Translation: Netflix successfully lobied DRM into what is supposed to be the OPEN web standard, to the point where even Firefox couldn't afford not to support it. Dark days for the free exchange of information enabled by the web.
Here's the bottom line: browser makers have absolutely zero leverage over DRM. Firefox refusing to implement DRM would have been 1000 times more likely to lead to Firefox's irrelevance and death than it would lead to rightsholders caving on DRM requirements. Even if all browsers banded together and refused, all that would mean is that premium content would not be available in browsers, and that would lead to a significant devaluation of the web in favor of proprietary apps. It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here. The fact is content producers would restrict themselves to licensed devices in a heartbeat, and they would get away with it to, because at the end of the day, people want to watch what they want to watch.
EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards. It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.
> It shouldn't be considered worse than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope.
True. Proprietary plugins with limited scope are better than proprietary plugins with arbitrary scope, all other things being equal.
IMO the 2005-2015 wave of pirated content was due to the exact opposite; users (people in the living room) not going the extra literal mile to buy/rent a DVD.
With the coming of Spotify & Co the music pirate scene has pretty much died off and it's because the physical CDs are replaces by something orders of magnitude easier.
Same thing is happening with video content now that most houses have the capability of streaming it.
What people want to do after work is to sit in the sofa and press "play". They don't want to start installing software.
Maybe, but Roku, Fire Sticks, Apple TV & Chromecast all seem to indicate that people are willing to put in some effort to set up a platform for video consumption. That combined with pre-installed solutions like iTunes and Microsoft Movies & TV give users some pretty easy options to compete with their browser.
I have quite a few data points that say you are flat wrong about that. I would add to this: people watch what they want to watch and how they want to watch it.
I've literally downloaded HBO shows even though I'm an HBO Now subscriber. The Roku HBO Now app is so horrible, I just hate using it.
Show us the data points or it didn't happen.
I am highly sceptical about your statement and am convinced that most people are willing to pay in exchange for ease of use and convenience.
Sorry, that's not how it works. The situation is what it is, and the people with hard data are going to act on it, and your scepticism does not change any of that.
As another person with business interests that produce custom video content for niche markets, I have shifted significantly in my attitude towards DRM since discovering how real people behave. We tried to be nice and considerate and not limit access to the video files with DRM. We did this while producing new, original content unlike anything else out there for our subscribers. We held out for several years.
But we got to the point where we were spending so much time dealing with that that it was directly affecting our ability to deliver for the vast majority of our customers who respected the rules. We were losing out on revenues, our genuine customers were losing out on new content, and the only people winning were the freeloaders and the people enjoying our content on other people's sites/channels/whatever.
My concern about DRM affecting legitimate customers if something goes wrong is as strong as ever, so we still take a cautious approach and err on the side of being nice. However, I have no qualms at all about DRMing every single asset we have, and I have no qualms whatsoever about deploying the lawyers against people who knowingly, maliciously and without remorse rip off the results of several years of hard work and share them with others.
As a final point, none of this negates your point that making access convenient and prices reasonable improves conversion rates. But I see little evidence that this helps if part of your potential market is finding your content totally free from someone else first.
The "someone" in your hypothetical can modify the blob, but then they won't be able to resign the blob, so SGX will fail to load it.
No, they can't. The DRM will have to be there, or the content (as is from the website) wont play.
>There's no way DRM can't be removed if I own the device that can play it.
There are several ways (including recording the analog signal if it comes down to that). But not any way of "make it so that the DRM looks like it's there to the websites it visits, but it isn't really there"
If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone. There are millions of archived predictions of Apple's demised in forums such as this, but even though they had 20% of the market at peak, they easily killed flash.
Unfortunately, Google has an interest in DRM for its own sake. This may serve as a welcome reminder that the awesome job they have done with Chrome is a result of an alignment of interest between them and the web community: they need the open web to compete against iOS and the closed Facebook ecosystem. That situation may not last forever.
I'm quite happy to have had RMS and other true-believing ascetic martyrs shaping the techno-centric fantasy world we're living in. If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.
I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks. I honestly don't know what benefit they think they're getting from DRM, considering all their material somehow ends in a .torrent anyway.
Proof: this is exactly what Amazon does with Kindle content.
The app and Edge are the only two PC 4k viewing options. And both require a Kaby Lake CPU.
They still do, you have to have the Widevine PLUGIN and the Open H264 PLUGIN to play content on netflix
It is a pure myth that eme does not have plugins
>browsers have less leverage as more Netflix subscribers get their content either on set-top boxes or mobile devices (where Netflix has total end-to-end control), and fewer are stuck with browsers.
I am fine with that, I would rather have that than an HTML5 standard that requires binary plugins to work. I would rather have that then the risk EME brings to extent beyond video content to start having entire pages plugin bases, fonts DRM encumbered, and 100's of other consequences to this move that are coming
HTML5 does not require binary plugins in order to work.
Yet... EME opens the door, and only the Naive believe EME will start and stop at Video Content.
There are already requests for ebooks,and fonts. Images and and even web content itself is not far behind
>I agree that it's a myth that EME doesn't have plugins. What EME does is reduce the scope of those plugins.
Yes and no, if you buy in to the "perfect sandbox" myth then sure, but to believe CDM's are secure is laughable. There are too many hooks into the hardware, there as to be in order to bypass the user, for it to actually be secure.
No the security is more protecting the CDM from the user, not protecting the user from the CDM
Firefox users were already viewing Netflix with a Silverlight plug in. Would you rather be stuck with an MS solution or one with input from various companies.
As far as the music industry getting rid of DRM it had nothing to do with "carrot vs. sticks." The real history:
2003: itunes was introduced with DRMd music that only worked with the iPod.
late 2006: other companies tried to sell drmd music but since it didn't work with the iPod, none of them could gain traction.
