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Dear Jeff, Tim, and colleagues, In 2013, EFF was disappointed to learn that the W3C had taken on the project of standardizing "Encrypted Media Extensions," an API whose sole function was to provide a first-class role for DRM within the Web browser ecosystem. By doing so, the organization offered the use of its patent pool, its staff support, and its moral authority to the idea that browsers can and should be designed to cede control over key aspects from users to remote parties.
[...] The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.
[...] We believe they will regret that choice. Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they'll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.
[...] Effective today, EFF is resigning from the W3C.
Thank you,
Cory Doctorow
Advisory Committee Representative to the W3C for the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Source: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:49AM (2 children)
Cory Doctorow, not only a good writer but also a freedom fighter.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:53AM (1 child)
Mmhhh... let's not exaggerate... perhaps enjoyable is a better fit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:52PM
Yeah, it ain't literature, but most of it's fun.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:51AM (9 children)
The Director (Tim Berners-Lee [w3.org]) is perhaps thinking at his retirement from his professoral/professional life and a stipend would do nice to him (a pastime position in W3C is good for his spare time too - endless debates about standards is just perfect for the mindset. Those who can do, those who can't teach, the ones who aren't able of the previous two two lead).
Wishing you all a long life of doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:59AM
EFF has been on this case since the beginning, for example,
https://mikegerwitz.com/2013/03/Defective-By-Design-Campaign-Against-W3C-DRM-Standard [mikegerwitz.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:24AM (7 children)
The standard makes precisely no sense. It requires binary bits that aren't actually included in the standard. The result being that the support will be limited to probably just OSX and Windows. There may be Android and iOS support, but that's not a given.
The result is hardly any better than in the past when there'd be a proprietary 3rd party plugin required for accessing those sites.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:52AM
systemd to the rescue! Yo dawg! Gotta blob for your blob, so now you can blob your blob with your blob!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Tuesday September 19 2017, @12:54PM (5 children)
You can watch Netflix on Linux by using Chrome. It uses Google's 'WideVine' proprietary-blob.
Indeed, it's still all about proprietary binary blobs.
On the, uh, upside? Last I checked, Chrome on Linux doesn't prevent video capture, so the whole DRM charade is for nought.
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:15PM (2 children)
Note that Chromium can use Chrome's widevine plugin too, and Netflix has been working just fine on Firefox on Linux for a while now.
Yeah, DRM in the browser has some major issues, and not just philosophically, but cross-platform support for the most-used browsers is not a problem at this point.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:23PM (1 child)
What hardware? x86_64? 32bit? x32? arm? ppc? mips? ppc64? itanium?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Chromium_One on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:05PM
Getting away from the major hardware platforms, it's gonna get dicey. Support for x86 32 and 64 is a solid yes. Support for arm64 is a solid yes as well. Netflix will play on Chrome on at least some Linux distros Raspberry Pi 3's at the least. Widevine for arm64 has been repackaged for Chromium on some distros, though I haven't personally tested it. As examples, Debian arm64 is one, and same round of quick search shows a third-party answer for Arch Linux.
Oddly enough, widevine exists on itanium (Windows supported, dunno about others).
For ppc/mips, or other browser support ... eh, spent enough time searching on this already. If you really need it, good luck!
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:03PM (1 child)
It's limited to 720p on Netflix. You need IE11 for 1080p or Edge for 4k. :(
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Thursday September 21 2017, @09:02AM
Unless things have changed since I last checked, the best way to watch Netflix from a PC is using the Windows-only Netflix 'app' from the Windows Store -- it supports better surround-sound than any of the web-browsers. (The picture, though, is identical to using IE11/Edge, I believe.)
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:07AM (8 children)
The dude came up with WWW protocol to spread/exchange info over the internet. How does DRM help? The senile no-integirty bastard should have resigned a while back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:57PM (6 children)
DRM is supposed to help by allowing providers of rental video to use WWW, with the proprietary components sandboxed in a CDM, rather than completely proprietary native applications. Or would you prefer to do away with rental video entirely?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:20PM (5 children)
You are right, it's better to corrupt an open successful platform to accommodate a niche commercial interest.
