it also gives the government the ability to disable people's guns at will. This is very scary. You trust them to use this responsibly ignores just about all history of the US government.
Again, nobody said the guns should be networked... That's is just speculation.
On second thought, that sounds pretty appealing. Imagine a protest where we could simply disable all firing mechanisms of police firearms.
Because when there is a protest the police is always the bad guys? That is a messed up world view...
or mabey we could tackle larger social issues that drive shootings in the first place, but that seems to be too hard.
Yeah, if you want to solve poverty without spending money, that is going to be hard.
On the other hand you could make higher education free, provided free healthcare and wealthfare that covers housing and food for a family in need.
Social mobility is key, it's not enough that there is a slight possibility of making it. It's about making it easy to make it into the middle class.
No, robotic taxis will monetize the poor the same way they do now: by licensing only a limited number of companies to operate the taxis.
How does that monetize the poor? They won't be hire by taxi companies anymore...
The GP really did have it right.
To be fair... I was just saying that the poor, who can't afford new auto-driving cars will keep paying fines for speeding (assuming their cars can speed at all).
I was being sarcastic... the point of my post was that the income from fines is not significant compared to all the other things we invest in transportation.
Like all these stories, $5,000 may be the "sticker" or asking price. How many sold at this price or at any price is the important metric.
The market for this kind of software is fairly small.. so 5k is very cheap... it's probably not feasible to hire real developers to do this.
I wouldn't be surprised if this guy could be making more money making enterprise software. SharePoint plugins, various CMS plugins, etc...
To a petty thief 5k is a lot of money, but for a legitimate business it's rather cheap, compared to doing any kind of development.
As it is now, people are forced to fight and win/lose, the system costs rise.
Speeding tickets is the one place where plea bargins makes sense... So yeah consider that...
On topic, this article is ridiculous.. most Americans won't be able to afford a new self driving car for years... So the poor will still have to pay tickets for many years to comes (you really have well rigged system for the rich).
Either way, when self driving cars are dominating you'll also see other things, such as: fewer accidents, less time wasted in traffic, less wear and tear on the road. All things that save the state money.
Not to mention all the productive hours people spending in traffic, where they could be productive, make money and generate even more taxes.
Better transportation is probably good for the economy.
Once the police are happy enough with the technology to use it exclusively, then a mandate is appropriate.
I'm not holding my breath.
That makes sense... whilst the police, in the US, certainly have a legitimate need to carry arms. They also have an incentive to use these guns, if they are reliable. As it'll make it harder to use an officer's gun against him.
I am surprised by this outbreak of common sense from an organization that often have very little empathy for.
Don't worry I'll stop my preacher on why guns shouldn't be allowed in the first place, fixing a America is beyond the scope of a slashdot post anyways:)
My point was: There is too much common sense.
Regarding mandates, why don't you take that discussion when the technology is reliable. Maybe you should have build in camera too:)
Or maybe you should just reduce the classes of weapons available to normal people for other than sports with appropriate safety measures...
Either way, take that discussion when technology is mature.
yeah right - just like in communism the government is supposed to eventually fade away...
I haven't heard that one before... But I suspect that like most Americans you probably don't really know what communism is... And have a tendency to confuse it with totalitarian dictatorships.
Maybe... But DRM is the case for now with or without Mozilla. There is no way the content industry will let NetFlix and Hulu will drop DRM right now.
So what is the alternative, denying people NetFlix and Hulu? We all know they'll go to Chrome and IE, or NetFlix will make a binary plugin for Firefox, which won't be sandboxed.
The only reason DRM went away on music is because Apple did some economic jujitsu on the publishers making them choose between money or control, apple's complete domination of music DRM meant they could dictate terms to the industry as long as the industry required DRM.
Let's hope netflix grows powerful enough...
(1) Why do you think they encrypt the streams individually instead of just once and store the encrypted files on their server just like bluray discs of the same movie all have identical encryption?
NetFlix don't implement DRM out the evil in their hearts:)
They do it because the content industry requires it... And the content industry requires each stream to be encrypted individually... They require a complicated protocol that ensures that each device is uniquely identified...
Security through obscurity is complicated (no surprise there).
(2) Encryption is super cheap now that dedicated hardware is built into modern CPUs - a typical Xeon processor can do 700MB/s with AES-NI on just one core. Intel makes Xeons with 15 cores per chip nowadays.
But building a large CDN with this kind of special hardware is expensive, very expensive. Without DRM movies could be streamed directly from a normal CDN.
I think the other EU countries need to start getting together and saying to the UK that they need to either adopt ALL of the EU rules (including the Euro, Schengen, Net Neutrality, human rights etc etc) or get out of the EU completly and fend for themselves.
Lot's of EU countries have exceptions to their EU membership. There is a lot of countries without the Euro.
Ideally, the EU shouldn't be pick and choose... but some pragmatism is necessary.
For example, my country is going to vote on whether or not to join the new EU patent court. I recommend people to vote "NO".
I generally like the EU, but I don't trust the patent system and making it bigger only makes it worse.
You are assuming that without membership in the EU, the UK and/or the members of the EU will start imposing mutually harmful restrictions. In whose interest would that be?