Early 2007: the music industry asked Apple to license FairPlay. Apple refused. As an alternative, Jobs said that if the music industry would license their music without DRM, any music sold anywhere would be compatible with any player. His "Thoughts on Music" essay giving this alternative was widely publicized in 2007 (https://www.google.com/amp/readwrite.com/2007/02/06/steve_jo...) and was on the front page of Apple.com
The music industry wanted variable priced music, the ability to bundle songs, a cut of every iPod sold, and a deposit to insure against losses due to privacy. Apple refused all of those conditions.
To both decrease Apple's dominance in the market and to increase the competition, the music industry allowed all of Apple's competitors who would bow to their demands to offer DRM free music. Apple was only able to sell DRM free music by EMI and independent labels and they weren't allowed to sell music at all over cellular for the then new iPhone.
2008: Apple and the music industry came to terms and Apple started selling DRM free music.
The only reason the music industry allowed DRM free music was to decrease Apple's dominance.
Maybe not, but since they already provide their content via various apps anyway, it's hardly a leap to them providing a dedicated, proprietary player on other platforms as well.
If Chrome were to ship without DRM, Netflix would cave faster than you can say "thepiratebay". See what happened to flash when it wasn't supported on the iPhone.
Flash continued to be the dominant platform for online video for several more years, major sites didn't work on Apple devices, and competitors literally ran campaigns with lines like "See the whole Internet"? I'm not sure you're making the point you intended to here.
If your defeatist attitude had prevailed in the early years, we'd all be writing VBScript to animate the spinning gif on homepage.doc – yes, Microsoft once tried to push .doc to replace .html.
This is just silly. At no point in the history of the Web, from its earliest days growing out into public awareness, was there any serious prospect of anything like that happening. Whether we're really better off with JS having become the dominant front-end language is a different question, but I digress.
I also think the music industry has proven quite clearly that you'll have a lot more success with carrots than sticks.
The music industry can sell its primary content at sub-dollar prices and still make a reasonable profit. Almost no-one else can.
True or not true, this is just not going to happen.
Google was the single browser pushing DRM into the web-standards to begin with. They were the first to ship with this enabled.
And Google already has a vested interest in DRM. They have their own media-services now, remember...
>> It is a techno-centric fantasy to think that browser makers have even a modicum of leverage here
You realize the world's largest browser vendors are Google, Apple, and Microsoft... right?
>> EME is a ideological compromise, sure, but it's a net benefit to the open web since its scope is small and it maintains the overall schema of web standards.
Ahhh yes, the classic "compromise some of my morals to save the rest of them". Works every time.
1) Content production is rapidly moving to an "in house" model, where subscribers are more heavily influenced by original and exclusive content
2) I doubt there would be large transfers of subscribers, more a slight depression across the board and large increases in piracy, as we saw rather distinctly with the early days of music providers (like before itunes early days)
3) Google and Apple each by themselves are worth the entirety of Hollywood many times over. I think it's less them having little leverage, and more them playing a longer game and not caring about DRM battles in the short term.
You keep using this phrase. Doesn't that also suggest that, if given enough trouble, they will just pirate that content instead? DRM has shown to do very little to stop that, so why continue pretending that it does.
> You keep using this phrase. Doesn't that also suggest that, if given enough trouble, they will just pirate that content instead?
Not to point any fingers, but I can confirm that this happens, a lot.
But regardless of my personal views of DRM and its efficiency, kudos to Netflix for targeting Linux as a platform, even if they do it for their own pockets' sake.
Yes, but, in general, trouble has been decreasing, and so has the need to pirate. I would argue that there are only three kinds of people who pirate anymore:
1. People who want a local copy of the content that can't be taken away (e.g. Netflix pulling a title, or just canceling one's Netflix account).
2. Content that is so long-tail that it's not available for streaming from one of the major players that have decent device/playback support.
3. People who are so far in the "openness"/ownership camp that they would refuse to buy into a service like Netflix unless they provided #1 (DRM-free, of course).
The fourth kind of person is mostly gone: the person who doesn't need 1-3, but finds the options for playing content legally to be too cumbersome, or who can't find a legal player for their chosen viewing device. (Essentially, they've been "given enough trouble".)
If Netflix were to drop all browser support, and release native apps for Windows and macOS, there would be an increase of that fourth kind of person (Linux users, mainly, though I wouldn't put it past Netflix to release a Linux client too), but that wouldn't change the situation for the 1-3 type people, who are the bulk of pirating community.
I really think, for the vast majority of viewers, having a native Windows/MacOS app, plus native apps for Android/iOS, is plenty. Taking away browser support isn't going to increase piracy by any measurable amount.
And you're absolutely right.
DRM will not have any impact on that. Someone will come along, and make a video-grabbing utility that bypasses the DRM. Also, many of the content is already available via bittorrent.
DRM is pointless. But perhaps you are right about "browser vendors refusing to cooperate" not being the best possible approach. However, do you know what is?
Protecting media copyright isn't a black or white thing like crypto. It's about compromises to drive behavior and consumer spending with convenience.
1. People who have access to the content can usually see it over and over again (when they have a subscription to a service like Netflix). DRM will do nothing here.
2. People who don't have access to the content can't even see the DRM'ed version of the file, so DRM will do nothing here either.
3. People who want to pirate (illegally distribute) the content have advanced tools and knowledge to circumvent DRM, so DRM is of no use here again.
For instance, I didn't have access to netflix content, and then I signed up for a netflix account and paid them money, and now I do have access.
So you're saying people could move to another jurisdiction to be able to watch their favorite show on Netflix? Yeah, that truly sounds like freedom to me. Or am I misinterpretating you?
It's also true that some people don't live in such places. But that doesn't matter. You said that DRM serves no purpose. For some it may not. But for some people it does.
Sure it will. It will stop people writing a script to download as much as they can get away with in a single month and then cancelling since they have enough content to keep them going for several more months without paying for them.
3. People who want to pirate (illegally distribute) the content have advanced tools and knowledge to circumvent DRM, so DRM is of no use here again.
That is a big assumption, and in many cases not a correct one. The major online DRM systems today are fairly robust, and if anyone has a crack for some of them, they're keeping their cards very close to their chests. The leaks of major movies that you find on torrent sites and the like are usually from other sources.
