Firefox 49 For Linux Will Ship With Plug-in Free Netflix, Amazon Prime Video Support (mozilla.org)

Reader LichtSpektren writes: Widevine, the media protocol that allows users to watch videos on Netflix, is supported in Firefox for Windows and macOS. But until now, its users on Linux were required to use a plug-in. That changes with v49, which offers out-of-the-box support for Netflix.Mozilla plans to offer plug-in streaming for Netflix as well as Amazon Prime Video and other similar services. The v49 will be available on Linux in September. Mozilla adds that it will be removing support for NPAPI plugins from its browser in the near future, plugins that some video streaming sites rely on for playback. "Mozilla plan to support the Widevine CDM on Linux, letting users watch Netflix without plugins," the company said.

Comments

Not plugin free

[Carewolf]

If they switch from NPAPI to CDM, that does not make them plugin-free. CDM is based on plugins and Widivine is a plugin.

Re:Not plugin free

[tepples]

It does, however, drastically reduce the attack surface of plug-ins. The CDM is a much narrower, more focused API than NPAPI. And it'll be easier to avoid: don't use any services that offer Hollywood movies for online rental.

Re:Not plugin free

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Yes and no: the interactions between the browser and the CDM defined by the 'encrypted media extension' stuff are indeed pretty narrow; but the spec allows, and deliberately doesn't not define, what the CDM itself does, what privileges it runs with, and so on. There are a few plaintive encouragements to avoid incompetence or malice; but those are optional. It is less likely to be useful for attacking the browser than an NPAPI plugin is; but the security and behavior of the CDM itself are restricted only by the vendor's implementation choices.

Re:Not plugin free

[Anonymous Coward]

A proper plug-in based video streaming like streamed .wmv would use a 2D graphics card's abilities to scale video and do YUV to RGB conversion in hardware so that a low end 500MHz CPU would play full screen smooth, with no SSE, no hardware decoding or no OpenGL.

Your statement here is...bizarre. You laud not using hardware acceleration in a process using hardware acceleration? YUV to RGB is definitely hardware decoding. Though perhaps you were thinking about whole-stream in-hardware decoding of MP4?

Fast-forward a decade and a faster netbook with 16x the RAM is struggling playing 240p youtube even in small size windowed mode. Well done.

SSE came out in 1999, not 2006, and was in response to AMD's 3dNow! from 1998, which itself was a response to Intel's 1997 MMX technology, whose specific purpose was graphics processing acceleration on the CPU. We're getting darn near 20 years ago, at this point.

Now, I won't argue that the layers upon layers of APIs and abstractions aren't harming performance and reliability. On the contrary, I think the proliferation of different components all fighting to talk to the GPU is creating a huge bottleneck and complexity point. And browser architecture, such as it presently exists, isn't making things much better. It sort of helps you understand why flash was so popular for so long; a content provider could trust that there was a team of people at Adobe dedicated to concentrating on and working around platform issues that harmed the viewer's subjective experience. (Yes, flash is buggy, it crashes, it's the worst thing that ever happened to the web, whatever. But nobody else had a team dedicated to providing what Flash tried to provide.)

Re:Not plugin free

[Anonymous Coward]

If processes can't be assigned fine-grained permissions then your operating system is shit.

Let's ignore that there are entire operating systems built around the browser experience. The browser itself is the new thick client for a huge swath of user experience; you don't need to escape the browser's process to do real damage.

Re:Not plugin free

[roca]

"The browser should be..." Sure! But it turns out that Hollywood won't let you play their movies in such a browser :-(.

If you want Firefox to be that browser, just uncheck "play DRM content" in the preferences and you're all good.

more features for the feature god.

[nimbius]

for netflix viewers: ignore this update, you already likely see netflix on an embedded linux television.
for non viewers: enjoy your free, mandatory DRM in the browser.
for Firefox developers: get rid of pocket, get rid of sync, please work on fixing the bugs youre assigned, hustle up and get that godforsaken voice chat program out of the browser, restore cookie control functionality, quit mandating signed plugins to curtail adblock users, and ditch the targeted advertising tiles.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[QuietLagoon]

I don't use Sync and would prefer if it were a plug-in for those who do like to use it. The concept of mandatory options, i.e., plug-ins that are permanently plugged-in, runs counter to good security practices. When they are not used, they do little more than increase the attack surface.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[houstonbofh]

Firefox has lost the point and become a fat bloated monster. And Chrome is not far behind. (And this ignores the massive data gathering both do) So there is a fantastic market opportunity for a lightweight browser that can still render the bloated modern web... Any ideas?

Re:more features for the feature god.

[QuietLagoon]

On the contrary, I am generally opposed to the "mandatory options" plug-ins because of the problems (security and otherwise) they can cause in instances when they are not wanted or used. I most specifically am not saying the plug-ins should not be available for those who do want to use them. Indeed, the abuility to choose what plug-ins you want in your browser is one of the great benefits of plug-ins.

.
In being concerned about security and other issues, I am looking at things beyond myself and this Kim Kardasian person you speak of.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[dmahurin]

> Firefox has lost the point and become a fat bloated monster. And Chrome is not far behind. (And this ignores the massive data gathering both do) So there is a fantastic market opportunity for a lightweight browser that can still render the bloated modern web... Any ideas?

Well, you could create a minimal version of Firefox, stripping out all the junk, and call that Phoenix.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[retchdog]

"OMG these sites i don't pay to use are advertising to me and that's evil!"

okay, use noscript.

"but that's hard and there are other ways i can be tracked."

okay, i'll build and maintain a secure browser for $5 a month.

"i can't afford that."

okay, $5 a year.