And since when "rental video" needed web?
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:17PM
How's Blockbuster doing in your area?
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:39PM (3 children)
Niche, huh?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:39PM
sauce: http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/netflix-bandwidth-share-2016-1201801064/ [variety.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @11:16PM (1 child)
Youtube has, or wants, DRM?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @01:05AM
Downloader extensions make it easy to upload YouTube videos to other sites. VLC and other programs can stream the videos. Both options could deprive the company of ad revenue, which is AlphaGooTube's lifeline. YouTube also offers paid services, including live TV streaming [wikipedia.org] and premium videos [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:03PM
it helps him retire comfortably.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:19AM (11 children)
This seems to me to be akin to the "Official" end to the open web. If the EFF has given up, the battle has been lost.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:04AM (6 children)
the battle has been lost.
No, the battle has merely forked. Let's help the EFF pry open the web, or better yet, develop new protocols that ride the wave without being seen. VPN has lost its luster. Could I2P really be the answer?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:32AM (4 children)
Come and visit, especially the IRC.
Sadly the 'core' group has become formalized in what some of us consider a negative way. But on the bright side, there is one major reimplementation, the protocol itself is very forward thinking (lots of privacy tech that hasn't been implemented, but was thought of when the protocol was drafted.) Unfortunately many of the original designers, developers, etc have slowly aged out, been arrested, etc. But the community is truly international, with microcosms of Western, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and other groups making portions of it their home.
The current 'addressbook' system has a number of shortcomings, similiar to DNS, but no registration fees. Actual in-network addresses are referenceable as b32 hashes of the encryption key via the special .b32.i2p second level domain and could in fact use any other domain lookup system that supports cnames references and custom tld/slds if needed.
As long as you don't need Tor style outproxy support it offers in-network torrenting, network service hosting (including UDP if you use the newer i2pd branches. The java router devs have chosen not to implement it without a formal draft and more discussion, even though it piggybacks on the privacy of their SSU datagram protocol.)
Furthermore there have been discussions about either drafting a replacement for HTML, or forking a browser engine and choosing a subset of privacy friendly features to retain, while anonymizing or removing everything else.
Give it a visit today, spread work of it to twits, ditters, and whoever else you know. Show your protest of corporate takeover of the internet by helping support and grow an alternative. Given enough mindshare and new developers it is fully possible I2P could be overlaid on a mix of etwork protocols, paving the way to a future 'anonymity meta-network' atop every walled garden regional governments start to implement. The time to fight back is now, because if not you, then who? And if not now, then when?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:27PM (2 children)
Much about this decision is disappointing.
The technically savvy aren't standing their ground. DRM is a broken concept at a very fundamental level. Anyone can copy a DRM protected item to unprotected media, breaking the DRM for everyone. More than that, anyone can disable obedience to copy protection directives, creating a device that can easily copy all DRM protected items to unprotected states. And, it is extremely easy, and well known. For instance, any child old enough to read could simply hand type the letters of a DRM protected book into a word processor. So why aren't the tech savants pounding these points home on these ownership bozos? Information cannot be owned, not in the same sense that a material good can be owned. Considering their extensive track record, I can understand Microsoft being stupid enough to accept the ownership propaganda and aligning themselves with Big Media. MS has been chummy with them since before Windows XP and the "phone home" misfeature introduced therein. Think they can protect Windows and MS Office from piracy, at least a little bit, But the W3C? What's their game?
They appear to have accepted this silly argument that while DRM can't stop piracy, it is enough of a barrier that it's worth doing. Helps bolster the ownership propaganda. Perhaps this is just throwing them a pointless bone, knowing that the DRM cannot work. Perhaps it's the idea of destroy them by giving them what they want. If so, not worth it.