And yes, the value of much of my time is effectively zero. The same is true for most people.
Also, some modern watermarking techniques can survive conversions like this, so if anyone is making a habit of recording content from a service using watermarking and redistributing it on a scale that justifies taking serious action, it'll be pretty easy to prove who it was when the lawsuit comes up.
How many compromised netflix accounts do you think are floating around? At some point the bits have to actually go to a display device as well, which can always be tapped.
However, you don't just get to conveniently avoid taking any responsibility when there are videos being distributed that are specifically linked to an account you signed up for that clearly said you couldn't redistribute the content you got through it, just because there's some vaguely possible alternative that might have once happened somewhere maybe.
Really? How would you do that, exactly?
If you're looking online and find camcorder copies of videos that were served to a specific customer at a specific time, as confirmed by the watermarking, and your server logs show that that stream was sent to the customer's usual IP address at the time in question, what are the odds that they were the victim of a carefully crafted hack of the kind you're implying, and not just someone who set up a camcorder to record from their own account?
Wireless isn't very secure, you're mileage may vary on the encryption mechanism but here is a guide to hacking WPA networks (with WEP it takes seconds):
http://www.hackingtutorials.org/wifi-hacking-tutorials/how-t...
From there you can try a range of known exploits and gain admin access to a PC, after that it's game over, they can run what they want, when the want. There is no careful crafting necessary, the process can be largely automated.
We aren't talking camcorder copies, but exact digital replicas from the netflix stream.
In any case, merely compromising WiFi won't get you someone's Netflix account. The Netflix data itself, including the credentials, are all encrypted.
As for taking over someone's PC, that's far beyond the average pirate, and you're talking about serious criminal offences on top of mere copyright infringement at that point.
And even then, we're not necessarily talking about being able to make exact copies of the stream. The whole point of hardware-backed DRM schemes is that just because you can run software on the PC, that doesn't mean you can access the unencrypted data stream.
So again, how exactly were you planning to do this? What you're talking about is far beyond the average script kiddie or casual pirate.
Remember, we were talking about convincing a court that it was more likely that someone did all of this and that was how a watermarked copy of protected content got out than that the person whose account was used to download that content then somehow shared it. A slight possibility that professional pirates who are also expert crackers chose that particular customer to pick on and left no evidence having done so isn't likely to be very convincing.
WPA2 is reasonably secure, but most home instances aren't set up well. They often have WPS enabled or a guessable password. Plus weaker set ups are still easy to find. Once you're on, redirect Netflix to a site to grab their info, record the stream from a computer outside their house. This is needlessly complex for what is needed, find a compromised Netflix(+email?), record.
You keep coming up with these claims about how easy this is, yet you also keep missing basic technical points about the system actually works. As I've said before, if there is actual evidence that someone's account was compromised then they can produce that as part of their defence in court. However, if content that is watermarked to a specific account turns up all over the Internet, that is evidence suggesting that the person in question has infringed copyright, and that does need a real defence if the rightsholder chooses to take legal action accordingly.
And you're still ignoring the major parts. What someone actually needs to do is much easier than all this, and Netflix has already lost if they end up in court with an innocent person.
If you want me to prove accounts have been compromised, look at all the account breaches over the past few years, think of how many reuse passwords.
Currently the burden of evidence is far too low. Something being done with my account, or even my machine is not evidence that I've done anything wrong.
> However, you don't just get to conveniently avoid taking any responsibility when there are videos being distributed that are specifically linked to an account you signed up for that clearly said you couldn't redistribute the content you got through it
How are we supposed to take responsibility for the actions of others? Should we be liable for crimes committed due to the insecurity of home networks? If so the computer industry has much bigger problems than DRM.
Yes, it is. It may not be absolute proof, but it most certainly is strong evidence.
How are we supposed to take responsibility for the actions of others?
Hopefully, you don't have to. But you also don't get to just invent some hypothetical bogeyman and use that as an excuse to ignore real evidence.
Perhaps. But this person can always claim that it was done by an external hacker. In fact, it can be done by an "external" hacker, and it will be if these guys are smart.
But the people who go through the trouble of that are exactly the people who wouldn't mind downloading pirated copies in the first place.
2b. People who don't have access to the content, but want to watch it for free.
You mean grabbing a DRM-free (i.e. pirated) copy so that I can watch it at my leasure and on devices of my choosing, even if I have access to it via other legit means?
For video, people don't download it and take it with them (typically), they either play from their computer or from a set top box or smart TV. So there is no market forces that would give the movie studios any incentive to do non-DRM.
Ironically, this scenario just got more unlikely, thanks to EME now being a standard and thus available for everyone... Hooray for web standards!
We got away from it with audio in part because a typical audio product such as a music single or short audiobook can viably be produced and sold DRM-free at a price so low that it's hardly worth anyone looking for it elsewhere even if they could find it literally for free. Unfortunately, the same economics don't work in most other markets.
I said kinda of because not all sign with big three and further more there are so many independent artists out there releasing to YouTube or Apple iTune or Soundcloud on their own).
(Disclaimer: work in a music company)
Did we? Look at Apple Music, Spotify, and other subscription music services. They all have DRM.
And Amazon. And Google Play music. And band-camp. Etc etc.
In fact, I don't know a single place on the entire internet which still sells DRMed music. Such a thing simply ceased to exist.
Imagine if we could make the same happen for video. That would be real nice.
Download should be DRM free for free for vidéo that's true but don't blame Netflix for using DRM on a streaming service as every music streaming service does that too.
Indeed I think studios could reduce pirating to baseline (people who can't afford anyway) in a split second should they understand that people are willing to pay for a fair priced streaming service like Netflix. They just need to open up their catalogs like music majors finally did as an average wallet can hardly sustain a dozen different subscriptions in order to have a decent movie catalog.
They all just switched to DRMed streaming services.
Technicalities aside: Also I like to think that buying albums (even if I stream them later on) makes the artist more money. And I want to support the artists I appreciate as much as I can.
