47 ms·

YouTube Ditches Flash, and It Hardly Matters

381 points by sinak 12y ago

jsnk 12y ago
I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery.
- bobajeff 12y ago
  Actually, for most online video sites users are their bread and butter. (Since they are ad supported) In fact users also provide the content in most cases.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- vlad003 12y ago
  I'm not sure what the benefit of HTML5 video is if you still end up being forced to use some proprietary component. You ditch Flash but now you have to run some DRM software. And there's so much more to HTML5 than video; I disagree that lack of DRM video support would set the rest of HTML5 back in any way. EDIT: I guess the sandboxing aspect of EME is a significant improvement over Flash running as a plugin.
  - notatoad 12y ago
    The benefits of html5 video are practical ones: it simply works better than flash does. It plays without stuttering, the audio works properly, it doesn't steal my mouse focus. Also, it doesn't get webcam permissions by default, or all the other crap that comes along with flash. Sure, its still DRM, but flash was terrible for plenty of reasons that aren't DRM.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      Which is funny, because flash was also great for creating content... If you were building learning demos or content, flash is still better than having to hand-code an alternative with html+svg+js... Though one of my early hopes when Adobe bought macromedia was that they'd push the authoring tool to export an archive file (similar to xaml) that would contain a manifest along with svg and javascript as a bundle. That never really happened though... I still hope that now it can. I know a lot of elearning content creators that really miss being able to use flash for most things... yeah, the player was horrible, and the formats sucked.. but the content creation experience was so nice. Creating data driven projects with Flex wasn't bad either.
  - spyder 12y ago
    HTML5 video works on phones and tablets
    - ris 12y ago
      But with EME it will only work on those phones and tablets which are running on an architecture and platform that the EME CDM has chosen to bother supporting. So it's pretty much as bad as flash.
      - spdustin 12y ago
        And blu-ray only works on blu-ray players, not Motorola StarTACs. I don't get most of the arguments on this thread. And I'm very much on the fence about DRM as a producer of licensed content, and a consumer of it.
        aikah 12y ago
        And video file formats are not physical objects you put in a physical disc player. False equivalence makes your point idiotic. Hard to believe how customers are willing to accept more and more of this bullshit, vendors did a great job at brainwashing them.
        spdustin 12y ago
        And you don't own those intangible things, you license them, so how is it you expect to be able to do MORE than the average consumer of a tangible product like a blu-ray? It's not a false equivalence fallacy when the alternate argument only inverts the parameters while violating the same logical foundation. And it's insulting to suggest I (or anyone else) have been brainwashed because my world view is a bit more pragmatic than, "give me all the rights." I'll eat the down votes for that, no problem, because this shouldn't be an adversarial debate between producers and consumers. There may be better ways to approach acknowledging producer rights and consumer usage, even if the consumers who feel their rights are violated are outnumbered by those who have no problem. Sure, the argument could be made, "if only they knew how their rights are being violated!" That argument could be made about any number of situations where one class feels like they need to lift up another one. And it's just as meaningless unless you do something to change the situation. DRM is evil, blah blah blah, I get it, as a consumer, I do. I also get that there are arguments for DRM that are perfectly valid from the point of view of the producer, even if the consumer thinks that the producer is off his nut. Surely there are people out there on HN who aren't so polarized by this issue? Sometimes, it feels like the US Congress in here.
- awalton 12y ago
  > I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. And the DRM does absolutely nothing to stop anyone from doing whatever they want with it. DRM punishes paying customers at the expense of being a slight pain-in-the-ass for pirates. Plain and simple: they delivered content to my computer and I have a key to decrypt it - there's nothing stopping me from doing whatever I want with those bits but the time to break their silly DRM scheme. Had Apple, Google, Netflix et al. the backbone enough to stand up to the media companies, we'd never have been inflicted with such stupidity. Now, Google's taking it upon themselves to start using their own DRM module with their own media - so much for the company that prided itself on Do No Evil.
  - sounds 12y ago
    Great argument. One point, though: it's "Don't be evil." Are you able to say you "do no evil"?
  - geofft 12y ago
    How is that punishing a paying customer? It's a quirk of classical information theory that you can't transmit a piece of data for a limited period of time. As an approximation, they apply a silly DRM scheme that takes time to break, and ask customers if they are willing to pay for time-limited access. Unlike with DRM on music downloads or (worse) physical copies of software or games, there's no expectations mismatch here. If you sell a download, the average buyer expects to be able to copy that download, etc. If you stream a movie, the average buyer no more expects to be able to retain a copy than the average movie-ticket holder does. They didn't think they paid for a copy of those bits for all time. There's nothing stopping someone who visits a movie theater from doing whatever they want with those photons, other than the time to build a sufficiently concealed camera, is there? And pirates do show up to movie premieres with concealed cameras... but would you argue that the security guards stopping you from carrying in a giant camcorder are "punishing paying customers" while not effectively deterring pirates?
    - aikah 12y ago
      How is that punishing a paying customer? You must be young, forgetting about formats like WMV or WMA where you couldn't open the file without the proper license installed on your computer.That's what DRM is about.And of course you needed to log to a server regularly to renew the license, or you couldn't listen or watch the media anymore. Just like games, pirates don't have issues with online license verification,since they play pirated games that got rid of them. Obviously vendors did a nice job not only brainwashing the legislator but also the client.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  So what, what guarantees you get a EME module of your OS of choice?
  - hsivonen 12y ago
    Nothing.
- thristian 12y ago
  Over thousands of years of human history, new technologies have changed the ways people communicate, from language to writing to the printing press, and so on. Every change shifted the economic balance, so things that once were prohibitively expensive became easy, and people who derived economic benefit from former scarcity became disadvantaged. I hear what the proponents of DRM-encumbered browsers are saying - media streaming companies control huge chunks of our popular culture, and significant political power, and it's expedient to give in to their demands and stop threatening their business model. But when I look back at the last thousands years of technological progress, I cannot bring myself to say "yes, this is good enough. We should legislatively freeze our technology at early-21st-century levels forever." Our civilisation has benefited from technology so much already, I can't in good conscience deny people the benefits of future technology, even in exchange for the right to stream Game of Thrones.