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.

Comments

Typo: Digital Rights Management

[Unknown Lamer]

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.

Re:Typo: Digital Rights Management

[mrchaotica]

I can only conclude that the issue is not that you don't want to use that capability, it's that you don't want anyone else to be able to use that capability. The contradiction in wanting "open culture" to deny some users options that they desire never crosses your mind, does it?

Wanting "open culture" to not be destroyed by those who promote "closed culture" instead is not a contradiction.

Disableable

[DrYak]

At least there's still the iceweasel fork that doesn't come with this shit.

The DRM isn't a closed source part of *firefox*. It's a separate external plugin (like flash, etc.) that runs sandboxed (like chrome) and that can be
disabled and/or removed like any other plugins (or you can download a version of the installer that doesn't even pack the DRM module).
You don't need to go as far as Iceweasel.

How does it work ?

[itzly]

Is there an explanation of how this works ? At the end of the rendering pipeline shouldn't there be an unencrypted frame for display, and couldn't somebody it just grab it from there ?

Re:Get cracking

[lgw]

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.

Re:Get cracking

[Endymion]

the plug-in interface is standardized

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.

Re:Get cracking

[lgw]

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.

The majority of internet traffic is DRMd video streams - has been for years. A standards committee has no power to tell the vendors what to do; instead their job is to write down what the big vendors are already doing, so that everyone else can interoperate.

Use the right tool for the job, man. If you want non-DRMd video, you're supposed to use a torrent client, not a web browser. Not every tool has to solve every problem, you know - let each be good for its purpose instead.