As a very frequent music buyer, I'd say the situation is very comfortable and user-friendly and I'd wish to see the same for video content.
Guess which industry watched how that happened REALLY REALLY closely?
The music industry was falling apart by the time they gave up on DRM, the video industry is still very strong and had time to learn where all the mistakes were made that lead to DRM free content.
They got in bed with Apple, and at first they were happy with that -- Apple showed that offering a legal way to download music would succeed, so long as it was A) convenient, B) had a suitably large catalog and C) was priced in a way customers saw as fair.
And the result was Apple became a major player in the market, to the point that the record labels started getting scared of what Apple could now force them to do. So they needed to give Apple a competitor. Except... Apple wasn't about to license its Apple-specific DRM scheme to that competitor, and wasn't going to install the competitor's DRM scheme on Apple devices. Which left them with no way to introduce a serious competitor other than to go DRM-free so purchased music would be playable on all the popular devices, including Apple's. Thus, Amazon got to start selling DRM-free music (and eventually Apple got to sell it too).
I suspect sooner or later the book industry will have to go DRM-free to break Amazon's ebook stranglehold, in much the same way.
But video... is different. There isn't a monopolish player in the online video market. There are multiple competing services, some doing purchase and some doing temporary rental and some doing streaming and some doing combinations of multiple options, and there's nobody emerging with power to dictate to movie/TV studios the way Apple emerged in music or Amazon did in ebooks. Which suggests DRM on video is going to be with us for a while no matter what.
And video is one area where I have some sympathy for attempts to control access: the video market is quite young compared to music or books, and has had the short-term rental as a key segment of its market for roughly as long as it's existed. And this makes some sense, as video content tends to have less long-term re-use value: listening to a song multiple times, and re-reading a book multiple times, both seem to be much more common than watching a movie multiple times. So providing a reduced-price option which limits the number of times or amount of time of watching makes business sense. I'm unsure how to reconcile that with hardcore anti-DRM positions, since some type of access control is necessary to enable a rental market.
I wonder about this, because the fact is that I really LIKE Amazon's system. It doesn't matter where music comes from, I listen to it over and over and usually listen to each song totally.
But with books, it takes more than 3 minutes to read. The fact that all my stuff (Kindle App, Kindle, website) know my place and sync all that stuff is very handy. It's the main reason I use Kindle over physical books.
If you load non-DRMed eBooks onto Kindle my understanding is you don't get that functionality for them and I'm guessing no one would have the power to force Amazon to implement that feature. The end result is that Amazon's DRMed books may be more appealing to me than DRM free options from other places.
As for breaking their monopoly.... Apple tried and the government smacked them down for it.
...which is crazy, especially for HD video. Why use the bandwidth every time you want to watch something when storage is so much cheaper?
I've always rented the movies I've watched because I know I won't watch them again, so the savings is win on the whole.
I guess there's something to be said for TV shows, as people often watch those over. I generally don't watch TV series, the exception being a couple Netflix series that friends have begged me to watch, so I don't have too much of an opinion there.
Fun story: Not very long ago, I bought a copy of a documentary using the latter model.
Another person with whom I was going to watch the documentary had visited their site and seen what movie services it was on. I trusted that info at first without checking the documentary's own site. I got very annoyed about the movie services having the title geoblocked in my country (even when a movie service had presence here and in a neighboring country and the rights for both countries are typically sold as a bundle and the neighboring country had it available!).
Then I looked at the site of the documentary myself. And indeed, for the price of the Blu-Ray version, I could buy a full-HD .mp4 without DRM to download.
So I paid and downloaded the .mp4 plus .mp4s for all the Blu-Ray extras. And I downloaded a .srt file for the subtitles.
The Linux box I had connected to my TV couldn't do full HD well in software but could via VAAPI. However, the player that supported VAAPI was supposed to support .srt but didn't actually support at least this .srt file.
In the end, we watched it by pluggin in a more performant Windows laptop doing the whole thing in software.
Conclusion: This is what we always said we wanted. However, when it was there, I didn't expect it to be there and assumed I had to find the title on one of the big-name services instead of navigating to the documentary's own site. The UX of getting stuff to work was less smooth than with the locked-down streaming services.
What I don't do anymore is to download video or music and then just keep it around on a hard disk just in case I want to watch it again. At least in my case storage is actually far more expensive than bandwidth, both in monetary value and time spent maintaining things.
When digital music downloads started record companies demanded DRM. They agreed to a model with iTunes of $0.99 per song. They chafed against this model and wanted pricing tiers. Jobs was willing to give them this but the price was to go DRM free.
Jobs could get away with this for two reasons. First, he was Steve Jobs. Second, the record industry had unwittingly created a virtual music download monopoly in iTunes.
I personally use Spotify because streaming is incredibly convenient and there isn't much you can buy but can't stream. I use Netflix and Ahbo Now for the same reason.
I'd never "buy" DRMed content so music would be fine. Video not so much. I personally don't have as much of an issue with DRM on streaming content.
"The music industry didn't go DRM free because they hated DRM; they went DRM free because they were fearful of the leverage Apple was gaining with their iTunes + FairPlay + iPod combination. Apple’s DRM created this lock, and it became so successful that the music industry went with the lesser of two evils (songs locked to Apple’s iPod monopoly vs. the distribution of DRM-free music) and chose to distribute DRM-free music...
http://fortune.com/2014/12/14/re-thinking-steve-jobs-thought...
You say "Jobs was willing to give them this but the price was to go DRM free", but why would he do that if DRM was good for Apple, it's what locked this market to iPods? Doesn't make sense to me. The music industry had to go DRM free (with Amazon, for example) because that was the only alternative way to sell music that would play on iPods.
Here goes a ~10yo tidbit from SJ [0]. Whether you take it at face value, see it as a PR trick, or anything in between is up to you.
> Apple was able to negotiate landmark usage rights at the time, which include allowing users to play their DRM protected music on up to 5 computers and on an unlimited number of iPods. Obtaining such rights from the music companies was unprecedented at the time, and even today is unmatched by most other digital music services. However, a key provision of our agreements with the music companies is that if our DRM system is compromised and their music becomes playable on unauthorized devices, we have only a small number of weeks to fix the problem or they can withdraw their entire music catalog from our iTunes store.