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Media producing companies that have no way of safeguarding their revenue stream would like the technical threshold for copying to be at least a minor deterrent, because otherwise people have no incentive to pay them; many many people are in fact OK with being freeloaders. I'm so sick of seeing Game of Thrones offered as the standard example. Sure, HBO has more more money than any of us would know what to do with. I, on the other hand, make my living working on films with budgets that only amount to a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, and believe me that does not go very far - the lower cost of digital vs. celluloid film is only one line item in the production process, whereas you still have to pay for locations, costumes, props, housing, transport, food, lighting, and a whole bunch of other things before you even get to handing out any wages. It's very, very hard to monetize a low-budget film. And there's constant downward pressure on production budgets, because indie films don't usually have fat box-office payoffs, and instead depend on small-scale releases in festivals and the art-house cinema circuit, followed by (you hope) some international box office and (you really hope) a long tail of DVD/streaming sales. And that long tail is highly vulnerable to piracy, and the existence of piracy is a big deterrent to investors. So when you're saying Big Studio makes enough money with their latest superhero franchise movie, or HBO makes enough money with their huge base of cable subscriptions, and so you don't feel bad about pirating Superhero 4 or Game of Thrones well sure, I understand that - none of the producers are in any danger of losing their shirts, everyone on the cast and crew got paid handsomely at the fairly generous rates their guilds/unions have negotiated over the years, and the shareholders still make plenty of money and get a nice dividend check every quarter. On the other hand, lots of smaller content providers are getting fucked financially because it's a lot harder to answer the question of 'how will investors make their money back?' than it was a few years ago. So spare me the stereotypes of evil media barons trying to stop the brave plucky technological underdogs. That same technology is also massively disruptive to creative professionals and small businesses that work outside the Big Media tent, and actively hinders their ability to make a living.
- chx 12y ago
  "Piracy is a service problem." -- remember that? There's nothing on Netflix you can't download illegally. People would pick Netflix still because it's a superior experience to what most people perceive as shady sites. This has always been so with DRM: the only ones it inconveniences are the paying customers. Incredible stupidity.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    I use Netflix every day. The DRM doesn't inconvenience me at all. I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me they have to go down a salt mine and they won't have any internet down there and it's such a tragedy that they won't be able to finish watching the thing they started watching on Netflix because stupid DRM. Sorry, but those are bullshit first world problems. Your life is not significantly impacted by this.
    - jhasse 12y ago
      My wireless network is very slow in my bedroom. Also there's often no internet connection on most railway lines in Germany. So we aren't just talking about going down a salt mine.
      - anigbrowl 12y ago
        Like I said, first world problems. You can upgrade or move your wi-fi router. The idea of internet on a train was practically unheard of a decade ago. I'm sorry, but I don't think that being able to watch a movie is so important in every situation that DRM is intolerable, even though I'm a filmmaker.
        Xylakant 12y ago
        It's certainly not intolerable to not watch movies on the train, but it's inconvenient. I spend a significant chunk of my time on trains every week where I can watch movies. And due to DRM the illegal product is superior. Guess what people are doing? I've never seen anyone watching Netflix, but I see VLC on a daily basis. It's a service problem.
- copsarebastards 12y ago
  > I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. The alternative is non-DRM browsers. EME does nothing to protect content, so the "content is their bread and butter" argument doesn't work. > Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value. > Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery. Including EME sets the web platform back because we no longer have control of that part of our browsers.
  - eridius 12y ago
    > Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value. That's absurd. Netflix would sooner stop supporting web browsers on desktop OS's before they started allowing DRM-free streaming. Regardless of your own view on DRM, Netflix's licenses to the content they provide almost certainly requires the use of DRM, and the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming. Without EME, Netflix would be relying on proprietary browser plugins forever, and if a platform with a significant userbase appeared that didn't support any form of proprietary plugin, and they wanted to support that platform, they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles).
    - timonovici 12y ago
      > the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming. Don't be so sure. People were saying exactly this several years ago about music. We owe it to Jobs that he realized it's stupid idea, and put an end to it. > they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles). That seems better to me, than poisoning a whole standard just to get their way, or the highway.
- davexunit 12y ago
  >I am not sure what the alternatives are. Refuse to use Netflix and co.! >Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards No, giving in on DRM set it backwards. The web is intended to be "free and open", which means that DRM is not welcome.
geofft 12y ago
One thing to note is that (last I heard) both Chrome and Firefox sandbox EME modules fairly tightly. Flash is a browser plugin, which means that it usually injects code into the browser itself, and runs with full privileges on your computer, just as much as your browser does. This is what makes Flash such fertile ground for exploits of all kinds, and also makes it bad for your privacy because it has direct access to your webcam, microphone, clipboard, supercookies, etc. — anything the browser can do, Flash can do without asking. If it asks, it's out of the kindness of its heart, not because the browser has any say. Chrome and Firefox's sandboxes, meanwhile, are both open-source. You can inspect what powers the EME module might possibly have, and know that it can't gain any more. A vulnerability in the code is unlikely to be able to do anything other than pirate your download of Game of Thrones — and that's assuming it even has general-purpose network access. Ideally, a vulnerability would be able to do nothing other than modify the video you see, but the remote site could achieve that by encoding a modified video in the first place. As far as the general moral arguments about DRM go, it's true that the new boss is the same as the old boss. But the bulk of the EFF's argument against Flash in this blog post is about security, not about open content, and it's important to acknowledge that EME is a significant step forward. The new boss is sitting in a tightly locked cage.
- detrino 12y ago
  Flash for Chrome uses the PPAPI and is sandboxed.
  - geofft 12y ago
    That is a fair point, but I would also consider that a (limited) victory on par with the (limited) victory of moving from Flash to EME, and I wish it got more press. The people who are implementing sandboxes are doing massively effective work to improve the security and privacy of everyone using the web. Chrome has been quite active here and I don't think they can be thanked enough. That said, PPAPI is Chrome-only; EME is a standard, and Mozilla's implementation even outlines a way for other browsers to integrate the EME module Mozilla uses, plus their sandbox, into their own browsers.
userbinator 12y ago
AIUI, EME is basically a standard for interfacing DRM plugins, so instead of the one implementation (Flash) of it that was around before, we might end up with a wide variety of DRM modules? That certainly doesn't seem like a better situation than before, where basically all the RE efforts were focused on Flash's DRM.
- asadotzler 12y ago
  Your assumption here about going from one DRM implementation to many is wildly off the mark. There have been several major video DRM solutions in widespread use for many many years including Adobe's Access (in Flash, and other places) Microsoft's PlayReady (in Windows, X-box, Silverlight, etc.) and more recently Google bought WideVine for its DRM offerings and has spent the last 4 or 5 years building that into the Google Chrome and Android platforms. Pretty much every major video streaming service was/is using a different DRM implementation. That's nothing new at all. Your suggestion that somehow there's going to be a shift from one to a lot more DRM providers thanks to EME is uninformed and unfounded.
  - hsivonen 12y ago
    With NPAPI each site picked one plug-in that worked in multiple browsers. Another site could pick another single plug-in that also worked in multiple browsers. With EME, each browser supports some DRM(s) and there's no single DRM supported by all browsers, so sites need to support multiple DRMs to reach multiple browsers.