"information wants to be FREE, man!"

okay, then i guess i'll go to work for an online advertising company.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[guises]

What is the massive data gathering that Firefox does? This is a serious question, the fact that they seem to be the only browser maker who's cares about privacy, even a little, is the whole reason why I use Firefox.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[roca]

> enjoy your free, mandatory DRM in the browser.

Not mandatory. Disable it with one checkbox in preferences.

> get rid of pocket

Being moved to a disable-able extension.

> please work on fixing the bugs youre assigned

Of course they're always doing that. To insinuate they don't is just gratuitously insulting.

> hustle up and get that godforsaken voice chat program out of the browser

Already done.

> quit mandating signed plugins to curtail adblock users

No connection between signed addons and adblock. The suggestion there is is something you just made up.

> ditch the targeted advertising tiles

Already done a long time ago.

Re:more features for the feature god.

[roca]

What are you talking about? Firefox already implemented the relevant WebRTC standards; they're what Hello was based on.

Truth in Advertising?

[gQuigs]

I do support this move by Firefox, but can we please actually call it DRM on this site?

We were just talking about how we want to call it out as being anti-consumer, etc.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Not my fault

[LichtSpektren]

My original submission said nothing about plug-ins, so I declare this "not my fault"

:P

CDM is sandboxed

[tepples]

"the attack surface of plug-ins" oh fuck off. If processes can't be assigned fine-grained permissions then your operating system is shit.

Unfortunately, people have allowed themselves to become locked into incumbent operating systems that are, as you put it, "shit". But given the presence of "sandbox" in the titles of bugs listed at Media/EME, it appears Firefox is at least trying to limit the permissions of the CDM.

Re:Where's the source code

[Anonymous Coward]

It just gets worse the deeper you dig:

"In order to become [an implementation partner] the following obligations must be completed: ... Non Disclosure Agreement ... Product Licensing Agreement ... "

"[implementation partners] must: Have on staff a minimum of 2 individuals that are CWIP certified, Pass audits of end user sites conducted by Widevine to ensure proper and secure installations, End user and content owner experience must remain satisfactory"

Re:This move from modularity to massive monoliths.

[MBGMorden]

What is it about freedom and control of your own systems that makes even professionals so afraid?

Freedom and control is ok to a point, but often times having stuff just work is of greater importance.

I use Linux at home. I like it. I can setup cronjobs to automate maintenance tasks and write scripts to handle all sorts of neat tricks (ie, I had a ton of old TV series downloaded and discovered that my media player downstairs choked on anything encoded with the old "DivX" codec - in about 10 minutes I had a script written that would scan over the entire media directory, find stuff encoded in DivX, re-encode it, then delete the old file).

That being said - there comes a point where I just want my damned Netflix videos to work. And truthfully - for a STREAMING SERVICE - I don't have any issue with the DRM or plugins needed to facilitate it. The downside of DRM is that I consider it a rental. If I want to move the files to a different device it won't work, and if the mothership authentication servers go offline stuff stops working. I will not buy videos or songs that have DRM - HOWEVER, a streaming video subscription service is by definition already a rental service. On that type of arrangement I truly don't care about the DRM because I'm not paying for a copy of what I'm watching and for the most part the DRM doesn't get in the way.

Re:How to remove plugin?

[tepples]

Hamburger menu > Preferences (or Options) > Content > Play DRM content

Turn it off and no CDM will run.

Good riddance

[Eravnrekaree]

Removing NPAPI is actually a huge improvement, this has only been an invitation for companies to make a fleet of closed source, proprietary plugins that only run on Windows and which contain tons of security problems. Good riddance! Instead, if app developers need to do 3D and and video, they can use the built in browser APIs to do this, like WebGL, implemented better audited open source code available on all the platforms.

It is Netscape/Mozilla that is primarily to blame for Flash, Java, Unity, Shockwave plugin junk, because Mozilla for a while did not include built in Video and 3D capability for a long time despite enormous demand for this, but did provide plugin APIs which were just an invititation for Windows only plugins that would lock out FreeBSD and so on. There are still too many applications, often corporate custom apps used in corporate and education environments, and online games, that still use the Flash, Unity, and Java junk despite Flash disappearing from many sites like YouTube. We have Mozilla to blame for this plugin mess. Hopefully it will now go away for good and take all of its binary blogs, crappy proprietary code and so on with it.

Now, Firefox finally needs to get sandboxing and multiprocess to work to further security and safety, something that should have been done eons ago like Google Chrome has done.

Re:Great, can we get keyboard naviation from Netfl

[ausekilis]

Dear Sir/Ma'am,

Our client, pecosdave, suffers from the debilitating disease of Laziness wherein he cannot be bothered to use a mouse or mouse-like interface to use your service, "Netflix". Our client has sent not zero, but exactly 1 (one) email to your customer support asking for proper keyboard support for your services web browser client. As described in his email, he is able to use arrow keys and the space bar without problem, and mashing his hand down on a keyboard as a response to your "Are you still watching?" prompt. However, anything that requires our client to sit up and move his arm around causes him considerable pain and mental anguish. We politely ask for your assistance in aiding our client and others stricken with Laziness in providing proper keyboard support for your platform.

Sincerely,

Real-life Lawyer
Association of Lazy People

Widevine

[GrievousMistake]

This is the same buggy piece of crap that led to root exploit on many Android phones, since of course a media player needs privileged access to the kernel.

http://bits-please.blogspot.co...

But don't worry, that was a fluke, I'm sure the opaque blob for the PC is written by their best men, and not the scum of the earth who failed their McDonalds job interview.
The complete loss of security to all their users is a small price to pay to eradicate unlicensed copying of movies once and for all!

Re:This move from modularity to massive monoliths.

[roca]

Firefox does do "on the fly decompression of images so off screen images are not stored in memory uncompressed".

When complaining about Firefox memory usage, make sure your understanding of the issues is up-to-date.