What embracing DRM has done is waste time and resources. Devices that handle HDMI video have this HD Content Protection piggybacked on the HDMI capability. It's a contractual requirement. So everyone has to pay a little more money, a hidden invisible levy, to support a system that has no other purpose than to restrict and deny content to its owners (which they are trying hard to turn into lessees), and which works poorly. Often gets the restrictions wrong, and cannot stop piracy.
The ownership propaganda has worked entirely too well. Any time they can sucker consumers into accepting lock in, they apparently win another battle. But humanity loses. Is the vast knowledge civilization has discovered and accumulated over millennia of study and experimentation soon to be put on the auction block, access rights to be sold off? Textbook publishers would like that. 2 + 2 = $4 please. You may pay by credit card, isn't that so convenient and nice that we allow you to pay by credit card?
(Score: 1) by AssCork on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
And don't mind the extra processing fee when you pay with a digital method - also, we bulk-upload transactions once a month to avoid the fee the card-processor's charges us (which we've "passed-on" to you).
Just popped-out of a tight spot. Came out mostly clean, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:03PM
I'm gonna need you to pop on over here, I need you to stem the flow of ... stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:20PM
Interesting stuff. I'll drop by. Between Google and the misogynerd narrative... it's odious; it all stinks to the high heavens.
Yes. I agree. Thank you for this post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:24PM
That depends. Every time I've looked at I2P I've seen an empty wasteland. Is there a howto anywhere that tells you how to do something simple like set up a website behind I2P or route stuff through it?
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:40AM (1 child)
the cards are stacked against us, as eff has found and said.
the big guys have too much money on the table to let this just slide. they will keep fighting for their drm.
I fight back buy not buying their media and downloading whatever I want, from wherever I want (as long as its drm-free files).
they will label it as stealing, but we can give their behavior a label, too.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:19AM
It is not about name calling.
DRM is like tapeworm, it won't leave as long as there is more food to leech.
You are too soft, and you expose a weak point by still longing for their lure. It is like fighting drug lords without kicking the addiction. They'll always have you under their thumb. They have under their thumb so many people and so many influential people, because addiction to prepackaged entertainment is so widespread. It is insane!
I fight back by not even wanting their stuff. Damnatio Memoriae and all that.
Entertainment is fun, but some prices are just too high, and by price I don't mean monetary compensation.
Get serious.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Bot on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:43AM (1 child)
Web is an abstraction, freedom applies to meatbags (and particularly well programmed bots), not to things. So in the end it all depends on how much sh!t you are willing to take.
Fact, you can live without the latest bluerays or consoles or netflix shows or DRMed content. In fact you are better off without them.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Wootery on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:00PM
I'd say that watching Netflix on a console is actually one the more benign use-cases.
The content is DRM'ed, but it's rented, not 'purchased'. To me, it seems far more reasonable to use DRM when it's rental.
The machine itself is completely locked-down and proprietary, but this at least keeps the binary blobs off your important systems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:43AM (30 children)
Let's assume that this EME API gets through, because it almost certainly will.
It's success in the marketplace will depend on several factors:
1 - Browsers actively supporting it
2 - Content providers encoding their video using it
3 - Customers agreeing to consume it
1. I'm pretty sure that there will be a few browsers (particularly Linux-focused) that will decide to not support the API. At a minimum, I expect that using the API will remain a configurable option in the browser (well, perhaps not Safari if Apple is going to push their video offerings with this)
2. I would imagine that the majority of content encoded with EME will be stuff that you already need to pay for today. Anything currently free (YouTube, PornHub, Twitch etc) will, I suspect, remain free of this. I fully expect all of the various streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, whatever crap Disney is putting out etc) to be all over this