slang800 12y ago
And through all this effort to "protect their content", they still haven't managed to stop people from bypassing the DRM and giving the videos away for free in torrents. I have a hard time seeing how implementing DRM provides any value to media companies, other than a false sense of security.
- vlad003 12y ago
  It's possible the false sense of security is worth more than people think. It lets them say "hey, we tried".
  - geofft 12y ago
    Certain companies have been extraordinarily interested in implementing WebCrypto without mandating HTTPS. Which is to say, a man-in-the-middle attacker could trivially modify the JS that calls WebCrypto and cause different operations to be performed. My suspicion is that they have contractual agreements with the non-technical folks in the studios that they have to "encrypt" content, and the technically-competent redistributor has no direct interest in the crypto being sound. If the API gave them 256-bit military-grade AES encryption, but only in ECB mode, they'd probably use it.
  - jeremyjh 12y ago
    I think this is a very important point. These media companies have not been able to extract as much rent from their IP as they could ten years ago, and their shareholders are not happy about that. They absolutely have to try something.
- pkulak 12y ago
  Right click -> Save As is a tad easier than finding a torrent.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    Right click -> Save As is only possible after you've paid.
sowhatquestion 12y ago
I distinctly remember being upset about DRM in the '00s, back when it was being used to place onerous restrictions on content that people had ostensibly "bought" (CDs, DVDs, AAC audio files, etc.). Now that it's being used to prevent people from saving streams... I hate to say this, but please remind me why I should be upset? I never had any illusion of "owning" a stream. Not only that, I would rather stream than own in most cases.
- logn 12y ago
  Because it's a lot harder to make a competing web browser now. You'll have to buy the secret binaries from one of the DRM providers, if they'd even be willing to sell.
  - geofft 12y ago
    Firefox, which is open source, both sandboxes the Adobe decryption module—giving the browser control over the world that the Adobe module sees—and fetches it at startup from Adobe's site. It seems almost impossible that you'd be unable to hit the same URL from your own browser and put it inside your own sandbox such that the module can't tell it's not running inside Firefox. You have the hard constraints that the module can't examine the outside world except through the sandbox, and the sandbox itself is open source. Edited to add: Widevine, the (Google-owned) decryption module Chrome uses, has no license fees. http://www.widevine.com/ http://www.widevine.com/
    - logn 12y ago
      For Widevine, it looks like the following would be required: Completion of legal agreements Delivery of a Widevine documentation package Technical discussion to understand the device type, chipset, and review the Widevine robustness rules Exchange of libraries, SDKs, and integration documentation Keybox request and fulfillment (as needed) Client integration testing For piggybacking on the Firefox binary, maybe that would work but sounds like something you might get a cease and desist for. Anyhow, if everyone agree to make the binaries 100% free as in beer (like Cisco did with H.264), then that's better than nothing and makes writing new browsers easier. But the future is in new devices, operating systems, and virtualization. Being provided binaries limits freedom to make new things. And of course who knows what backdoors are in them. (Edit to add: this is a great discussion, http://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/25kbi7/next_firefox_will_have_drm_built_in_will/ http://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/25kbi7/next_firefox_... -- note that the tracking/privacy/backdoor issues with this are huge.)
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interestingingly it seems Youtube is still using Flash in its pre-roll advertisements unless I'm missing something obvious. Those videos get the 'f' from flashblock and won't view unless it is enabled.
pkulak 12y ago
Yes, EFF, we're still not living in a content wonderland where Hollywood studios send their blockbusters to people's browsers in naked <video> tags. Shocking, I know.
- joshAg 12y ago
  Look, if they want to make a plugin that understands their DRM scheme or some standalone app that's basically just a scaled down browser with support for a <drm_video> tag, they can tilt at that windmill all fucking day for all I care. But I still need a <video> tag that works like an <img> tag in that there's at least I format supported by all major broswer venders that works for that tag, that lets me easily save the video for offline viewing, and is completely unencumbered by patents or licensing issues, so anyone else can make a browser supporting it. If that means I have to use a tag called <supercalifragilisticexpialidocious> instead of <video>, I don't really care. I need that functionality. The web needs that functionality.
  - asadotzler 12y ago
    You have that functionality thanks to the <video> tag and H.264 and AAC in MP4. That seems to meet all of your requirements. Am I missing the problem? EME and DRM are not required to make that work in Firefox, IE, and Chrome.
    - joshAg 12y ago
      H.264 requires a per user license fee paid to MPEG LA until 2027 when the patent runs out: http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-closer-look-at-the-costs-and-fine-print-of-h-264-licenses/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-closer-look-at-the-costs-and-... AAC also requires a per unit license for anyone who manufacturers or developers of a codec: http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx So no, neither of them meet the 3 requirements I laid out.
      - nsgi 12y ago
        What does that have to do with EME?
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
Why are they calling EME "locks"? It isn't locking anything. It's obfuscation. The most relevant physical analogy would be smog. They should call it what it is; digital smog.
- eridius 12y ago
  It is a lock. You open it with a key. Just like a physical lock. And just like a physical lock, there are ways to force it open without the key. And just like a physical lock, forcing it open without a physical key is (usually) illegal.
  - _ikke_ 12y ago
    Yes, but it's a lock where they have to provide the key too, and the only way to prevent you from manually opening the lock is obfuscating this process.
  - malka 12y ago
    And, like a physical lock, you need to provide the users with the key, so that they can use the product.
ouiya 12y ago
I like the order in which they named the culprits, Apple, Microsoft and Google, while referring to dominant browser vendors. EFF, please do what you preach. Be honest and accurate. If you have a soft-corner for Google because it pays money, Google has a soft-corner for technologies which give you money. Of course the free-as-in-beer leering majority at HN loves Google, so bring it on with the downvotes.
hyperion2010 12y ago
Somehow this reminds me of my long running rage against all things webapp and javascript. Companies have started using the browser as a substitute for an OS because it is easier to distribute working code to multiple platforms on a browser. So what do the drm people target now? The browser: aka operating system 2.0. And the thing that is scary is that people don't realize this and think "oh, its just W3C, its just a single program on my computer, they aren't really attacking general computation!" Spoilers: browsers act as virtual machines for probably 90% of all calculations that run on an average pc these days.
ck2 12y ago
The nice thing about youtube is it also encodes most videos in webm format so it still plays on XP with Firefox and some old phones Other sites like vimeo only do mp4
t0mas88 12y ago
Adobe got Flash (once one of their main products) wrong on the security side so many times that we can't even keep count anymore. Let alone the horribly bad performance of flash and the hack-slack way they added features. Why on earth would anyone want to trust this company to build another proprietary blob of their sub-par code into all browsers? They've proven to be incompetent in many attempts, let's not give them a 32nd chance.
silon5 12y ago
I notices Firefox sometimes starts busy looping on 2 cores while playing youtube (usually when "buffering"). IMO, they should really move the decoding threads into separate processes so they can be restarted easily (just like Flash was).
