4 ms·

In the short to medium term, Netflix, etc. will just fallback on delivering streams through Silverlight of Flash. That's what they do know and those plugins wil

by akjj 13y ago

In the short to medium term, Netflix, etc. will just fallback on delivering streams through Silverlight of Flash. That's what they do know and those plugins will keep working. There's precedent for this in the way that many websites would deliver H.264 encoded HTML5 videos to browsers that supported those, but used Flash when Firefox didn't support H.264. In the longer term, Silverlight is abandoned and Flash is on its way out. I think it's unlikely that Firefox holds out against EME in the long term, but it could be that it slowly gains a reputation for being bad for many streaming sites. The Flash fallback is buggier and less featureful than the streaming in other browsers, maybe slower as well. At some point, people upgrade their computers and find it hard to get a Flash plugin that works and so they eventually give up and switch browsers. I'm not sure how technically possible it is, but another option is that Netflix and similar companies will write their own plugin for Firefox which supports DRM. Presumably they will try to make a plugin which is not a platform like Flash, but only serves the purpose of doing the DRM. An equivalent, but probably techincally superior, option is to put the DRM into an asm.js blob. Some people in this thread believe that the lack of support for EME will put pressure on media companies non-DRM streaming options. This strikes me as wishful thinking. In the short-term, the existence of Flash and Silverlight fallbacks mitigates the pressure on Hollywood and streaming providers. Again, see the H.264 story. In the long-term, Hollywood's smart enough to realize that if there exists a DRM solution for Firefox today, then it will be technically possible in the future as well. That's why I don't see the point of boycotting EME. If it could plausibly lead to DRM-free streaming options, that would be an improvement, but I don't believe it will happen. On the other hand, from a binary blob perspective, EME plugins are strictly better than NPAPI plugins, and second, users who don't want DRM can always not use it. All boycotting does is reduce the options for users who are willing to accept DRM.

Fice 13y ago
> from a binary blob perspective, EME plugins are strictly better than NPAPI plugins DRM can't be implemented in a simple binary plugin since the user will still be able to copy the protected content by e.g. modifying the video driver. All system layers from EME module in a browser to hardware will need to be restricted from modification. Do you believe that Secure Boot was created just for malware protection?
- acdha 13y ago
  The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough. Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback.
  - Fice 13y ago
    > The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough. Flash and Silverlight do not provide any real protection and they are certainly not enough for content cartels. That's why DRM solutions are being developed. As soon as the major software vendors will provide complete DRM implementation restricting all levels from user agents to drivers and bootloader, content providers will start to require it. > Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback. But that shim will not provide any real content protection if the OS is open for modification. For example, someone could make a version of the OS's media API implementation that will allow users to save any media stream decoded by CDM. Thus, the OS will have to be locked down to support DRM, that's what I am trying to say.

by akjj 13y ago

Fice 13y ago

> from a binary blob perspective, EME plugins are strictly better than NPAPI plugins DRM can't be implemented in a simple binary plugin since the user will still be able to copy the protected content by e.g. modifying the video driver. All system layers from EME module in a browser to hardware will need to be restricted from modification. Do you believe that Secure Boot was created just for malware protection?

acdha 13y ago
The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough. Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback.
- Fice 13y ago
  > The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough. Flash and Silverlight do not provide any real protection and they are certainly not enough for content cartels. That's why DRM solutions are being developed. As soon as the major software vendors will provide complete DRM implementation restricting all levels from user agents to drivers and bootloader, content providers will start to require it. > Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback. But that shim will not provide any real content protection if the OS is open for modification. For example, someone could make a version of the OS's media API implementation that will allow users to save any media stream decoded by CDM. Thus, the OS will have to be locked down to support DRM, that's what I am trying to say.