> [...] only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.
> The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.
> Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music.
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20080107121341/http://www.apple....
I really wonder how they could have been so stupid.
If this is so, why would Netflix have JUST added the download feature last quarter? Obviously there's some demand for storage-based playback.
The point of enforcing DRM is not to prevent piracy, but rather to flex their market clout and demonstrate control. As long as they put up moderate barriers to ripping, and as long as they have legal sanction to suppress productized piracy, the steady stream of new must-have content allows them to throw their weight around. Licensing streaming without DRM is a slippery slope that decreases the perceived value of their content. Small distributors will do it because they need to make whatever money they can, big distributors will never do it because it damages their brand.
The whole bit about preventing people from copying content is just a feel good story that's told to TV executives in order to further DRM's primary purpose.
Yes, yes, and yes. DRM has blocked me from Netflix as a Linux user (not anymore obviously), blocked me from games due to bugs in the DRM in windows and or rootkits, and blocked me because the DRM does not work in Linux while the actual game does. And often you can find DRM free piracy versions.
DRM is a pestilence that blocks legitimate use.
> The point of enforcing DRM is not to prevent piracy, but rather to flex their market clout and demonstrate control.
I don't see how DRM does this. The amount they've spent compared to the results they've got seems to demonstrate a complete lack of control to me.
>As long as they put up moderate barriers to ripping, and as long as they have legal sanction to suppress productized piracy, the steady stream of new must-have content allows them to throw their weight around.
What does DRM do to prevent productized piracy?
>Licensing streaming without DRM is a slippery slope that decreases the perceived value of their content.
So the choose to increase the real value of it instead?
Proprietary plugins have been the source of the majority of exploits. EME will be no different
I doubt that. All browsers boycotting DRM freaks would cause more rational heads in the media industry to push against those who insist on DRM, and it could become the tipping point in ridding video of this disease.
They themselves admit, they don't mind it, but don't want to be first to disrupt the status quo. So cowardice of browser makers only advanced the problem. But I agree that Firefox alone couldn't change things. This had to be a combined effort. But others simply either have no guts to stand against DRM, or are themselves dirty with it.
At worst Netflix could have resorted to desktop apps for their movies. DRM doesn't need to be on the web.
Not everyone sees this as a bad thing. Horses for courses; the web doesn't have to be the platform for everything.
If you need DRM, nobody is forcing you to create a solution based on a open-platform. Go make a OS and platform-specific app instead.
I mean... That's what EME makes browsers and web-sites into anyway. You now have so called "web-sites" where your OS and platform has to be "supported".
And then you might as well make a native app. Like Netflix does. Like Spotify does. Like everyone does.
We don't need DRM in our open standard.
So, you are god then?
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
―George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) "Maxims for Revolutionists"
(Ok, I guess on Linux it's a blob from a Google-owned company.)
DRM should have stayed second-class, leaving the way open for competitors to offer a first-class web experience as long as they left DRM behind.
Competitors already exist in this area. Here is GoG's listening of DRM-free movies: https://www.gog.com/movies?sort=bestselling&page=1
It is very rare that I find something I want to watch here, where as the content I generally want to watch, sadly, exists behind a DRM-wall.
Services/competitors are a dime a dozen, but the issue is driving users to your service, and I don't believe users will run to watch content they don't want to watch just because it is DRM free. I also don't feel like we will force content creators to go DRM free since, as we're seeing, everyone is releasing their own streaming service, which would include DRM.
Hollywood has no desire to enter an open platform. They're completely happy if none of their movies are online, ever. Really. They already have a massively profitable distribution system in the theaters.
The problem is that people want to watch Hollywood movies on their computer, including people that use Linux. So what do you tell those people to do? Tell them run Windows? Have them go watch it in the theater? And they have copyright controls that can force offline sites that host copyrighted content in various countries.
So DRM is the tech industry's way to kiss these people ass. It may be flawed or may not work, but it's still ass-kissing. They're the artists, they get to decide what they do with their art. The consumer has no right to an artists creation. Their only choice is to pay up or ignore it.
And you'll find that this happens to other art mediums as well. There are many, many art galleries that won't sell certain works of art if they deem your ownership as insufficient. Literally - the customer is wrong.
They can pirate it too, which is often a superior user experience in that the user can keep the file, move it to a different device, watch without arcane restrictions, etc.
>We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.
But hey if Hollywood wants to refund every purchase I made adjusting for inflation and with interest of VCRs, LaserDisc Players, DVD Players, BluRay players and all the titles I bought on them over and over then fine let's go back to you can only ever see a movie in a theatre.
Yes I realize DVD and BluRay have DRM but there was just as much wailing and gnashing of teeth over those media when introduced and each one was more profitable than the last and remain so even though their DRM is now broken. Contrast that with the failed DIVX platform and you can see what consumers want versus what Hollywood does are very much out of sync.
Look at Netflix and others who are starting to build alternatives to that ecosystem (in addition to working with it for existing content). If DRM remained second-class, maybe the next such alternative would loosen its stranglehold a bit to gain a broader audience and reduce friction.
So instead they lobbied for it to be built in, the day will come when view source won't work anymore because everything fed down will protected by DRM and we moved another step closer to turning the web into a gigantic walled garden for whoever the incumbents are at that point in time.
this is a false statement, Flash was ubiquitous. Still today every chrome user on desktop has a flash player. Obviously, this isn't true for mobile, but before the mobile era flash was basically on every Windows and Mac computer with a browser.
By that metric notepad would be the most adopted programmer text editor in the world..
Yes, with WebAssembly. (With ASM.js, the predecessor it was still JS, but hard to read as human.) that's why WebAssembly is bad for the open web. In near future we will see binary blob SaaS like full Office running in browser. So the 1990s vision of vendor lock-in come to a full circle.
They knew the adoption rates for out-of-browser proprietary content viewers were awful. That is why they dedicated resources to usurp the open web.