3. Vote with your wallet. If nobody ends up using content encoded with EME, then it won't be worth putting it up there.
As a final point, it's worth remembering the fate of Flash. While it was very handy for a while, it eventually died from being full of exploits, and for consuming too many resources. The same could well be true of EME. Only time will tell.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jcross on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:59AM (12 children)
I think you're right. And to some extent the market has already decided, because Netflix et al aren't currently pushing out video in straight HTML5 formats; as I understand it they're using browser plugins to do their DRM, at least in Chrome. So this standard would in theory make it so they only have to target a single system rather than one per browser. You likely still won't be able to watch Netflix on Chromium, although there might be some fights about whether it should be added to make the browser fully standards-compliant. Maybe it becomes an optional plugin there. The W3C's stamp of approval is disappointing for sure, but I'm just not seeing how this changes the landscape much.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:55AM (11 children)
And to some extent the market has already decided, because Netflix et al aren't currently pushing out video in straight HTML5 formats; as I understand it they're using browser plugins to do their DRM, at least in Chrome.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought Netflix et al were already using this standard, it just hadn't yet been quite finalized. We can already watch Netflix on Linux using Chrome (not Chromium).
The W3C's stamp of approval is disappointing for sure, but I'm just not seeing how this changes the landscape much.
I agree; I think they're just rubberstamping what Google has already put into Chrome, and has probably already been built into Safari and Edge. Firefox and Chromium and the minor open-source browsers are the holdouts.
Also, remember what things were like before this: to watch Netflix, you had to use Silverlight, which of course wasn't available on Linux (some people did come up with a workaround called "pipelight", but it was quickly rendered obsolete by the move to browser-based decryption), or you just had to go without. Companies that wanted to DRM their content were already doing it long before this standard was proposed, using proprietary plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. So yeah, I don't see how this really changes anything. Perhaps the worry is that everyone and their brother will start using it, unlike now where it's only certain large players like Netflix. Imagine if Youtube's stuff was all DRMed; we wouldn't be able to download anything on there with youtube-dl.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:05AM (5 children)
People are also worrying because this makes digital restrictions management officially accepted as part of a major standard, which can give the appearance of it being ethical on some level. DRM should be condemned in the harshest terms for restricting users, and especially so by organizations like the W3C.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by melikamp on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:09AM (4 children)
Thanks, AC. More to the point, EFF is right to run like hell. An ethical equivalent of this fine deed would be a technical standard for torture: "make the ropes this tight, turn so many degrees...", or something like that. WTF is DRM, anyway? It's a pure con, no silver lining. There's no need for DRM on a kiosk-type thingy, as it just does with physical protection. There's no such thing as DRM on a personal computer, because that thing just does whatever I tell it to, thank you very much libreware. The only place DRM is even feasible is a sleazy rental that spies on you for no other reason than you are trapped by an oppressive government or an equally oppressive market force, or (sigh) you are channeling Homer Simpson and just buying the first thing you see advertised on a freeway. In that last case, we can't really help, just as we cannot help people who like being tortured, but I do believe most of us are in the much bigger trapped category. And we don't need this standard at all, in fact it's an amazingly brazen insult, rather than a technical standard. And we can do a standard, can't we? And make sure our libreware Web browsers support the real standard, which doesn't start by bending user over? I don't know, talking to some people, I feel a lot of doubt about this, which I find perplexing, as to me it just seems like another fork. adblock plus [wikipedia.org] all over.
Anyways, here's my 2013 email to TBL, I think he might have printed it out and wiped with it, as is his right, but I hope you enjoy it :)
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:03PM (1 child)
My my, the Interwebs tell me you're right. I'd always assumed he had a PhD.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:57PM
Crazier yet, Cory Doctorow isn't a doctor either.
(Score: 4, Informative) by NotSanguine on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:58PM (1 child)
As with most things, the Golden Rule [quoteinvestigator.com] applies.
Who are the members [w3.org] of the W3C? How much do they pay [w3.org] for that privilege? Who else makes monetary contributions [w3.org] to the W3C?
When you answer (you're welcome) those questions, the people upon whom pressure needs to be brought becomes clear.
Tim Berners-Lee is a figurehead. Those that matter are the ones paying the bills.