dredmorbius 12y ago
EFF's view is that we've been sold down the river with EME (Encrypted Media Extension). Except ... that I seem to be able to access most online video content (certainly on YouTube, Vimeo, and other major sites) via youtube-dl. And hugely prefer to do so. It's much more useful for me to be able to queue, speed up / slow down, pause, resize and otherwise manipulate video with consistent controls than to have the limited (and varied) interfaces various online video / multimedia sites offer. I've got a video playing as I write this, well, paused, at 133% playback speed, in a small 250px x 190px window -- when I can give it my focus again I'll simply mouse over it and tap 'space' to resume playback. If I want to skip back a few seconds, or a minute, the left or down keyboard arrows do that for me. As they do for all video I play. I can also normalized audio levels (many are too low, this one's actually got a tendency to clip), and more.
- belorn 12y ago
  If you are going to use unauthorized methods to gain content, there is many convenient ways to do so. Most are not effected by DRM. The issue with DRM on video is one which lawful consumers of content has to deal with, and those who run programs which is infected by said DRM.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Um. Who elected you god and decided youtube-dl is "unauthorized"? I was actually inquiring as to how such use is impacted by the decision. I've found few or none. Then again, there's little commercial content I've interest in regardless.
    - dahdum 12y ago
      belorn probably figured the terms exclude it, I was curious and checked - seems so. Maybe they've authorized your method specifically somewhere though? http://www.youtube.com/t/terms http://www.youtube.com/t/terms You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
kelnos 12y ago
It's a little weird that the EFF is using YouTube's move to HTML5 video by default to attack EME, considering that YT doesn't require EME... (Yet, anyway.)
- idlewan 12y ago
  It's maybe to point out some of the irony of "Hey, let's accept another proprietary blob from Adobe" when it's not even needed anymore now.
blakeja 12y ago
Can I uninstall Flash at this point? What do I really need it for?
- cpeterso 12y ago
  Most Facebook games require Flash.
Aoyagi 12y ago
Well, hopefully using the Flash player remains an option.
orblivion 12y ago
I think this article seems to act as though ditching flash just happened to coincide with adoption of this new EME thing. The issue is that no matter how much we kick and scream about user freedom, business interests are business interests. Economics are economics. There just isn't enough user demand for freedom to overcome the loss to businesses of losing control of their content. In order to win this, I think we may need to come to terms with this. Perhaps it means trying even harder to inform the public and increase demand for freedom, but maybe it means coming up with alternate ways to monetize, or alternate ways to produce which circumvent the need to monetize.
- copsarebastards 12y ago
  This is a misrepresentation of the problem here. You're restating the corporate arguments. > There just isn't enough user demand for freedom to overcome the loss to businesses of losing control of their content. DRM doesn't prevent businesses losing control of their content. Orange is the New Black has, AFAIK, only ever been distributed through EME, but it's all over the Pirate Bay, every single episode. > maybe it means coming up with alternate ways to monetize We have alternate ways to monetize. The simplest being doing exactly what they are doing except not DRM-ing their content, which demonstrably has worked for multiple content distributors. There are others. DRM isn't about controlling content or monetize that content. It's about maintaining an outdated business model because business executives don't understand the internet. Which would be fine, except that it's hurting the open web.
  - mikeryan 12y ago
    Orange is the New Black has, AFAIK, only ever been distributed through EME This isn't even close to true. Netflix has a ton of non browser delivery mechanisms. It may only have been delivered with drm but that's a different thing and I don't know enough to know if that's true.
    - copsarebastards 12y ago
      > This isn't even close to true. Netflix has a ton of non browser delivery mechanisms. It may only have been delivered with drm but that's a different thing and I don't know enough to know if that's true. Maybe that’s a bad example. But I’ll put out this challenge: find me a reasonably popular TV show that’s supposedly completely covered by DRM, and I’ll find you a torrent for it. My point is that DRM does nothing to prevent piracy.
Jack000 12y ago
I kind of miss flash. Security issues aside, Actionscript 3 and the graphics api felt a lot easier to use than js/canvas and was more performant. It felt like adobe just rolled over once Steve Jobs declared flash dead. They even bundled mcafee antivirus with the flash download, it's like they just want it to be over.
- nsgi 12y ago
  Isn't it possible to create HTML5 apps with Flash Pro?
  - Jack000 12y ago
    in actionscript? I haven't worked with it for a while but I don't think so. Even if it was possible I wouldn't want yet another layer of abstraction to compile to html. it's not the graphical authoring environment that really matters. I just prefer the OOP style of AS3 to Javascript. Open standards are great and all, but the result is that we've had to wait years just for html to catch up to where flash was.
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  I think Haxe recreates the API method for method, and targets HTML5/Canvas as well as C++ and other stuff.
- brandlib 12y ago
  You can check out Adobe AIR; it uses Actionscript 3 and it deploys to web, desktop, Android, and iOS. In practice you can straight up copy-paste an AS3 codebase into an AIR project and have it work 99%. And I like to think that Adobe is more committed to supporting AIR since it's available for mobile.
murbard2 12y ago
Security is what matters here, the DRM can be circumvented anyway.
spiralpolitik 12y ago
To be honest the W3C was between a rock and hard place here as all the other alternatives on the table were worse than this. If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. As for "the open web", nothing changes. Content that was DRM free will continue to be DRM free, content that wasn't DRM free will still remain DRM. If anything we are slightly better off as one more proprietary has bitten the dust. As with a lot of things, the next steps aren't technical. Organizations like the EFF should be working with content providers to educate them on the benefits of being DRM free. A much harder task than firing off press releases.
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  > If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. You're wrong about this. That is an excellent outcome. Large companies want the universal application that free software enjoys, but with none of the respect for the users it requires. I have absolutely no problem with companies having huge problems locking users in. If we had 2 or 3 proprietary standards to implement DRM that things worse for users, that's a good thing. "Why is this so hard to do?" The answer should be: "We refuse to make such abhorrent behavior easy", rather than: "It's not" Making it easy for vendors to dick users over is a bad thing. Making DRM easy to deploy damages the open web in a very bad way.
Tloewald 12y ago
Why don't the people with this point of view rail against proprietary fonts the way they do against video codecs? If we took the same approach to fonts then you'd only be allowed to use open source fonts and everything would look ugly. Instead we're allowed to deploy copy-protected fonts to render text nicely and no-one is unhappy. If the ultimate issue is that people want to be able to steal video content with impunity, it all makes perfect sense. If the issue is technical or has to do with software freedom, I'm unconvinced. Not being able to open my old documents because Word 2025 isn't able to read Word 2004 documents is not the same thing as not being able to archive videos of Galavant that I don't have the right to keep.
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  Oddly enough, fonts in particular have extreme benefits to open source models of development, the influence of actual research can be applied outright, and open fonts can be deployed rapidly. I can't imagine a worse battleground to stake your argument on than this one, other than servers.

