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Mozilla's Route For Implementing W3C EME (HTML5 DRM)

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  • erendorn
    replied
    Originally posted by anda_skoa View Post
    The problem most people have with the current for of DRM is that is designed such that it cannot be implemented in FOSS software.
    Which has nothing do to at all with encryption.

    FOSS crypto software is routinely used to protect financial, diplomatic and military data and transmissions, because decades of cryptography research have shown that the protection does not come from the secrecy of the algorithm but from the difficulty of the mathematical problem and the secrecy of the encryption key.

    Yet, for whatever reason, protecting a media stream seems to require secret algorthms.
    DRM cannot rely on anything apart obfuscation. No amount of cryptography research will change this mathematical truth.

    A DRM component must be shipped with the decryption key, there's no way around it, as the content must be decrypted somehow. So how do you prevent the user from reading that key? You obfuscate your program. There is no other way. This requires shipping compiled binaries. If you ship the sources as well, it just makes it much easier for an attacker to locate where the key is stored in the binary, and how it is hidden.

    What you can do, is have a clear API, with the smallest possible surface. That is what Mozilla is doing. But you cannot have an open implementation of the blackbox inside.

    Leave a comment:


  • curaga
    replied
    Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
    Well no, they're not choosing money - they're choosing survival. You might see it as a plus, being "the only major web browser to reject DRM", but most people will see it as "the only major web browser to not support watching movies".

    Mozilla simply can't win this fight - they've been trying to steer things in the right direction, but given that every single one of their competitors has decided to adopt DRM, what else can they do? Keep fighting against the tide, and sink into obscurity as their users abandons them? Or accept they're lost this fight, and keep going in the hope they might have more luck next time?
    That was answered by the post directly above yours, as well as the FSF announcement. TL;DR: Mozilla has shown it will always choose market share over important issues. There will be no "next time", because Mozilla will sell out again if their market share is threatened.

    Originally posted by anda_skoa View Post
    It is extremely naive if they think anyone buys into that anymore.

    They have show twice in a row in short time, that they will cave in if their market share is threatend.

    So whatever future issue arises that Mozilla might oppose, it is just a matter of working with the proprietary browser vendors until Mozilla tucks its tail between its legs and comes running.

    The no longer have any negotiation power, the best they can do is delay the inevitable.

    But of course it has to be said that they are still needed as an alternative to the whole sale sell out of users privacy by the proprietary vendors. It is just that their bargaining power is now zero and they should really start to admit that.

    Leave a comment:


  • Cyborg16
    replied
    Stick with Debian, don't enable the non-free repo and I'm sure you'll be fine.

    The interesting points are what anda_skoa says above: small sites will struggle to compete, and likely the plugin won't work on all platforms. Unless it runs on JVM or another virtual machine; now that would be a good idea... and I think machine code has to be ruled out if Mozilla want to sandbox it properly anyway.

    Leave a comment:


  • ihatemichael
    replied
    Wow. Mozilla developers' attitude is really disappointing, I'm done with them.

    Linuxguy | https://fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-pa...ons-management
    Noah | who the heck is the fsf?
    Noah | I really hope that blog post from Gerv isn't about DRM...
    %Mardeg | the Free Software Foundation
    %Mardeg | it is
    Noah | oh, that sounds like an important organization
    Sugestions for a saner browser please?

    Leave a comment:


  • timofonic
    replied
    FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Ma



    [quote[
    BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA ? Wednesday, May 14th, 2014 ? In response to Mozilla's announcement that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox Web browser, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made the following statement:
    "Only a week after the International Day Against DRM, Mozilla has announced that it will partner with proprietary software company Adobe to implement support for Web-based Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) in its Firefox browser, using Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).

    The Free Software Foundation is deeply disappointed in Mozilla's announcement. The decision compromises important principles in order to alleviate misguided fears about loss of browser marketshare. It allies Mozilla with a company hostile to the free software movement and to Mozilla's own fundamental ideals.

    Although Mozilla will not directly ship Adobe's proprietary DRM plugin, it will, as an official feature, encourage Firefox users to install the plugin from Adobe when presented with media that requests DRM. We agree with Cory Doctorow that there is no meaningful distinction between 'installing DRM' and 'installing code that installs DRM.'

    We recognize that Mozilla is doing this reluctantly, and we trust these words coming from Mozilla much more than we do when they come from Microsoft or Amazon. At the same time, nearly everyone who implements DRM says they are forced to do it, and this lack of accountability is how the practice sustains itself. Mozilla's announcement today unfortunately puts it -- in this regard -- in the same category as its proprietary competitors.

    Unlike those proprietary competitors, Mozilla is going to great lengths to reduce some of the specific harms of DRM by attempting to 'sandbox' the plugin. But this approach cannot solve the fundamental ethical problems with proprietary software, or the issues that inevitably arise when proprietary software is installed on a user's computer.

    In the announcement, Mitchell Baker asserts that Mozilla's hands were tied. But she then goes on to actively praise Adobe's "value" and suggests that there is some kind of necessary balance between DRM and user freedom.

    There is nothing necessary about DRM, and to hear Mozilla praising Adobe -- the company who has been and continues to be a vicious opponent of the free software movement and the free Web -- is shocking. With this partnership in place, we worry about Mozilla's ability and willingness to criticize Adobe's practices going forward.

