SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Mozilla Firefox 38 has been released. It adds the <picture> element, Ruby annotation support, and Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a form of digital rights management for HTML5 video. It also automatically downloads Adobe's Primetime Content Decryption Module (CDM) on 32-bit versions of Firefox on Windows Vista and newer Windows systems. The Register reports:
The nonprofit grudgingly agreed to add EME support to Firefox last year, despite the vocal objections of both Mozilla's then-CTO Brendan Eich and the Free Software Foundation. "Nearly everyone who implements DRM says they are forced to do it" the FSF said at the time, "and this lack of accountability is how the practice sustains itself."
Nonetheless, Mozilla promoted Firefox 38 to the Release channel on Tuesday, complete with EME enabled – although it said it's still doing so reluctantly. "We don't believe DRM is a desirable market solution, but it's currently the only way to watch a sought-after segment of content," Mozilla senior veep of legal affairs Danielle Dixon-Thayer said in a blog post.
The first firm to leap at the chance to shovel its DRM into Firefox was Adobe, whose Primetime Content Delivery Module for decoding encrypted content shipped with Firefox 38 on Tuesday. Thayer said various companies, including Netflix, are already evaluating Adobe's tech to see if it meets their requirements. Mozilla says that because Adobe's CDM is proprietary "black box" software, it has made certain to wrap it in a sandbox within Firefox so that its code can't interfere with the rest of the browser. (Maybe that's why it took a year to get it integrated.)
The CDM will issue an alert when it's on a site that uses DRM-wrapped content, so people who don't want to use it will have the option of bowing out. If you don't want your browser tainted by DRM at all, you still have options. You can disable the Adobe Primetime CDM so it never activates. If that's not good enough, there's a menu option in Firefox that lets you opt out of DRM altogether, after which you can delete the Primetime CDM (or any future CDMs from other vendors) from your hard drive. Finally, if you don't want DRM in your browser and you don't want to bother with any of the above, Mozilla has made available a separate download that doesn't include the Primetime CDM and has DRM disabled by default.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:53PM
I'm just going to end up repeating the subject in the body. Thanks filter.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:03PM
Technically, Firefox is still non-corporate. The only thing really going on is that they enabled something by default, but then left umpteen million ways to disable it. They even went so far as to release a distribution without any of it, so it's almost as if it's internally forked.
Personally, they fucked up. They should have done the *exact* opposite, and had a download page for the DRM enabled stuff. Make people go through all the extra hassle to enable bullshit software like Adobe-everything, and whatever Mordor-produced software Sony is developing in the basement.
The default should always be, "LOL! You want to control what on my system and why again?"
Then again, I stopped using Firefox about 6 years ago when the entire development team became stricken with a form of mental illness. That's about all I can do to explain why Firefox went from something usable, to something that wholly sucks. It says a lot when Internet Explorer can out-do your ass on the Internet. Slowest and buggiest POS browser on the planet, but it is *still* available DRM free.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:01PM
Slowest and buggiest POS browser on the planet, but it is *still* available DRM free.
A lot of good that does you when it is proprietary user-subjugating software.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:06PM
Still. Its just a plug-in. Not all that crazy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @07:20AM
They should have done the *exact* opposite, and had a download page for the DRM enabled stuff.
So make technically illiterate people jump through extra hoops for the benefit of a small minorty of the userbase, most of which already knows how to disable this? That doesn't sound like a great proposition to me, Mozilla should be accountable to all of it's userbase, not to your personal ideology.
Make people go through all the extra hassle to enable bullshit software like Adobe-everything, and whatever Mordor-produced software Sony is developing in the basement.
Mozilla has been pretty on-point with plugin security, they even automatically blacklist third party plugins when known security holes appear. For the security-conscious users, plugins can be made click-to-play which alleviates all of these problems.
Then again, I stopped using Firefox about 6 years ago when the entire development team became stricken with a form of mental illness.
So let me get this straight... you haven't used a piece of software in 6 years and yet you feel qualified to criticize it? How did you ever get +5... oh wait, I know bashing Mozilla/Google/Apple/Microsoft/Pottering is pretty much free karma around here.
It says a lot when Internet Explorer can out-do your ass on the Internet.
You have got to be kidding. IE still has worse plugin framework, worse UI and workflow, is heavily DRM ridden (which you can't remove), and worse standard compliance. The only upside is that it's slightly faster without crapblocker plugins.
Slowest and buggiest POS browser on the planet, but it is *still* available DRM free.
Then again, I stopped using Firefox about 6 years ago
...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 14 2015, @01:11PM
So make technically illiterate people jump through extra hoops for the benefit of a small minorty of the userbase
Make them jump through hoops to use of this user-subjugating DRM, yes. Maybe they'll learn a thing or two while jumping through those hoops and will emerge less ignorant than before. Or they'll just continue to be ignorant and use some proprietary, user-subjugating web browser, not realizing that Freedom Software is more important than ever in the modern day.
Better yet, don't implement this garbage at all.
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday May 13 2015, @11:29PM
Give Midori [midori-browser.org] a try. The Windows build is pretty shakey, but it's really come together in the past couple years under Linux.
Gaaah, I just clicked my own link and it's gone web 2.0. The browser itself is still good.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 14 2015, @08:23AM
The question is: Does it support the important extensions (or, alternatively, support the functionality natively)?
In particular, does it support NoScript (note: just globally disabling scripts is not the same), and something along the lines of RequestPolicy/Policeman, Cookie Monster nad RefControl?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:47PM
NoScript™, no, but there's an equivalent plugin called NoJS that does a pretty good job. I was able to get the green site to work and my credit union's site. (Naturally, this site, built with superior technology, does not require any tweaks.) In fact, it was pre-enabled on BodhiLinux 2.0 (although beware, BodhiLinux is based on Ubuntu—systemd coming soon to a distro near you). AdBlock™, no, but the advertisement blocker extension seems to be doing good also.
There are two cookie management extensions, but I haven't used either. Looking at others I don't use, apparently there's a feed (RSS/Atom/etc) aggregator, mouse gestures, and vertical tabs.
I use Ghostery in Chromium, but I don't think there's a Midori equivalent. Also forget YouTube and Vimeo (granted, Vimeo somehow manages to spin up the fans on my video card like I'm playing Star Citizen on my desktop).
RefControl I'm not sure about, but I'd assume no.
(Score: 5, Informative) by carguy on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:45AM
Just checked the Pale Moon site, searched their forum for EME and got one hit from last year, Fri May 16, 2014 --
http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4564&p=27793&hilit=EME#p27793 [palemoon.org]
... Pale Moon will not implement DRM, including but not limited to "EME" or Adobe's closed-source encryption module. If you wish to access DRM-protected content, you should use a site-specific, appropriate plugin.