Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 38 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include Digital Rights Management (DRM) tech for playing protected content in the HTML5 video tag on Windows, Ruby annotation support, and improved user interfaces on Android. Firefox 38 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play.
Note that there is a separate download for Firefox 38 without the DRM support. Our anonymous reader adds links to the release notes for desktop and Android.
I think you meant Digital Restrictions Management. It's a sad day for Mozilla, the w3c, the web as a whole, and open culture. At least there's still the iceweasel fork that doesn't come with this shit.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
You don't need to go as far as Iceweasel.
Yes, you do, to show that you don't want that capability in your web browser. I get that everybody thinks Netflix are the good guys because they free people from the evil cable companies, but they aren't. They are just the next iteration of media companies who try to shove proprietary shit down your throat. Don't let them.
FYI, you can screenshot netflix in Windows right now with silverlight. So technically a screen recorder on a sufficiently fast system could record "netflix exclusive titles" and upload them elsewhere.
Yep this should be an easy crack, with most of the source code being available. Firefox 38 will also be known as Netflix Video Ripper 1.0!
Still, it would've been better to leave the DRM where it belongs, in plugins to be installed by each user who wants to have their rights managed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, no, you're missing some steps:
1) The studios (Fox, Paramount, Sony, etc.) tell Netflix that without DRM, Netflix is going to have its own original series to stream AND THAT'S ALL.
2) Netflix decides it might be wise to include D-R-M unless they want to go B-A-N-K-R-U-P-T.
3) The major browser companies all adopt DRM too, since no one wants to be the one browser that doesn't work with Netflix
4) You, the user, streams movies from your browser.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Still, it would've been better to leave the DRM where it belongs, in plugins to be installed by each user who wants to have their rights managed.
Which is exactly how the standard works - except now the plug-in interface is standardized. So much nerdwhine over nothing with the HTML5 DRM stuff. Feel free to grab the "can't watch Netflix" version if it makes you happy. Not needing Silverlight (or Flash, or some other exploit delivery engine) makes me happy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
DRM = encryption + key obfuscation.
If DRM was merely encryption that would be great. Then we could save the encrypted streams to our hard disk, then play them while on vacation. Or we could copy those encrypted streams for time shifting. We could decrypt them, then re-encode them into another format for playing on another device. Or take fair-use protected clips from them.
The goal of DRM is to prevent the the end-user from doing the things listed above. But encryption alone isn't enough to do that. You need a way to give the key to the user, but obfuscate the key so that they can only use it limited circumstances. It's infuriating to the user.
Before this new version of Firefox, the DRM was delivered via Silverlight. Either way, you are running a closed-source binary blob that handles DRM.
Previously, there was some hesitation to use this crap thanks to this lack of standardization. Now, thanks to this idiotic move by Mozilla this type of DRM will be used, and if you think it only apply to Netflix - or only apply to video - you haven't been paying attention.
Now that it is possible to for businesses to claim that "almost all of our potential customers support DRM", it will be used in many places. Remember the pages that show an image of text instead of just putting the text in the page? Well, get ready for the video equivalent the first time someone gets paranoid because browsers have a save-as feature. Besides, once DRM for one type of content is in place, the other industries will cry "equal access".
All of you who are "ok" with this, or are thinking only of convenience - your selfish view of the world is a big part of why this is happening. You should be fighting this, if you give a damn about having an free an open internet in the future. Unfortunately, you're probably going to mod me down and go back to cheering about how you get to watch movies in your browser, and I hope you enjoy fighting the far more difficult battles in the future, because you didn't stop this crap when it was still small.
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Because mozilla decided to promote DRM instead of a free web, we can look forwards to lots of sites (which used to work) displaying a nag screen with a link to download the "proper" version of firefox, specifically because the DRM version is a free download. They will assume everybody has support available, so there is no penalty to using this crap everywhere.
Or have you not been paying attention to how businesses work these days?
When the fight for freedom is hard, there are many potentially useful strategies. Giving up without a fight and simply handing victory to the enemy is not one of them.
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Flash at least crashes
Fixed that for you.
instead their job is to write down what the big vendors are already doing, so that everyone else can interoperate
We call people who work with the enemy collaborators, which is one of the faster ways to get your former allies to see you as a traitor.
There is a fight for freedom going on here, and many of you are talking about movies. Anybody that things this is hyperbole or "crazy" hasn't been paying attention.
(actually, given that the target audience of this post is nerds that like netflix, I suppose these links would be more appropriate)
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
Why is their not room for both the open and closed cultures?
Assuming s/their/there/:
Because the concentrated non-free media use their vast financial resources to lobby governments to make existence harder for free culture.
Big media uses copyright to squelch competition. It has successfully lobbied for successive extensions of the term of copyright, which reduces the chance that a work will enter the public domain while it remains culturally significant. It uses copyright claims to squelch comment on its works and "similarity" claims under copyright to interfere even with creation of original works, as you have no way of telling whether the song you wrote infringes the copyright of some other existing song out there.
Big media uses its massive selling power to convince viewers to purchase player devices designed to play only works created by sufficiently large commercial enterprises, giving it a captive audience. These include such as video game consoles (with their code signing), Blu-ray Disc players (with the requirement of an AACS license for BDMV), home Internet service plans (with their bans on running a home server, enforced through carrier-grade NAT or TOS disconnection), and AM and FM radio receivers (governed by scarce exclusive licenses to transmit). Furthermore, there exists only a finite amount of electromagnetic spectrum. Case in point: People commuting to and from work who are unwilling to pay for expensive cellular data plan have only AM and FM radio as means of discovering new music. When was the last time, for example, that you heard free recordings of free music on radio? (Here, by "free" I mean distributed under a license conforming to the Definition of Free Cultural Works.)
Big media even controls elections. All major U.S. television news outlets share a corporate parent with a major movie studio: CBS is Paramount, ABC is Disney, NBC is Universal, CNN is Warner Bros., and Fox is (duh) Last Century Fox. This gives them enormous power over name recognition, both in campaign contributions and in "in-kind" donations of name recognition through news coverage. It also helps them control what issues voters feel are important to them, as they tend not to report on threats to the existence of free culture unless it's something extraordinarily high-profile like Wikipedia's PROTECTIP protest blackout of 2012.
Because I'd rather pay $8 for an honest license than pirate for the rest of my life.
You appear to think there are two options: use DRM or infringe copyright. There are actually three options: use DRM, infringe copyright, or voluntarily do without.