381 points by sinak 12y ago

jsnk 12y ago

I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery.

bobajeff 12y ago
Actually, for most online video sites users are their bread and butter. (Since they are ad supported) In fact users also provide the content in most cases.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
vlad003 12y ago
I'm not sure what the benefit of HTML5 video is if you still end up being forced to use some proprietary component. You ditch Flash but now you have to run some DRM software. And there's so much more to HTML5 than video; I disagree that lack of DRM video support would set the rest of HTML5 back in any way. EDIT: I guess the sandboxing aspect of EME is a significant improvement over Flash running as a plugin.
- notatoad 12y ago
  The benefits of html5 video are practical ones: it simply works better than flash does. It plays without stuttering, the audio works properly, it doesn't steal my mouse focus. Also, it doesn't get webcam permissions by default, or all the other crap that comes along with flash. Sure, its still DRM, but flash was terrible for plenty of reasons that aren't DRM.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    Which is funny, because flash was also great for creating content... If you were building learning demos or content, flash is still better than having to hand-code an alternative with html+svg+js... Though one of my early hopes when Adobe bought macromedia was that they'd push the authoring tool to export an archive file (similar to xaml) that would contain a manifest along with svg and javascript as a bundle. That never really happened though... I still hope that now it can. I know a lot of elearning content creators that really miss being able to use flash for most things... yeah, the player was horrible, and the formats sucked.. but the content creation experience was so nice. Creating data driven projects with Flex wasn't bad either.
- spyder 12y ago
  HTML5 video works on phones and tablets
  - ris 12y ago
    But with EME it will only work on those phones and tablets which are running on an architecture and platform that the EME CDM has chosen to bother supporting. So it's pretty much as bad as flash.
    - spdustin 12y ago
      And blu-ray only works on blu-ray players, not Motorola StarTACs. I don't get most of the arguments on this thread. And I'm very much on the fence about DRM as a producer of licensed content, and a consumer of it.
      - aikah 12y ago
        And video file formats are not physical objects you put in a physical disc player. False equivalence makes your point idiotic. Hard to believe how customers are willing to accept more and more of this bullshit, vendors did a great job at brainwashing them.
        spdustin 12y ago
        And you don't own those intangible things, you license them, so how is it you expect to be able to do MORE than the average consumer of a tangible product like a blu-ray? It's not a false equivalence fallacy when the alternate argument only inverts the parameters while violating the same logical foundation. And it's insulting to suggest I (or anyone else) have been brainwashed because my world view is a bit more pragmatic than, "give me all the rights." I'll eat the down votes for that, no problem, because this shouldn't be an adversarial debate between producers and consumers. There may be better ways to approach acknowledging producer rights and consumer usage, even if the consumers who feel their rights are violated are outnumbered by those who have no problem. Sure, the argument could be made, "if only they knew how their rights are being violated!" That argument could be made about any number of situations where one class feels like they need to lift up another one. And it's just as meaningless unless you do something to change the situation. DRM is evil, blah blah blah, I get it, as a consumer, I do. I also get that there are arguments for DRM that are perfectly valid from the point of view of the producer, even if the consumer thinks that the producer is off his nut. Surely there are people out there on HN who aren't so polarized by this issue? Sometimes, it feels like the US Congress in here.
awalton 12y ago
> I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. And the DRM does absolutely nothing to stop anyone from doing whatever they want with it. DRM punishes paying customers at the expense of being a slight pain-in-the-ass for pirates. Plain and simple: they delivered content to my computer and I have a key to decrypt it - there's nothing stopping me from doing whatever I want with those bits but the time to break their silly DRM scheme. Had Apple, Google, Netflix et al. the backbone enough to stand up to the media companies, we'd never have been inflicted with such stupidity. Now, Google's taking it upon themselves to start using their own DRM module with their own media - so much for the company that prided itself on Do No Evil.
- sounds 12y ago
  Great argument. One point, though: it's "Don't be evil." Are you able to say you "do no evil"?
- geofft 12y ago
  How is that punishing a paying customer? It's a quirk of classical information theory that you can't transmit a piece of data for a limited period of time. As an approximation, they apply a silly DRM scheme that takes time to break, and ask customers if they are willing to pay for time-limited access. Unlike with DRM on music downloads or (worse) physical copies of software or games, there's no expectations mismatch here. If you sell a download, the average buyer expects to be able to copy that download, etc. If you stream a movie, the average buyer no more expects to be able to retain a copy than the average movie-ticket holder does. They didn't think they paid for a copy of those bits for all time. There's nothing stopping someone who visits a movie theater from doing whatever they want with those photons, other than the time to build a sufficiently concealed camera, is there? And pirates do show up to movie premieres with concealed cameras... but would you argue that the security guards stopping you from carrying in a giant camcorder are "punishing paying customers" while not effectively deterring pirates?
  - aikah 12y ago
    How is that punishing a paying customer? You must be young, forgetting about formats like WMV or WMA where you couldn't open the file without the proper license installed on your computer.That's what DRM is about.And of course you needed to log to a server regularly to renew the license, or you couldn't listen or watch the media anymore. Just like games, pirates don't have issues with online license verification,since they play pirated games that got rid of them. Obviously vendors did a nice job not only brainwashing the legislator but also the client.
pjmlp 12y ago
So what, what guarantees you get a EME module of your OS of choice?
- hsivonen 12y ago
  Nothing.
thristian 12y ago
Over thousands of years of human history, new technologies have changed the ways people communicate, from language to writing to the printing press, and so on. Every change shifted the economic balance, so things that once were prohibitively expensive became easy, and people who derived economic benefit from former scarcity became disadvantaged. I hear what the proponents of DRM-encumbered browsers are saying - media streaming companies control huge chunks of our popular culture, and significant political power, and it's expedient to give in to their demands and stop threatening their business model. But when I look back at the last thousands years of technological progress, I cannot bring myself to say "yes, this is good enough. We should legislatively freeze our technology at early-21st-century levels forever." Our civilisation has benefited from technology so much already, I can't in good conscience deny people the benefits of future technology, even in exchange for the right to stream Game of Thrones.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Media producing companies that have no way of safeguarding their revenue stream would like the technical threshold for copying to be at least a minor deterrent, because otherwise people have no incentive to pay them; many many people are in fact OK with being freeloaders. I'm so sick of seeing Game of Thrones offered as the standard example. Sure, HBO has more more money than any of us would know what to do with. I, on the other hand, make my living working on films with budgets that only amount to a few hundreds of thousands of dollars, and believe me that does not go very far - the lower cost of digital vs. celluloid film is only one line item in the production process, whereas you still have to pay for locations, costumes, props, housing, transport, food, lighting, and a whole bunch of other things before you even get to handing out any wages. It's very, very hard to monetize a low-budget film. And there's constant downward pressure on production budgets, because indie films don't usually have fat box-office payoffs, and instead depend on small-scale releases in festivals and the art-house cinema circuit, followed by (you hope) some international box office and (you really hope) a long tail of DVD/streaming sales. And that long tail is highly vulnerable to piracy, and the existence of piracy is a big deterrent to investors. So when you're saying Big Studio makes enough money with their latest superhero franchise movie, or HBO makes enough money with their huge base of cable subscriptions, and so you don't feel bad about pirating Superhero 4 or Game of Thrones well sure, I understand that - none of the producers are in any danger of losing their shirts, everyone on the cast and crew got paid handsomely at the fairly generous rates their guilds/unions have negotiated over the years, and the shareholders still make plenty of money and get a nice dividend check every quarter. On the other hand, lots of smaller content providers are getting fucked financially because it's a lot harder to answer the question of 'how will investors make their money back?' than it was a few years ago. So spare me the stereotypes of evil media barons trying to stop the brave plucky technological underdogs. That same technology is also massively disruptive to creative professionals and small businesses that work outside the Big Media tent, and actively hinders their ability to make a living.
chx 12y ago
"Piracy is a service problem." -- remember that? There's nothing on Netflix you can't download illegally. People would pick Netflix still because it's a superior experience to what most people perceive as shady sites. This has always been so with DRM: the only ones it inconveniences are the paying customers. Incredible stupidity.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  I use Netflix every day. The DRM doesn't inconvenience me at all. I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me they have to go down a salt mine and they won't have any internet down there and it's such a tragedy that they won't be able to finish watching the thing they started watching on Netflix because stupid DRM. Sorry, but those are bullshit first world problems. Your life is not significantly impacted by this.
  - jhasse 12y ago
    My wireless network is very slow in my bedroom. Also there's often no internet connection on most railway lines in Germany. So we aren't just talking about going down a salt mine.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Like I said, first world problems. You can upgrade or move your wi-fi router. The idea of internet on a train was practically unheard of a decade ago. I'm sorry, but I don't think that being able to watch a movie is so important in every situation that DRM is intolerable, even though I'm a filmmaker.
      - Xylakant 12y ago
        It's certainly not intolerable to not watch movies on the train, but it's inconvenient. I spend a significant chunk of my time on trains every week where I can watch movies. And due to DRM the illegal product is superior. Guess what people are doing? I've never seen anyone watching Netflix, but I see VLC on a daily basis. It's a service problem.
copsarebastards 12y ago
> I hear what the proponents of non-DRM browsers are saying, but for media streaming companies content is their bread and butter. I am not sure what the alternatives are. The alternative is non-DRM browsers. EME does nothing to protect content, so the "content is their bread and butter" argument doesn't work. > Content providers will stick with technologies like Flash because HTML5 alone could not provide EME. Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value. > Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards because huge content providers would shy away from using web as the dominant platform of media delivery. Including EME sets the web platform back because we no longer have control of that part of our browsers.
- eridius 12y ago
  > Or, they'd give up on EME because all the major platforms were hostile to it and it provides them no defensible value. That's absurd. Netflix would sooner stop supporting web browsers on desktop OS's before they started allowing DRM-free streaming. Regardless of your own view on DRM, Netflix's licenses to the content they provide almost certainly requires the use of DRM, and the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming. Without EME, Netflix would be relying on proprietary browser plugins forever, and if a platform with a significant userbase appeared that didn't support any form of proprietary plugin, and they wanted to support that platform, they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles).
  - timonovici 12y ago
    > the companies that own the content would never be willing to relicense them for DRM-free streaming. Don't be so sure. People were saying exactly this several years ago about music. We owe it to Jobs that he realized it's stupid idea, and put an end to it. > they'd develop their own proprietary application for it instead of providing DRM-free streaming (think of how Netflix has applications for mobile OS's and even consoles, both living room consoles and handheld consoles). That seems better to me, than poisoning a whole standard just to get their way, or the highway.
davexunit 12y ago
>I am not sure what the alternatives are. Refuse to use Netflix and co.! >Lack of such feature set HTML5 backwards No, giving in on DRM set it backwards. The web is intended to be "free and open", which means that DRM is not welcome.