Many of the members might have an interest in opposing DRM and many members have a vested interest in supporting DRM.
Individuals are not members of the W3C, it's corporations and other organizations who pay anywhere from US $2,250.00 to US $77,000.00 (depending on the size of the organization) in the US (I didn't investigate other countries, but you can at the W3C Membership costs link [w3.org] I posted above). These folks aren't just giving away their money because they want to make the world a better place, they're doing so to achieve specific goals which, for many of these companies, includes DRM.
IMHO, letter writing campaigns and negative publicity are completely useless for an organization which survives on contributions from many who not only support DRM, but feel that their business models depend upon it.
Perhaps I'm too cynical, but that's the way I see it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:24PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:37AM (1 child)
Silvershite was such a piece of crap as well. On a slow connection it would only buffer a tiny amount however long you waited, making shows unwatchable. Maybe the publisher could reconfigure that but they didn't.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 20 2017, @05:34AM
Yeh, I installed it too, and had the same result. Unusable.
Trashed it as unworkable with consumer-grade ISPs.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:21PM (1 child)
No, the widevine plugin works under Chromium. Check if your distribution offers it repackaged or not. Mine does. Also Netflix works just fine on recent Firefox on Linux.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday September 20 2017, @11:20PM
Firefox works great, but with NetFlix it only supports 720p. On my e2180 CPU Firefox works great. They recently (maybe six months to a year) fucked up Chrome on Linux so bad I can't even play standard definition video stuttering without stuttering! Chrome is shit for Netflix on any OS. Load a Netflix video and press cntrl-alt-shift-d and it toggles a diagnostic display of the current playback. Chrome drops frames like hot potatoes. Firefox doesn't drop a single frame on my system.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday September 20 2017, @10:02PM
That would ruin YouTube for me! My computer, under Linux (no browser video hardware acceleration), cannot play 1080p video (MPV works great). I really hope they don't go this route.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:02AM (3 children)
there goes 1% of your market
Yeah, this sucks
99% of consumers have no clue. What's sad is this tech evidently gives a route to making services like Ad Block Plus and Ublock Origin ineffective, which IMHO is the worst possible outcome.
A couple months ago I had to use my sister's laptop for something. Jeebus, what a fricken waste. Spent 10 minutes installing ublock origin and noscript, and she was all over me in how much better her web browisng experience was.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:49AM (1 child)
if I can't root my phone, I can't install good blockers.
the raw web is NASTY without blockers.
when you live behind a blocked wall (lol), life is not too bad, online. then, you go to someone else's machine and see their unblocked web experience. as you noticed, its like a quiet room vs an airport runway.
I don't know if there are good blockers for the iphone. apple locks lots of stuff down, so I'm not sure what they have, but its one reason why I never considered buying an iphone. all my android phones have been rooted and suitable blockers installed.
could you imagine if they taught this in public schools? imagine if kids were really taught about life, instead of the synthetic things they often spend time 'learning' at school. if the teachers sat down with the kids and leveled with them; told them the purpose behind advertising and how invasive it now is, when you are online. what a raw vs blocked web looks like. how to install and maintain filters and such. just imagine how cool an INFORMED society would be!
the main reason I'm using firefox is the value of the plugins and how much time I've spent refining the filters. every so often, FF breaks their plugins and that is inexcusable to me. I'm on a very old version of FF just because the value of the browser is its plugins, at this point.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sourcery42 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:32PM
If you ever want to block ads system wide on an android look into DNS66. I didn't want to unlock the bootloader or root my kid's phone. This works great for sanitizing the web and apps without root, and it doesn't seem to hurt performance. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.jak_linux.dns66/ [f-droid.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @06:19AM
Your sister was all over you? Eeew.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:02AM
>Anything currently free (YouTube, PornHub, Twitch etc) will, I suspect, remain free of this
Are you kidding me? That's preposterous. This is the home movie industry, the people who with a straight face compare the invention of VCRs to the Boston Strangler.