    We understand that Mozilla is afraid of losing users. Cory Doctorow points out that they have produced no evidence to substantiate this fear or made any effort to study the situation. More importantly, popularity is not an end in itself. This is especially true for the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit with an ethical mission. In the past, Mozilla has distinguished itself and achieved success by protecting the freedom of its users and explaining the importance of that freedom: including publishing Firefox's source code, allowing others to make modifications to it, and sticking to Web standards in the face of attempts to impose proprietary extensions.

    Today's decision turns that calculus on its head, devoting Mozilla resources to delivering users to Adobe and hostile media distributors. In the process, Firefox is losing the identity which set it apart from its proprietary competitors -- Internet Explorer and Chrome -- both of which are implementing EME in an even worse fashion.

    Undoubtedly, some number of users just want restricted media like Netflix to work in Firefox, and they will be upset if it doesn't. This is unsurprising, since the majority of the world is not yet familiar with the ethical issues surrounding proprietary software. This debate was, and is, a high-profile opportunity to introduce these concepts to users and ask them to stand together in some tough decisions.

    To see Mozilla compromise without making any public effort to rally users against this supposed "forced choice" is doubly disappointing. They should reverse this decision. But whether they do or do not, we call on them to join us by devoting as many of their extensive resources to permanently eliminating DRM as they are now devoting to supporting it. The FSF will have more to say and do on this in the coming days. For now, users who are concerned about this issue should:

    Write to Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal and let him know that you oppose DRM. Mozilla made this decision in a misguided appeal to its userbase; it needs to hear in clear and reasoned terms from the users who feel this as a betrayal. Ask Mozilla what it is going to do to actually solve the DRM problem that has created this false forced choice.

    Join our effort to stop EME approval at the W3C. While today's announcement makes it even more obvious that W3C rejection of EME will not stop its implementation, it also makes it clear that W3C can fearlessly reject EME to send a message that DRM is not a part of the vision of a free Web.

    Use a version of Firefox without the EME code: Since its source code is available under a license allowing anyone to modify and redistribute it under a different name, we expect versions without EME to be made available, and you should use those instead. We will list them in the Free Software Directory.

    Donate to support the work of the Free Software Foundation and our Defective by Design campaign to actually end DRM. Until it's completely gone, Mozilla and others will be constantly tempted to capitulate, and users will be pressured to continue using some proprietary software. If not us, give to another group fighting against digital restrictions."
    [/QUOTE]

    Leave a comment:


  • anda_skoa
    replied
    Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
    Looks like it's for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Probably x86 only though.
    Yes, likely. Though their DRM department might be more compentent than their Flash departement was.

    Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
    He said one of the reasons they went with Adobe's DRM is that they'd support linux.
    Anything else wouldn't have made sense.

    Originally posted by smitty3268 View Post
    Also said that Mozilla expects the major video sites to make deals and support all the various DRM providers, so that the videos will work everywhere and you won't have to switch browsers for different sites. We'll see if that actually happens or not.
    All major sites? Probably, they have lots of money and won't care paying for another license, might even have an Adobe license already due to Flash.

    The interesting ones are the smaller sites, since they are the ones that EME was built-against, to keep them from competing with the major players as good as possible.

    For them a license of Microsoft's DRM will bring them all Microsoft users (desktop and mobile), a Google license all Android, Chrome and ChromeOS users, an Apple license all OSX and iOS users.

    What would and additional Adobe license get them?
    FirefoxOS? FOSS platforms currently not supported by Chrome? The Linux users who do not want to use Chrome because it us closed-source and/or from Google?

    Cheers,
    _

    Leave a comment:


  • nanonyme
    replied
    I'd expect Fedora to refuse to ship the DRM at all and Ubuntu to have it enabled by default. Dunno about politics on other Linux distros enough to make guesses what they'll probably do.

    Leave a comment:


  • M@yeulC
    replied
    Originally posted by anda_skoa View Post
    The problem most people have with the current for of DRM is that is designed such that it cannot be implemented in FOSS software.
    Which has nothing do to at all with encryption.

    FOSS crypto software is routinely used to protect financial, diplomatic and military data and transmissions, because decades of cryptography research have shown that the protection does not come from the secrecy of the algorithm but from the difficulty of the mathematical problem and the secrecy of the encryption key.

    Yet, for whatever reason, protecting a media stream seems to require secret algorthms.

    If you believe that DRM has anything to do with protecting the content then, as you put it so nicely, are living in cloud cuckoo land

    Cheers,
    _
    This. I don't see why DRM systems can't have an open specification, and an open implementation.

    Leave a comment:


  • asdfblah
    replied
    And we don't even have support for VDPAU in the browser... even Flash supports it.

    Leave a comment:


  • liam
    replied
    Originally posted by Prescience500 View Post
    Mozilla held out a lot longer than I would have, considering my background in economics. Chrome/Chromium and it's users have single-handedly beated and reversed Mozilla's open internet revolution. I knew the moment that Chrome began to eat Mozilla's market share a few years back that Mozilla would no longer be able to play hardball anymore, but they kept doing it. They hemeraged market share every month because of it. Now they have lost most of their influence due to not enough market share relative to the others. It doesn't help that Mozilla is spending so much resources on things not in it's core focus.
    This is something I see quite a lot but haven't heard a good read a good reason for actually holding the position... maybe you can be the exception?
    Why shouldn't building out the web platform be a core focus for Mozilla? They live and breathe the web, and part of that is defining what the web is, and helping it to adapt.

    Leave a comment:

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