geofft 12y ago

One thing to note is that (last I heard) both Chrome and Firefox sandbox EME modules fairly tightly. Flash is a browser plugin, which means that it usually injects code into the browser itself, and runs with full privileges on your computer, just as much as your browser does. This is what makes Flash such fertile ground for exploits of all kinds, and also makes it bad for your privacy because it has direct access to your webcam, microphone, clipboard, supercookies, etc. — anything the browser can do, Flash can do without asking. If it asks, it's out of the kindness of its heart, not because the browser has any say. Chrome and Firefox's sandboxes, meanwhile, are both open-source. You can inspect what powers the EME module might possibly have, and know that it can't gain any more. A vulnerability in the code is unlikely to be able to do anything other than pirate your download of Game of Thrones — and that's assuming it even has general-purpose network access. Ideally, a vulnerability would be able to do nothing other than modify the video you see, but the remote site could achieve that by encoding a modified video in the first place. As far as the general moral arguments about DRM go, it's true that the new boss is the same as the old boss. But the bulk of the EFF's argument against Flash in this blog post is about security, not about open content, and it's important to acknowledge that EME is a significant step forward. The new boss is sitting in a tightly locked cage.

detrino 12y ago
Flash for Chrome uses the PPAPI and is sandboxed.
- geofft 12y ago
  That is a fair point, but I would also consider that a (limited) victory on par with the (limited) victory of moving from Flash to EME, and I wish it got more press. The people who are implementing sandboxes are doing massively effective work to improve the security and privacy of everyone using the web. Chrome has been quite active here and I don't think they can be thanked enough. That said, PPAPI is Chrome-only; EME is a standard, and Mozilla's implementation even outlines a way for other browsers to integrate the EME module Mozilla uses, plus their sandbox, into their own browsers.

userbinator 12y ago

AIUI, EME is basically a standard for interfacing DRM plugins, so instead of the one implementation (Flash) of it that was around before, we might end up with a wide variety of DRM modules? That certainly doesn't seem like a better situation than before, where basically all the RE efforts were focused on Flash's DRM.

asadotzler 12y ago
Your assumption here about going from one DRM implementation to many is wildly off the mark. There have been several major video DRM solutions in widespread use for many many years including Adobe's Access (in Flash, and other places) Microsoft's PlayReady (in Windows, X-box, Silverlight, etc.) and more recently Google bought WideVine for its DRM offerings and has spent the last 4 or 5 years building that into the Google Chrome and Android platforms. Pretty much every major video streaming service was/is using a different DRM implementation. That's nothing new at all. Your suggestion that somehow there's going to be a shift from one to a lot more DRM providers thanks to EME is uninformed and unfounded.
- hsivonen 12y ago
  With NPAPI each site picked one plug-in that worked in multiple browsers. Another site could pick another single plug-in that also worked in multiple browsers. With EME, each browser supports some DRM(s) and there's no single DRM supported by all browsers, so sites need to support multiple DRMs to reach multiple browsers.

slang800 12y ago

And through all this effort to "protect their content", they still haven't managed to stop people from bypassing the DRM and giving the videos away for free in torrents. I have a hard time seeing how implementing DRM provides any value to media companies, other than a false sense of security.

