Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 1:21 UTC (Thu) by dannyobrien (subscriber, #25583)
In reply to: Firefox gets closed-source DRM by alonz
Parent article: Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Actually, from my understanding in talking to Mozilla, they will be distributing it, and also managing the updating of the CRM. It will be packaged with Firefox, though you will have to enable it on first use. Is there anything in the blog post that contradicts that?

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 1:52 UTC (Thu) by nirik (subscriber, #71) [Link]

From https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mi...

"As plugins today, the CDM itself will be distributed by Adobe and will not be included in Firefox. The browser will download the CDM from Adobe and activate it based on user consent."

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 8:38 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (5 responses)

Legally speaking, Adobe will be distributing the CDM. Apart from anything else this is important for patent licensing reasons.

The user probably won't be able to tell (or care) who's distributing it.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 15:57 UTC (Thu) by welinder (guest, #4699) [Link] (4 responses)

Hi, roc!

True/False: if one were to run mozilla showing DRM contents under your
replaying debugger, then the generated files could be transferred to
any other machine and still be used to display the same DRM contents?

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 17:05 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm pretty sure rr would not be the easiest way to break this kind of DRM.

The robustness of DRM is an interesting topic but as gerv says elsewhere it's not really productive to talk about it. The more people talk about the fragility of existing schemes, the more pressure there will be to replace them with something worse for users.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 16, 2014 11:24 UTC (Fri) by krake (guest, #55996) [Link] (2 responses)

> The more people talk about the fragility of existing schemes, the more pressure there will be to replace them with something worse for users.

But wouldn't that be good in the long run?

The more it negatively impacts users the easier it becomes for them to understand that it is bad.

Similar to nobody wanting crypto support because it was inconvenient and then Snowden came along.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 16, 2014 13:00 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Take a look on iOS “ecosystem”. Apple rules it with iron fist. One can not do anything without Apple's approval. Yet people only pick Android over iPhone because it's cheaper. In countries where iPhone is subsidized (and thus cheap) it's market share is much higher.

Yes, some people refuse to do anything with Apple's devices because they are fatally crippled (you can never “own” them: practically speaking you are renting them, not buying), I'm one of these, but there are so few of us that it does not really matter, we are below statistical error when our numbers are counted.

Story with Snowden is similar: there are huge amount of snake oil salesmens which sell you “painless crypto” which is, in best case, a pointless placebo, but very few picked real painful and unconvenient crypto after Snowden revelations.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 16, 2014 22:44 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Making things much worse for users in the short term in the hope it provokes a political response is a very risky strategy, and I don't think it would work. A lot of the downside of DRM (invasion of privacy for example) is not very visible to users.