immediately folded when the issue came up in the first place. In the moment when Flash and Silverlight died, there was a small sliver of hope that DRM on the web would die with it, but instead we wove DRM directly into the fabric of the web, and Mozilla, no doubt afraid to watch their marketshare dwindle even further, (which it has continued to do anyways, mind you,) played a huge part in that. Issues like this are why there is guaranteed to be vile toxicity when something like WEI comes up. We know that there is no entity out there holding the line to protect the web platform; once one of these technologies like WEI makes it into Chrome, the era of the open web will have essentially ended. If you believe that the open web is important, then any technology that's vaguely WEI shaped is enemy #1, and when there is no other option, people will choose violence, again and again. DRM on the web isn't really quite as dire of a situation, but it isn't particularly great either. (One might wonder what the point of keeping DRM out of the browser is, forcing users to use separate software, making their overall experience worse... but that's kind of the thing: Why in the fuck should these vendors and this DRM'd content, that is antithetical to the open web, get to benefit from the web platform built and used mostly by people who stand to gain nothing from it? If you want the benefit of the web platform and all it offers, you should be forced to lose the DRM. Otherwise, have fun deploying your own native software.) [1]: https://developers.google.com/widevine/drm/overview https://developers.google.com/widevine/drm/overview
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >Personally, I think life would be better if browsers just didn't play the game at all. A web browser is a user agent. Why is the browser deciding anything one way or another? Let the user decide by providing options one way or another. If the user wants DRM access, let them; why is it the browser's business? Again, the two important words: User agent. The freedom to decide and choose is what helped Firefox take out IE6 and led to most subsequent browsers featuring some form or another of extensibility (which incidentally is now regressing because web browsers are increasingly developer and publisher agents).
  - jchw 2y ago
    Firstly, I object to DRM being added to the web platform in the first place. It is antithetical to the platform. This goes above the definition of what a user agent is and goes into what the web even is in the first place. Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary.
    - mike_d 2y ago
      If Netflix doesn't work in the browser users aren't going to lean back in their chairs and think fondly of the freedom fighter jchw that protected them from working against their own interests, they are going to open Edge and watch Netflix. No matter how much you opine the outcome is not going to change, the end users have spoken in what they want in their user agent.
      - jchw 2y ago
        Yes... that's pretty much exactly what I said. Users will indeed just do what they need to do to watch Netflix, whether or not DRM is good for them or the web platform. > Secondly, users don't really get a choice. Users are fucked because browsers implement features like DRM and websites hard-depend on them. So the user is no longer choosing whether or not to enable DRM, but whether or not they can watch Netflix on their laptop. User agents should not put users in predicaments like this where they are forced to make choices against their own interests. This is one of those situations where nuance is necessary. That's why it shouldn't be a part of the web platform in the first place. Because we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests. Here are some other examples of where we shouldn't force users to make choices against their own interests: - Users should not have to give up their rights to be able to access legally-mandated warranty services or replacement parts. - Users should not be forced to accept being tracked. - Users should not be forced to forfeit their right to be a part of a class action lawsuit to use a product or service. Try as you might, you're never going to convince anyone that the free market will just magically make all of the incentives align and make "the right choice", these are things that ultimately have to be solved with policy. The closest thing to "policy" on the web is standards, and W3C put EME in the standards despite widespread outcry, and that's why we're at where we're at. Now the thing is, we have DRM in browsers, but we still don't have Web Environment Integrity, a complete and utter bastardization of the open web that would've made it cryptographically impossible for an open source browser to really meaningfully exist (since compiling it yourself would likely make it impossible for you to e.g. do banking or watch Twitch streams, since it would then fail attestation.) The reason we don't have WEI is because it was widely rejected by the community. Not because users made a choice. It's nice to think that you can just leave it to the users to pick and they'll always do the right thing, but at the end of the day most people don't have time to care about DRM or WEI. Most people are not technical and just simply don't have the capacity in their day to be concerned about things like that. That's why it's literally the job of people who do have that capacity to fight for the user's best interests and try to avoid users being put into positions where they are basically guaranteed to be fucked. And frankly, we're not winning the fight. (This is no different from anything else. The vast majority of people can't be expected to fight for e.g. free speech rights either; it's always going to be a minority of people who hold the line.)