Any free video on the internet isn't free, it's being paid for with ads. The last thing Youtube wants is for you to rip their movie and reupload it somewhere else. They lose money and eyeballs. So of course they're going to encrypt every single second of video on their entire website. Giant corporations with buildings full of lawyers love nothing better than to massively inconvenience all their customers if it will save them a dollar.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:09AM (4 children)
I'm not so sure...
Definitely, most of the paid content will move to use EME... but I suspect some free content will move as well. The free content requires advertising in order to obtain revenue. Their problem is that they do not serve advertisements on content that is downloaded. EME will prevent easily downloading streamed content and will lock up the free content behind the advertising wall.
For this reason, I'm sure Google will incorporate EME into chrome. While Apple did piss off the advertising people with the recent release of Safari, they still have to play nice with the content industry due to all the content distributed through itunes... so, Safari will probably get it as well. I would suspect that Firefox may hold off initially, especially if there is any mass complaining about EME; after all, it costs more developer resources to implement EME, than it does to ignore it.
No real wallet when choosing browsers, but I agree if people avoid the browsers with EME, it will eventually be dropped. However, I don't believe the non-geeks are going to care or notice a difference. So unfortunately, it appears that EME is coming and its time for smart people to swap to non-mainstream browsers.
I also agree that your comparison to flash is accurate, and will eventually happen. Unfortunately, it will not happen until after EME takes over the masses.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 5, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:44AM (3 children)
Well, they *did*...back around 2014. But by now Firefox *already* supports EME (on Windows...). You can disable it, but it's on by default. Chrome/Safari/IE/Edge also support it; not sure if it can be disabled on those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypted_Media_Extensions#Support [wikipedia.org]
If you want to disable it on Firefox, head to about:preferences#content and look for the "Play DRM Content" checkbox. I don't think that option even exists on Linux installs (due to no EME support there yet), but can't verify at the moment as I'm currently on a Windows system at work.
The one way Firefox is better is they've apparently designed it specifically to resist attempts to track or identify specific users through the DRM tools. And, again, they do provide a switch to disable it. But if you want a browser that just doesn't and won't support it at all you probably want to be looking at something like Pale Moon...
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:04AM (1 child)
Not sure about Firefox, but I'm running PCLinuxOS and see this in Pale Moon's preferences window under Content:
|Video|
- Enable Media Source Extensions (MSE)
- Use MSE asynchronously
- Enable MSE for MP4 video
- Enable MSE for WebM video
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:47PM
MSE is a completely different part of the standard. That's just for regular video streams, not for DRM content.
MSE: https://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/ [w3.org]
EME: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [w3.org]
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday September 19 2017, @08:09AM
Ignore my earlier comment — I just realized that I wasn't paying close enough attention and mixed up EME with MSE.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:24AM (5 children)
1. Who builds the browers? All those who have had "the call" or "the visit" and are compliant with the movie magic club's wishes.
2. Content providers will be able to use it, use it, or go away and die.
3. The average person using the brower or software does not know anything technical. The smartphone or laptop is a toaster, an appliance that came pre-loaded from the store with what the salesman said was the latest and best. The few that care or know (like you dear reader), don't count as the 99.96% plough straight on into the abyss.
The internet, is over. But like the Hotel California, you can check-out but you can never leave. We are hooked to it whatever happens. And "they" know it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @05:13AM (4 children)
It.bloody.well.isn't.
Firstly, the internet is more than the WWW, and the WWW is more than the shit indexed by Google and others.
As to the WWW,
The 'sanctioned' and 'sanitised' World Wide Web as indexed by Google et al and polluted by all those fine 'content providers' may be terminally borked / infested with suits'n'crooks, sure, that's a problem, and there's a lot more 'noise' than 'signal' in search returns nowadays, so if we want to work within the framework of the current system initially we go 'old school' and start putting back up maintained/curated pages of topic related links until we get a distributed search engine in place which works.