vlad003 12y ago
It's possible the false sense of security is worth more than people think. It lets them say "hey, we tried".
- geofft 12y ago
  Certain companies have been extraordinarily interested in implementing WebCrypto without mandating HTTPS. Which is to say, a man-in-the-middle attacker could trivially modify the JS that calls WebCrypto and cause different operations to be performed. My suspicion is that they have contractual agreements with the non-technical folks in the studios that they have to "encrypt" content, and the technically-competent redistributor has no direct interest in the crypto being sound. If the API gave them 256-bit military-grade AES encryption, but only in ECB mode, they'd probably use it.
- jeremyjh 12y ago
  I think this is a very important point. These media companies have not been able to extract as much rent from their IP as they could ten years ago, and their shareholders are not happy about that. They absolutely have to try something.
pkulak 12y ago
Right click -> Save As is a tad easier than finding a torrent.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  Right click -> Save As is only possible after you've paid.

sowhatquestion 12y ago

I distinctly remember being upset about DRM in the '00s, back when it was being used to place onerous restrictions on content that people had ostensibly "bought" (CDs, DVDs, AAC audio files, etc.). Now that it's being used to prevent people from saving streams... I hate to say this, but please remind me why I should be upset? I never had any illusion of "owning" a stream. Not only that, I would rather stream than own in most cases.

logn 12y ago
Because it's a lot harder to make a competing web browser now. You'll have to buy the secret binaries from one of the DRM providers, if they'd even be willing to sell.
- geofft 12y ago
  Firefox, which is open source, both sandboxes the Adobe decryption module—giving the browser control over the world that the Adobe module sees—and fetches it at startup from Adobe's site. It seems almost impossible that you'd be unable to hit the same URL from your own browser and put it inside your own sandbox such that the module can't tell it's not running inside Firefox. You have the hard constraints that the module can't examine the outside world except through the sandbox, and the sandbox itself is open source. Edited to add: Widevine, the (Google-owned) decryption module Chrome uses, has no license fees. http://www.widevine.com/ http://www.widevine.com/
  - logn 12y ago
    For Widevine, it looks like the following would be required: Completion of legal agreements Delivery of a Widevine documentation package Technical discussion to understand the device type, chipset, and review the Widevine robustness rules Exchange of libraries, SDKs, and integration documentation Keybox request and fulfillment (as needed) Client integration testing For piggybacking on the Firefox binary, maybe that would work but sounds like something you might get a cease and desist for. Anyhow, if everyone agree to make the binaries 100% free as in beer (like Cisco did with H.264), then that's better than nothing and makes writing new browsers easier. But the future is in new devices, operating systems, and virtualization. Being provided binaries limits freedom to make new things. And of course who knows what backdoors are in them. (Edit to add: this is a great discussion, http://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/25kbi7/next_firefox_will_have_drm_built_in_will/ http://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/25kbi7/next_firefox_... -- note that the tracking/privacy/backdoor issues with this are huge.)

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interestingingly it seems Youtube is still using Flash in its pre-roll advertisements unless I'm missing something obvious. Those videos get the 'f' from flashblock and won't view unless it is enabled.

pkulak 12y ago

Yes, EFF, we're still not living in a content wonderland where Hollywood studios send their blockbusters to people's browsers in naked <video> tags. Shocking, I know.

joshAg 12y ago
Look, if they want to make a plugin that understands their DRM scheme or some standalone app that's basically just a scaled down browser with support for a <drm_video> tag, they can tilt at that windmill all fucking day for all I care. But I still need a <video> tag that works like an <img> tag in that there's at least I format supported by all major broswer venders that works for that tag, that lets me easily save the video for offline viewing, and is completely unencumbered by patents or licensing issues, so anyone else can make a browser supporting it. If that means I have to use a tag called <supercalifragilisticexpialidocious> instead of <video>, I don't really care. I need that functionality. The web needs that functionality.
- asadotzler 12y ago
  You have that functionality thanks to the <video> tag and H.264 and AAC in MP4. That seems to meet all of your requirements. Am I missing the problem? EME and DRM are not required to make that work in Firefox, IE, and Chrome.
  - joshAg 12y ago
    H.264 requires a per user license fee paid to MPEG LA until 2027 when the patent runs out: http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-closer-look-at-the-costs-and-fine-print-of-h-264-licenses/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-closer-look-at-the-costs-and-... AAC also requires a per unit license for anyone who manufacturers or developers of a codec: http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-fees.aspx So no, neither of them meet the 3 requirements I laid out.
    - nsgi 12y ago
      What does that have to do with EME?

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

Why are they calling EME "locks"? It isn't locking anything. It's obfuscation. The most relevant physical analogy would be smog. They should call it what it is; digital smog.

eridius 12y ago
It is a lock. You open it with a key. Just like a physical lock. And just like a physical lock, there are ways to force it open without the key. And just like a physical lock, forcing it open without a physical key is (usually) illegal.
- _ikke_ 12y ago
  Yes, but it's a lock where they have to provide the key too, and the only way to prevent you from manually opening the lock is obfuscating this process.
- malka 12y ago
  And, like a physical lock, you need to provide the users with the key, so that they can use the product.

ouiya 12y ago

I like the order in which they named the culprits, Apple, Microsoft and Google, while referring to dominant browser vendors. EFF, please do what you preach. Be honest and accurate. If you have a soft-corner for Google because it pays money, Google has a soft-corner for technologies which give you money. Of course the free-as-in-beer leering majority at HN loves Google, so bring it on with the downvotes.

hyperion2010 12y ago

Somehow this reminds me of my long running rage against all things webapp and javascript. Companies have started using the browser as a substitute for an OS because it is easier to distribute working code to multiple platforms on a browser. So what do the drm people target now? The browser: aka operating system 2.0. And the thing that is scary is that people don't realize this and think "oh, its just W3C, its just a single program on my computer, they aren't really attacking general computation!" Spoilers: browsers act as virtual machines for probably 90% of all calculations that run on an average pc these days.

ck2 12y ago

The nice thing about youtube is it also encodes most videos in webm format so it still plays on XP with Firefox and some old phones Other sites like vimeo only do mp4

t0mas88 12y ago

Adobe got Flash (once one of their main products) wrong on the security side so many times that we can't even keep count anymore. Let alone the horribly bad performance of flash and the hack-slack way they added features. Why on earth would anyone want to trust this company to build another proprietary blob of their sub-par code into all browsers? They've proven to be incompetent in many attempts, let's not give them a 32nd chance.

silon5 12y ago

I notices Firefox sometimes starts busy looping on 2 cores while playing youtube (usually when "buffering"). IMO, they should really move the decoding threads into separate processes so they can be restarted easily (just like Flash was).