If Mozilla had fought back, we might have progressed towards the death of the obsolete content model big media wants to keep in place and prevent change in the market. It would have at least been a step in the right direction - instead, the promise of the open Internet was sabotaged, and big media gets to be more "convenient" at its sacrifice.
It comes from two ideological positions. One believes that content creators need complete systemic control of what they make - at all costs (that the creator maintains full control no matter how the content is interacted with) - and the other is that content shouldn't be controlled (or that I, as a buyer of content, should control the content I bought), and all real world implementations fall between those extremes.
But when it comes to DRM, it should be understandable that plenty of people (myself included) are not willing to allow third party companies to run proprietary code (the drm) on my hardware for the exclusive purpose of preventing me from interacting with data on my own computer (the streamed movie / music). When web browsers start baking in this proprietary functionality, it forces me to look for alternatives to the established open source browsers.
If you are content with that relationship with content (heh) providers, then this is not your fight. But at least accept that a lot of us want to own our computers, and proprietary software takes away that right, and DRM is just one of the more visceral forms proprietary software takes where its entire purpose is to impede the users ability to control their computers.
your never bought content. you only rented it. this is especially true on netflix & co
How should content creators protect against people who access their content without buying it?
It's pointless for them to bother trying to stop piracy, especially of analog content using technical means.
Seems to me the only ultimate solution is to have some kind of guaranteed basic income, at least for all people that aren't involved in the creation of tangible goods (that can't be copied at zero cost).
DRM is not about being perfect against a dedicated pirate. Just like locks on doors, it's about putting up a few barriers that serve to keep the vast majority of people honest. No one is under any illusions that DRM will stop movies and games from showing up on torrent trackers.
It doesn't "keep honest people honest" when piracy is so damn easy regardless of what they do with DRM. The point of that phrase is to increase the effort and motivation necessary to commit a crime - in this case, DRM doesn't do that. With or without DRM any idiot can download the latest Popcorn Time fork and stream movies with 1 click. DRM doesn't hinder the most casual of pirates at all, it only hinders honest customers.
None of these are exactly out-of-the-way high-effort options. There's no increased effort - you just don't bother trying to do so via Netflix. Any of these can be Googled in a few minutes. DRM does nothing to prevent them.
The legal risk you're talking about is just that though - nothing to do with DRM, everything to do with a legal threat. Note that it's more effective than DRM.
Even those who do go out of their way somewhat to improve the piracy experience don't go that far. I wouldn't compare configuring a typical Usenet+Sonarr+CouchPotato+Plex rig to breaking down a door, and that's pretty much the most advanced sort of setup you can get. It may require slightly specialized knowledge, but it doesn't require specialized intent usually. The intent is still the same as that of the casual pirate, it's just a tradeoff of upfront effort for later ease.
This question got downvoted. What did you read into it, or which insinuation do you think it makes that you find offensive?
Why didn't Mozilla work harder to catch up with Chrome and counter Google? Was it a case of "My enemy's enemy is my friend?"
And why did Opera slip away into the mists of obscurity? I remember it being pretty good and it was actually my main browser for a year or so.
I'd argue that this "catching up to Google" was more their problem than their solution.
In making Firefox more and more Chrome-like they took away many unique and important Firefox features and they keep moving further and further in that direction. They now want to trash XUL and move to an extension framework that exactly matches Chrome's, removing the deep flexibility and customization that Firefox users have enjoyed. Several of my favorite extension authors have already announced they're giving up when that change happens.
If your browser just plays catch up without differentiating itself in any significant way, why would anyone use it?
Mozilla came up with some cool UI ideas, but never implemented them, or quickly did so, got them to a tiny percentage of their full potential and then abandoned them. That's the kind of thing they should be focusing on - that's the kind of thing that made Firefox gain market share in the first place. Instead they keep playing catch up. And playing catch up with a massive codebase against a giant company is incredibly hard.
Right now Brave is doing a better job differentiating itself and it's built on top of Electron - on Chrome's core codebase. If it were a little more active I think it'd have a shot at something.
Users should have a lot more faith in the protections of a browser over the free-for-all security and privacy nightmare that is desktop computing.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1021232
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1021235
The spec talks about both securing the CDM with Sandboxing and preventing fingerprinting, amongst other security + privacy issues that should be addressed:
https://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#cdm-security
https://w3c.github.io/encrypted-media/#privacy-fingerprintin...
the spec also says if the CDN isn't sandboxed then the user needs to be warned and prompted to allow exec:
> if a user agent chooses to support a Key System implementation that cannot be sufficiently sandboxed or otherwise secured, the user agent should ensure that users are fully informed and/or give explicit consent before loading or invoking it.
Actually, ECE is a plugin. The only difference is that it helps web-designers switch plugin providers.
That's it. No more security. No more standardization.
As a user, you still depend on the goodwill of the ECE provider throw you a bone. If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM), you're out of luck.
If Adobe decides that it's not worth their time to develop a plugin for PaleMoon, they won't and you're out of luck (or will MS let their ECE plugin run on Linux, or Google's run on FF?). You (as a user) won't be able to switch to another provider. It all depends on the provider.
"If you use a slightly niche OS (say, OpenBSD on ARM)"
Is rather hilarious - calling OpenBSD on ARM a 'slightly niche' OS in the context of 'operating systems people use to watch video on the web' is rather ambitious, don't you think? OpenBSD on ARM would have to increase it's user base in this arena by a couple orders of magnitude to elevate itself to 'slightly niche'....
The bigger issue will be when these providers will start holding OS's hostage (well, you want to view half the web? You've got to have a locked bootloader and only I have the key. You want to index our sites? Google has permission (the unlocking key) but not you).
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softwar...
Do you mean GNU running the FreeBSD kernel? Linux is only a kernel.
I wonder whether it would be feasible to run the CDM within QEMU on a platform like OpenBSD/ARM? At the end of the day it's just ordinary code that runs in the Gecko Media Plugin sandbox.