Hell, why don't we improve the signal to noise ratio by going one step further, let's fork the WWW.
Pick a new high port number as the standard, mandate encryption, initially keep the current server software unless things get 'blobby' there as well, pick a single browser codebase as standard, fork it, remove any 'cruft', modify it to point to the new high port number and/or recognise only a new URI along the lines of FUWWW://server:port and let's start over and use the new system if for information sharing only, no shopping, no entertainment 'services' etc. we use our normal browsers and the WWW for that.
I'm sorry If I'm going to sound 'elitist' but I no longer really care if your average internet user never gets to use any current or future 'alternative' service born out of the current dissatisfaction with the way the WWW is going, they're happy, so let them keep Google etc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:47AM (3 children)
So, you'd rather stuff Verisigns coffers than the MAFIAAs?
Unless you propose to make DANE a requirement - the current EME supporting browsers refuse to support DANE, because that would mean we could encrypt without paying Verisign et. al.
(And no, let's encrypt is not an answer unless they redesign their protocol, which has been deliberately designed to be as cumbersome as possible to ensure that anyone who wants a smooth experience still pays their Verisign tax).
(Score: 3, Touché) by TheRaven on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:09AM (1 child)
You know Verisign hasn't run a CA for about five years, right?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday September 19 2017, @03:11PM
Verisign doesn't run a CA, but it does run things that CAs check before issuing a certificate. Namely, it runs two root name servers and the authoritative registry for several top-level domains. This means it earns a cut with or without DANE.
In order to get a TLS certificate trusted by browsers, you need to buy a domain and keep it renewed. This is because the CA/Browser Forum's Baseline Requirements specify that hostnames in the subjectAltName field refer to a fully-qualified domain name in the public name servers, not some reserved or made-up TLD such as .local (mDNS), .internal, or .test. DANE wouldn't help either, as even if browsers trusted the DNSSEC root zone signing key, they wouldn't trust the zone signing key associated with a made-up TLD. So anyone who wants to run HTTPS over a home LAN and have it trusted by non-technical visiting friends and family needs to first buy a domain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:35AM
FSM No!
If people want to be fleeced royally for a 'chain of mistrust' certificate for encrypted traffic for commerce etc then they stick to the current web and browsers.
What I'm thinking is we fork a browser codebase anyway, strip all the crap out of it, so DANE would be a solution, at least, short term.
The point is, we fork..and end up with (crudely) what is now a commercial WWW and browsers capable of accessing that content, and a forked browser sans DRM etc capable of accessing a seperate non-commercial WWW..same protocol, same html, same server software, different port number. Yes it means running two browsers, but some of us already run more than that thanks to the way content on some sites borks depending on which browser you use. If, after this creation, there's a divergence between the way the commercially driven W3C web develops and the FTW3C web develops, then all the better.
Of course, there is nothing we can do to stop them trying to pollute any new scheme with their crap, nature of the beast I'm afraid.
Tell me about it!, cumbersome isn't the word, don't think there is a word in the english language invested with enough invective to sum up my feelings about the process...
As I've avoided any serious network related jiggery-pokery for a couple of decades now, I think I'll have a trawl through the current browser lists and codebases for inspiration.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday September 19 2017, @09:46AM
I agree with voting with your wallet. Only, I don't expect it to yield results. Finance ate economy. It is more like a political statement.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @01:44AM (8 children)
I'm not really joking. The EFF should publish an alternative standard excluding just this, at least at first. Make a lot of noise about it (they clearly know how to put out press releases) and work every trick in the book to get anything which uses the so-called official W3C methods for DRM to be labeled as unsafe, like Google does for pages with suspected malware.
Because that's what it is. Digital Restrictions Malware.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:13AM (5 children)
So, who do they fork? Chrome? Firefox? I'm guessing IE isn't an option.