dredmorbius 12y ago

EFF's view is that we've been sold down the river with EME (Encrypted Media Extension). Except ... that I seem to be able to access most online video content (certainly on YouTube, Vimeo, and other major sites) via youtube-dl. And hugely prefer to do so. It's much more useful for me to be able to queue, speed up / slow down, pause, resize and otherwise manipulate video with consistent controls than to have the limited (and varied) interfaces various online video / multimedia sites offer. I've got a video playing as I write this, well, paused, at 133% playback speed, in a small 250px x 190px window -- when I can give it my focus again I'll simply mouse over it and tap 'space' to resume playback. If I want to skip back a few seconds, or a minute, the left or down keyboard arrows do that for me. As they do for all video I play. I can also normalized audio levels (many are too low, this one's actually got a tendency to clip), and more.

belorn 12y ago
If you are going to use unauthorized methods to gain content, there is many convenient ways to do so. Most are not effected by DRM. The issue with DRM on video is one which lawful consumers of content has to deal with, and those who run programs which is infected by said DRM.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Um. Who elected you god and decided youtube-dl is "unauthorized"? I was actually inquiring as to how such use is impacted by the decision. I've found few or none. Then again, there's little commercial content I've interest in regardless.
  - dahdum 12y ago
    belorn probably figured the terms exclude it, I was curious and checked - seems so. Maybe they've authorized your method specifically somewhere though? http://www.youtube.com/t/terms http://www.youtube.com/t/terms You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.

kelnos 12y ago

It's a little weird that the EFF is using YouTube's move to HTML5 video by default to attack EME, considering that YT doesn't require EME... (Yet, anyway.)

idlewan 12y ago
It's maybe to point out some of the irony of "Hey, let's accept another proprietary blob from Adobe" when it's not even needed anymore now.

blakeja 12y ago

Can I uninstall Flash at this point? What do I really need it for?

cpeterso 12y ago
Most Facebook games require Flash.

Aoyagi 12y ago

Well, hopefully using the Flash player remains an option.

orblivion 12y ago

I think this article seems to act as though ditching flash just happened to coincide with adoption of this new EME thing. The issue is that no matter how much we kick and scream about user freedom, business interests are business interests. Economics are economics. There just isn't enough user demand for freedom to overcome the loss to businesses of losing control of their content. In order to win this, I think we may need to come to terms with this. Perhaps it means trying even harder to inform the public and increase demand for freedom, but maybe it means coming up with alternate ways to monetize, or alternate ways to produce which circumvent the need to monetize.

copsarebastards 12y ago
This is a misrepresentation of the problem here. You're restating the corporate arguments. > There just isn't enough user demand for freedom to overcome the loss to businesses of losing control of their content. DRM doesn't prevent businesses losing control of their content. Orange is the New Black has, AFAIK, only ever been distributed through EME, but it's all over the Pirate Bay, every single episode. > maybe it means coming up with alternate ways to monetize We have alternate ways to monetize. The simplest being doing exactly what they are doing except not DRM-ing their content, which demonstrably has worked for multiple content distributors. There are others. DRM isn't about controlling content or monetize that content. It's about maintaining an outdated business model because business executives don't understand the internet. Which would be fine, except that it's hurting the open web.
- mikeryan 12y ago
  Orange is the New Black has, AFAIK, only ever been distributed through EME This isn't even close to true. Netflix has a ton of non browser delivery mechanisms. It may only have been delivered with drm but that's a different thing and I don't know enough to know if that's true.
  - copsarebastards 12y ago
    > This isn't even close to true. Netflix has a ton of non browser delivery mechanisms. It may only have been delivered with drm but that's a different thing and I don't know enough to know if that's true. Maybe that’s a bad example. But I’ll put out this challenge: find me a reasonably popular TV show that’s supposedly completely covered by DRM, and I’ll find you a torrent for it. My point is that DRM does nothing to prevent piracy.

Jack000 12y ago

I kind of miss flash. Security issues aside, Actionscript 3 and the graphics api felt a lot easier to use than js/canvas and was more performant. It felt like adobe just rolled over once Steve Jobs declared flash dead. They even bundled mcafee antivirus with the flash download, it's like they just want it to be over.

nsgi 12y ago
Isn't it possible to create HTML5 apps with Flash Pro?
- Jack000 12y ago
  in actionscript? I haven't worked with it for a while but I don't think so. Even if it was possible I wouldn't want yet another layer of abstraction to compile to html. it's not the graphical authoring environment that really matters. I just prefer the OOP style of AS3 to Javascript. Open standards are great and all, but the result is that we've had to wait years just for html to catch up to where flash was.
tree_of_item 12y ago
I think Haxe recreates the API method for method, and targets HTML5/Canvas as well as C++ and other stuff.
brandlib 12y ago
You can check out Adobe AIR; it uses Actionscript 3 and it deploys to web, desktop, Android, and iOS. In practice you can straight up copy-paste an AS3 codebase into an AIR project and have it work 99%. And I like to think that Adobe is more committed to supporting AIR since it's available for mobile.

murbard2 12y ago

Security is what matters here, the DRM can be circumvented anyway.

spiralpolitik 12y ago

To be honest the W3C was between a rock and hard place here as all the other alternatives on the table were worse than this. If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. As for "the open web", nothing changes. Content that was DRM free will continue to be DRM free, content that wasn't DRM free will still remain DRM. If anything we are slightly better off as one more proprietary has bitten the dust. As with a lot of things, the next steps aren't technical. Organizations like the EFF should be working with content providers to educate them on the benefits of being DRM free. A much harder task than firing off press releases.

GhotiFish 12y ago
> If they had dug in we would have ended up with 2-3 proprietary DRM standards across the browsers or Flash would have lived on. Both are worse outcomes. You're wrong about this. That is an excellent outcome. Large companies want the universal application that free software enjoys, but with none of the respect for the users it requires. I have absolutely no problem with companies having huge problems locking users in. If we had 2 or 3 proprietary standards to implement DRM that things worse for users, that's a good thing. "Why is this so hard to do?" The answer should be: "We refuse to make such abhorrent behavior easy", rather than: "It's not" Making it easy for vendors to dick users over is a bad thing. Making DRM easy to deploy damages the open web in a very bad way.

Tloewald 12y ago

Why don't the people with this point of view rail against proprietary fonts the way they do against video codecs? If we took the same approach to fonts then you'd only be allowed to use open source fonts and everything would look ugly. Instead we're allowed to deploy copy-protected fonts to render text nicely and no-one is unhappy. If the ultimate issue is that people want to be able to steal video content with impunity, it all makes perfect sense. If the issue is technical or has to do with software freedom, I'm unconvinced. Not being able to open my old documents because Word 2025 isn't able to read Word 2004 documents is not the same thing as not being able to archive videos of Galavant that I don't have the right to keep.

GhotiFish 12y ago
Oddly enough, fonts in particular have extreme benefits to open source models of development, the influence of actual research can be applied outright, and open fonts can be deployed rapidly. I can't imagine a worse battleground to stake your argument on than this one, other than servers.