We've arguably replaced an insecure and general purpose open interface to proprietary blobs with more narrow and single purpose open interfaces to proprietary blobs.
Far outside the scope of providing authorized access to protected content.
What's terrible is Netflix could have used it's considerable influence to tell _that_ _Industry_ that we won't walk this walk anymore. EME - as I understand it - allows them to create a closed-source program that runs in a sandbox to authorize and reproduce content we've paid to view. It should have very limited ability to do this - but breaking out of sandboxes is what some software engineers are employed to figure out. We're trusting those companies with the ability to run their programs on our computer so we can watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop. We hope it works as it's defined, but it's not a guarantee.
It's not worth it and pirates don't rip from Netflix anyway. They usually work for the industry as some part of the distribution/theater network.
This hurts the customer. Our computers are not our own.
Why do you think Netflix et al invests so much in original content ? Because they have zero leverage and are beholden to the whims of Hollywood.
Why do you assume they didn't? And if they did and the industry said no, what should they have done? Walk away, lose access to all its content, see a large part of their subscriber base move to different services that do support DRM and therefor get the content and eventually have to start firing employees as their income drops?
Just about any streaming service has this exact same problem. They don't love DRM nor want to support it, it's annoying and cumbersome. But it's how you get access to the content. And unless you can survive purely on your own content you don't really have the option to walk away over your ideals.
If you want DRM out of the system, convince the content/rights holders that DRM isn't in their best interests, i.e they can make more money without it or at the very least won't lose money over not having it. If you're hoping that somehow a significant enough size of the population will boycott it for the industry to change, based on the ideals of the open web and open access, you'll be waiting a long time.
the issue itself is not a "free market problem" because copyright only exists because of government interference. Government created the "right" DRM is protecting against.
In a pure free market, there is no copyright, thus no need for DRM to protect a right that does not exist
So company like Slysoft, Replay, the devs of DeCSS, etc get sued out of existence when they create software that circumvents DRM
the cat and mouse game of DRM only works if you have government legal backing hamstringing the anti-drm crowd.
With out Anti-Circumvention laws there would be software on the open market to bypass every known DRM about 48 hours after it is release if not sooner
Distribute industry content with DRM, distribute their own content without, and see what the results are.
Somebody's going to have to perform the experiment to see what the outcome will be. Since Netflix produces tons of content now, they are in an excellent position to try this.
The industry content will show up on the Pirate Bay, and Netflix original content will show up on the Pirate Bay.
Were you expecting another outcome?
The only other possibility that I can come up with is if Netflix's original content has multi-party rightsholder situations with contacts that legally require them to apply DRM even to "their own" content (IANAL and don't know much about how these things work, but it wouldn't surprise me).
You've already given those two companies pretty broad permission to run binaries on your computer (unless you use Firefox on Linux) so I'm not sure what the incremental security issue really is.
I see the general theory of the argument for Opera and especially Firefox but even so, why trust a CDM blob less than any other commercial binary?
I can't decide whether this is bad or a sign of progress towards training people that DRMed content is not worth much.
Tell that to the 4k webrips on the private torrent trackers; I'm sure they'll be surprised both by the fact that they exist, and have apparently gained sentience.
That is SO UNTRUE. Netflix would never want their content to be distributed by anyone other than them, which is the point of DRM; absolute control over distribution, not copy protection.
If Netflix was against DRM, then why release their first party content DRM ensnared?
We did a book study on a book called Clean Code where I work, and I reminded of a similar situation that the book explains when describing why we all write dirty and bad code.
Why do we write bad code? Because our stakeholders and our product owners require it. Well, they push deadlines and expectations on us that mean we have to cut corners to make their promises become reality within the unrealistic time provided.
But if you ask the stakeholder why they pust that on you, the stakeholder will say "well, it's the client". Or they'll say "marketing made a promise to the client".
It's always upstream. There's always an upstream concern.
In the book they talk about making a stand, as a developer. That you have a responsibility to explain to your stakeholders and the people above you that doing something the RIGHT way is worth it. That you are the subject matter expert, that it is your responsibility to raise these concerns and thus your responsibility to write good code.
Netflix can pass the buck. "We do what we have to".
But they have a responsibility as one of the premiere web companies to do more than pass the buck.
A Good Internet doesn't happen accidentally, and it doesn't happen when stakeholders pass the buck. It happens when people make a stand for what's right and operate according to their values.
So yes, it is Netflix's responsibility not to bend Mozilla into accepting a Studio's IP demands, but to bend the Studio into accepting humanity's internet demands.
Why do we assume that Netflix can persuade Mozilla, but not a rightsholder?
It sounds more like the job of the citizens to elect representatives that support a Good Internet, and if the politicians they elect turn around and screw their supporters (which isn't illegal), to elect new politicians. A pretty disgusting and slow system, sure, but the only other solution I can think of (I am not a smart man) is outright revolution, and hoping the revolutionary government is all about a Good Internet.
EDIT: I'm fine with being downvoted if I'm wrong or stupid, but I'd appreciate if someone could tell me why they believe I'm wrong or stupid.
What evidence do you have to back this ? It's not like Netflix's own content is available DRM free. Corollary: If you are a content owner and want your content to be available DRM-free on Netflix, will Netflix make a provision for you ? I hate these generalizations that people make. Just because a company (like Netflix) is more tech-savvy than the average media house and makes a few blogs and OSS projects that run on BSD or Linux, it doesn't make them any better for the end user.
2. they are the middle man for content. they are exactly the group that benefit most from drm.
Am I missing something? Is this a case where an open standard is a bad thing?
Yes. The bit where this is an "open standard" to implement completely closed, non-standard plugins, which cannot be implemented by reading the spec.
With this "open standard" any browser or OS not blessed by Hollywood can't have a full web experience.
And I take great issues with that.
I suppose that viewpoint admits that obstinance on the part of Firefox was not going to get Netflix to offer their service without DRM.
edit: not really sure how I messed up the original comment, which was an incoherent mess.
I understand the argument about this making it harder to develop new browsers and so on, but eschewing EME probably wasn't going to prevent that from happening, it would just happen in flash or other closed code.