Who works on it? I'm guessing a web browser is a honkin big chunk of code that nobody understands > 70%. The learning curve is steep, those missing guardrails on the hairpin curves lead to security issues. How many newbs are gonna join your Grand Tour? How many of them can stay on the road at 3 am in rainy conditions when making a false move means a huge security issue?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Informative) by deimtee on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:32AM
The AC said fork the standard, not a browser. It's an interesting idea. Whether the EFF would have the clout and connections to make a go of it is the question.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:48AM (3 children)
Fork the standard, not the browser.
A browser fork to refuse EME already exists though -- Pale Moon. Although it definitely seems like they could use some additional support, so it might be nice for EFF to throw some their way as well. Although honestly I'd probably prefer they start with a more modern Firefox version if they're going to get into that...maybe even just a patch/plugin to strip out EME if possible, shouldn't be too hard to find one guy to maintain *that*.
(Score: 3, Informative) by linkdude64 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:12AM (2 children)
"A browser fork to refuse EME already exists though -- Pale Moon"
Funny that you mention Pale Moon specifically - didn't the lead dev recently stand against ad-blocking software or tracker-spoofing extensions or some such?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:52AM
No, he added a flag to one extension generating fraudulent clicks, so that it requires changing one setting to install it, so that hopefully only people who know what they are doing will install it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:19PM
Yeah, something like that, I've got no real opinions there though. Don't mistake my comment above for actual support of that project...I've got nothing much against it if that's your thing, but Firefox is the only browser I'll run on any of my devices. But if someone wants a browser that's taking a moral stand and refusing to ever accept EME, it does seem like Pale Moon is their best bet for that. Personally I'll stick with running Firefox and keeping it disabled, but if they start to screw with the ability to do that then maybe I'll look at Pale Moon. But I really hope I never need to, because Pale Moon's UI kinda sucks... ;)
Browser-based ad blocking is a stupid idea anyway though, so that would never keep me from switching. Do it right and block at the router or a required proxy server. If I don't want my browser loading content from malware-server.org, why the hell would I trust a game or other application using that same domain? Browser plugins are for reconnaissance -- learning what might be missing from the firewall rules and why.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:30AM
The RIAA lobbied Congress to pass the DMCA. They did. Unanimously. Every one of em' voted for it.
We also need to lobby Congress to pass the Digital Millenium Responsibility Act, to go along with DMCA, to stop abuse and irresponsibility of the rights given in the DMCA to operate in secret.
Just as the DMCA holds people responsible for copyright infringement, even to the case of $180,000 per instance, those terms should also apply to malware distributed under the cloak of DRM. As a concession to mandating ignorance on the public for how their stuff works, the vendors of stuff assume full responsibility for screwups sent under the Congress-granted right to cloak. No different than some manufacturer who did not watch his food prep stuff and sent out loads of salmonella laced chicken.
Get malwared? Send the rightsholder on record the bill. If he makes fuss over it, get that blond haired bombshell working for Relion Group to yap endlessly on TV about class action suits.
Failure to pass the DMRA should also negate the DMCA.
We gotta do business the way business does business.
However, this will require us to vote in a Congress which represents the People.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @10:13PM
The EFF will publish an alternate standard, but first they have to get their special friend Chelsea Manning to sign off on it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 19 2017, @02:06PM (2 children)
We're just nicely rid of Flash and now this? It would be funny if Adobe started pushing open standards now. Wasn't Google one of the first ones to jump on the "No Flash" bandwagon - hypocrites.
What's with all the adblock talk? Stuck this in my named.conf years ago and haven't ever looked back.
zone "doubleclick.net" IN { type master; file "poison/hosts.zone"; };
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Tuesday September 19 2017, @04:29PM
In principle, you've got a point. In practice, let me remind you of the gazillion and one security issues with Flash. Fuck Adobe, can't write shit for shit. Odds on any random group of programmers maintaining any random project being as incompetent as the Adobe Flash devs ... are poor to say the least.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 19 2017, @07:46PM
1 down, how many more to go?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves