Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 13 2015, @08:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-so-open-anymore dept.

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.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:16PM

    by Freeman (732) on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:16PM (#182636) Journal

    The relevant quote from the bugzilla page https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1025703/ [mozilla.org]

    " Matthew N. [:MattN] 2015-02-17 21:55:21 PST

    Release Note Request
    [Why is this notable]: Firefox already ignored autocomplete=off for prompting to remember logins since bug 956906 but now we also ignore "off" for the purpose of auto-filling login forms with saved credentials. The behaviour of non-login forms doesn't change with this bug. This change puts the user back in control of the login experience and aligns with the trend in other browsers.
    [Suggested wording]: autocomplete=off is no longer supported for username/password fields
    [Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]: None yet

    This change should probably get an intent-to-ship email."

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:57PM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 13 2015, @09:57PM (#182653) Homepage Journal

    by willfully ignoring the user's wishes?

    I'm not sure I follow.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:06PM

      by Freeman (732) on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:06PM (#182658) Journal

      Here is a quote that better explains what's going on.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=956906/ [mozilla.org]

      " :Gavin Sharp [email: gavin@gavinsharp.com] 2014-01-06 14:47:57 PST

      autocomplete="off" does two things:
      a) prevents us from automatically filling in already-saved data for forms/fields that have the attribute
      b) prevents us from saving new data for forms/fields that have the attribute

      This behavior is a concession to sites that think password managers are harmful and thus want to prevent them from being effective. In aggregate, I think those sites are generally wrong, and shouldn't have that much control over our behavior.

      I think we should investigate removing support for autocomplete="off" entirely, or at least the portion of it that prevents us from saving passwords."

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:23PM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:23PM (#182664) Homepage Journal

        I always completely disable the password manager. That forces me to type all my passwords in manually.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:52AM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday May 14 2015, @06:52AM (#182824) Journal

          That's your choice, and that is OK. What is not OK is the web site author making that choice for you.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:42PM

            by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Thursday May 14 2015, @02:42PM (#182911) Homepage Journal

            ... that option was ever available to website authors?

            I expect it was there for some reason other than defeating password managers.

            --
            Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
            • (Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday May 15 2015, @06:58AM

              by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday May 15 2015, @06:58AM (#183260) Journal

              I guess it was just a side effect of implementing a feature that's useful in other contexts. For example, if you have a Captcha, it doesn't make sense if the browser offers you a list of previously entered Captcha values. So disabling the storage of form values makes sense there.

              The password management was probably built on top of the auto fill-out of usual forms (after all, the basic functionality is the same, just the database you store the content in is different, and you have an additional confirmation dialog). And thus the attribute that inhibits auto-fillout from other forms automatically also applies to password fields unless that check is explicitly disabled for them.

              --
              The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2015, @10:39PM (#182675)

        > Here is a quote that better explains what's going on.

        Or you could just explain it for people who don't have expertise in HTML.

        The normal case is that firefox will ask you if you want to save a password. [eightforums.com]

        autocomplete=off is an HTML attribute not a browser setting. It is a way for the website to take control of your browser away from you and prevent the browser from even asking you if you want to save your password for that site. By ignoring the autocomplete attribute, firefox gives control back to the user. If you do not want firefox to autocomplete a password for you, you still have that option just as you always have.