I couldn't care less about Netflix, I never intended to use their services and never will, but this really is bad news for the web.
Netflix on the web with a plugin was fine for me: people wanting to watch Netflix on their standards-compliant browser would need to install a proprietary plugin to do so, and would have done it (at least a great number would have, I guess). It was their choice to do so (the other one being not to watch Netflix in a browser, and yes it _is_ a choice).
The difference (and it's big to me) was that it had _no_ impact on people not wanting to watch Netflix in their browser. These people did not have this proprietary code running in their browser and all the potential security issues coming with it.
IMO the browsers should (and I don't actually know if they do or not atm, this is a thing I need to check soon) at the very least let people opt in or out of this. Of course if they opt out they wouldn't be able to use services like Netflix.
And here comes the browser plugins world again... So much for killing flash (which was and still is a _great_ platform for small to medium web games).
People are just tying themselves in knots to act like the status quo is a disaster.
Second, this is worse in the sense that Netflix, Google, and Microsoft - creators of EME - have gotten the W3C to support DRM. That's not just a symbolic blow.
Is a programming language a good analogy? The C++ spec says what a switch-statement should do, but nothing about how it must be implemented, right?
> New browsers face a new barrier to entry
It's not really a new barrier to entry though, is it? If I wrote a browser last year, were my chances of getting Netflix to support it better then than they are now?
What about if I wrote a new DRM scheme? With a standard interface, are the barriers to entry for me now lower?
That's not what's going on, though. It's an API that a DRM provider can implement. A website that gets a DRM provider it doesn't recognize will refuse to work with it.
No it isn't. Example: Netflix will ask for Widevine DRM provider (and exactly that provider!). It's a proprietary closed licensed platform and your system needs to have their binary blob licensed and compiled for it. If you don't have it and didn't pay for it, you won't be able to decrypt the DRM. Of course to get your DRM blob to run, you'll also have to prove and promise to the DRM provider that you have locked out the user from their own device so they won't be able to accidentally record the video they watch.
It's impossible to make your own open implementation or compete with existing players because they built the fact that you need to negotiate with them for licensing into the standard.
Is there a better way to make strong DRM?
This DRM implementation would add this suffix: "and any number of third parties have chosen to allow my browser to use their proprietary decryption modules." This is the opposite of the Open Web and therefore a threat to user freedom and the integrity of the Web as a whole.
I don't think that's true. It's still just a plugin so as long as implement something like the Gecko Media Plugin / CDM, you should be good, or at least no worse off than before where you had to support the Flash or Silverlight plugin.
These steps are not technical but they are very significant.
Consider how you would provide this plugin to your users as the author of a new browser? You have to ask the plugin authors for permission to use it.
Then consider that you have to persuade Netflix to allow the users of your browser to use their site (without changing user agents).
Neither of these steps were required with NPAPI
There is no reason why Netflix would need to do user-agent sniffing - the EME API is built around request access to specific "Key Systems" (eg. Widevine) by well-known-name. If they do user-agent sniffing that's an entirely separate issue, and is just as much as problem in the Silverlight case.
I don't believe that's true. The plugin is freely available. You just have to write the host.
I don't think Netflix or the rights owners would care since the stream is protected equally in any browser.
Funny, I haven't heard many artists clamoring for DRM, and the ones who do tend to be well beyond the feeding-themselves step on Maslow's Hierarchy.
No, it is, as always, the distributors. That's because DRM hurts artists but entrenches distributors.
It is a shitty compromise because it is the start of a closed web. Enjoy your view-source while your corporate overlords deign to give you permission.
Yes, I think this improves the web. You no longer need the unmaintained disaster that was silverlight or the resource vampire and exploit factory that was flash. Users can choose to view this content in a safeER way than before.
The only good argument against this is the 'we don't need DRM ' argument, but that hinges on the ability to get content you want in a non-DRM format and it seems clear that isn't happening anytime soon thanks to Hollywood et. al and I don't blame them.
Online video services get DRM added to browser in order to "protect content".
The laws must be ordered in a way that allows streaming video to be sold to users of open-source software. It's not like the current scheme is entirely resistant to pirates anyway. It's very much like the Drug War in that externalities affecting individuals who have done nothing wrong begin to exceed the damage caused by the "crime".
I don't think it is a coincidence that Netflix's more aggressive anti-piracy actions and rollout of more DRM-enabled platform choices has come at a time that they're distributing more of their own content.
Whatever DRM was required to please the suffering media conglomerates, it could at least have been open source.
Yes, in ideal world there will be DRM-free streaming - but unfortunately that's unrealistic.
Why? That puts the cost of DRM on everyone except the ones who want to freeload on our open tech to take our freedom away.
And that's ass backwards.
You want non-free and closed? Cool deal. Go build it yourself.
This argument implicitly assumes that the big cost of DRM is actually implementing the DRM. Everyone knows that isn't true. The social cost of DRM is the effect on the users' freedom, and if the users are using entirely proprietary applets they're probably less free than if they depend on a single proprietary library.
Why is it unrealistic? Hollywood just needs to be pushed harder. It worked for music no?
Movies are a great deal more fractured, and they will remain fractured. The movie studios will not let Netflix turn into the iTunes for movies.
Unlike with video, where the signal ends up unencrypted only on the very last chip in the chain, namely the one that drives the (I'm taking a guess here!) thousands of pixel lines, this is not practical with audio signals - you can always intercept and easily record the signal in analog form, either right before the PA stage or if this does not work (because the D/A converter and PA are implemented on one chip) after the PA output. The signal will of course be affected by the PA frequency characteristics, but that can be compensated for - and you still get a perfect audio signal.
Also, I highly doubt that professional/semi-professional home theater setups will ever ship with "smart" (i.e. more wires than just the +/- heavy-gauge, direct speaker power signal wires) speakers, so you get the analog hole right there, on the output matrix of the amp.
Mozilla did not seem to care that much actually. And as long as torrents exist I do not think that there is any reason to support it.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...