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I understand Mozilla's philosophical objections to the EME, but if the alternative is Flash/Silverlight (and it's pretty clear that is, in fact, the alternative
by cwyers 13y ago
I understand Mozilla's philosophical objections to the EME, but if the alternative is Flash/Silverlight (and it's pretty clear that is, in fact, the alternative), I don't think Mozilla's mission loses out by implementing the EME.
- makomk 13y agoIn practice, so far the EME implementations that content providers have actually been willing to support have been far more tightly locked down than Flash or Silverlight. The Microsoft one supports hardware-level protected playback paths and unlike Silverlight no-one's managed to get it to run under Wine, and the Google one only runs on locked-down official Chromebook hardware which users can't run any non-Google programs on.
- bsmedberg 13y agoThe major DRM platform out there is Netflix on Silverlight, and it's not particularly locked-down at all. Of course there are others, but they hardly matter at all in terms of marketshare.
- jamesgeck0 13y agoNetflix won't run on the Mono implementation of Silverlight because it's dependent on a closed source DRM module. That's a bit locked down.
- stormbrew 13y agoFlash works on the three major desktop/laptop OS', ChromeOS, all the consoles afaik, and Android. EME will probably result in balkanized DRM that will never work on a bunch of those things (or you'll have to worry about whether the content you want to watch supports your platform). EME is a step down from Flash for consumer choice. A big fat one.
- tedmielczarek 13y agoFlash DRM has never worked on Linux, AFAIK.
- stormbrew 13y agoIt definitely does. Proof by troubleshooting: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-problems-playing.html http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/flash-player-11-pro...
- makomk 13y agoIn theory it does. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get it to work because the way in which it obtains a hardware ID to tie playback to doesn't work on the Linux distro I use and I can't feasibly debug or fix it. Assuming it were actually secure as stated, the Mozilla solution would have the same problem - if you can modify how it obtains the hardware ID, you can bypass the DRM in ways that content providers wouldn't accept. (The really stupid thing is, I was trying to watch online streaming video that was available to the whole of the UK, with access controlled through IP geolocation. There was no need to tie decryption to a particular device ID in the first place. EME seems to be taking exactly the same approach though with support from Mozilla.)
- hsivonen 13y agoSee "Linux" in https://www.adobe.com/products/adobe-access/tech-specs.html https://www.adobe.com/products/adobe-access/tech-specs.html . The problem is that copyright holders can still stipulate policies that exclude Linux. For example, http://voddler.com/en/ http://voddler.com/en/ greets Linux users with "Here you can rent and play movies. For even more movies and TV-series, visit us from your PC or Mac, where we have a even larger selection."
- mmagin 13y agoThe Flash browser plugin is NOT available on current versions of Android. There is some Flash available for Adobe AIR apps, but that's something different.
- shmerl 13y agoNo, alternatives are not using DRM at all.
- cwyers 13y agoNo, Flash absolutely exists and is almost as ubiquitous as web browsers themselves. You don't get to ignore it just because you don't like it.
- shmerl 13y agoLeaving DRM to Flash and external plugins is preferable to injecting it into the standard. It makes a clear delineation between broken and improper / insecure tools and proper way forward. I.e. DRM is insecure and unethical by design. Let it stay outside.
- rasz_pl 13y agoAlternative is TPB