None, but the EU was constructed to prevent this...
Without the EU, it would happen in small bits... France would try to protect it's movie industry... And then there is another exception...
And somewhere down the road Europe would be back to where it was a 40 years ago. EU ensures big agreements where everybody agrees not to protect their own industries and this results in a large free market.
Is a blockage going to help the ultimate objective, that is to stop crime? Does it not drive criminals underground in many cases?
It certainly complicates access... And whilst most slashdotters won't have a problem connecting to a dark net.. It's a high barrier of entry.
Stopping crimes is not always about making it impossible, just more complicated and harder to do...Even a locked car can be stolen.
Oh wait, stopping crime is not the ultimate objective, control of communication is. Go ahead.
Go ahead and bluntly assume every country is corrupt, just because yours is...
IMO dns blocking is an acceptable counter-measure. Because technical people who wants to go around it can just pick a non-default DNS-server. But if your not technically inclined it raises the barrier and complicates access.
Note, this could be illegal images, terrorist videos, illegal casinos or scam sites (these really should be blocked).
One can only imagine what other functionalities this CDM module will have.
Yeah, it might mine bitcoins, but if it wants to inspect your computer, get a cross-site unique id, look at your files, etc... It'll have to break out the sandbox in which it is placed. See the picture here:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...
So unlike the flash plugin, it won't be able to do much...
Believe it or not, chrome is also sandboxed, and has been for years.
I'm not familiar with how chrome sandboxes it's CDM. Nobody cares, because nobody expects privacy from chrome.
But I know Mozilla won't expose cross-site unique identifiers to the CDM module, so that's something.
I will move into your place then. I am less invading than a whole family, so obviously it is ok.
I'm currently not invaded by a whole family, but if I were, I would happily take the trade:)
A "lesser evil" is still an evil and we are free to voice our disgust at this bending over to profit and popularity at the cost of the freedoms they claim to protect.
Absolutely, by the way thank you for also mentioning "popularity"... After all, even the best of us want netflix:)
Most likely this is just like flash plugin, except the API surface will be smaller, the module will be better sandboxed, there will be real security and work to ensure users privacy
What about support for all platforms, including ones Mozilla doesn't ship binaries for and need to be built from source?
I don't know... I hope that there will be linux support:)
In fact I suspect that because of the sandboxing, it'll be a lot easier to port it to other platforms and there will be no platform dependent libraries to link against...
From what I read the binary CDM module will be locked down, and by that extend likely not have access to platform dependent functions.
DRM in Firefox will download a binary module from adobe
What could possibly go wrong?!
Plenty of things... But it will be sandboxed.
In sandbox provided by Mozilla. So adobe doesn't have to do anything security related. See the picture here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...
Compared to binary plugins like flash, which isn't sandboxed, this is much better.
Real security from Adobe? Bwahahah! Name an Adobe security success in the past decade!
Check out the picture here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...
Then notice the open source sandbox around the CDM module:)
I have confidence that the CDM can be locked down in a sandbox where regardless of how stupid the code is, it won't hurt the user experience or user privacy...
This is better than flash, where adobe made the sandbox. This time Mozilla will be making the sandbox, not adobe. Adobe will only be playing with the sand:)
As you suggest, it's probably best that adobe sticks doesn't do anything security related, in this setup, Mozilla will do the security, and adobe will do the "obscurity" (which we from flash that they are good at).
Will this 'lesser evil' have a unique ID?.. Based on your hardware?
Nope. Read the blog post by Andreas (CTO at Mozilla) on the topic, he says: By contrast, in Firefox the sandbox prohibits the CDM from fingerprinting the user’s device.
(Source: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...)
So contrary to other DRM infested browsers and other DRM delivery mechanisms, CDM is sandboxed and the sandbox will provide the CDM module with a unique identifier. The unique identifier will be different between sites, etc.. In order to ensure users privacy.
So, no super-cookie for you.
Websites could demand you run ads and use the DRM to make damn sure you don't disable them.
Websites could also demand that you run silverlight... They don't do that...
Also note, that the CDM module won't be downloaded without user consent.
All in all this is better than Flash and friends, and Mozilla is actively tasking steps to lock down the CDM module and restrict what it can do.
More, better DRM is never a good thing.
Agree, but if netflix goes CDM then silverlight is finally dead. So in terms of lines-of-code and API surface we'll have less DRM.
Long copyright terms need to die and DRM needs to die with it.
Copyright terms is a political issue, but regarding DRM, I think it'll change when the content industry makes most of revenue from online streaming. It's not cheap to encrypt every stream and license DRM technology from various providers. I'm sure netflix will work hard to kill DRM.
And they certainly have to power to do this.
1. Implement DRM to make sure the users don't massively ditch Firefox.
2. Attract more users, get >90% market share
3. Ditch DRM
Not for from it... From what I hear the idea is that when the content industry makes the majority of it's revenue from online streaming, they'll likely reconsider DRM. Most likely it'll go away on it's own, because it's complicated and expensive to implement on the server side. And it provides a buggy user experience.
I suspect that eventually netflix will be ones with the power to kill DRM. Imagine how much cheaper their distribution would be, if they didn't have to encrypt every stream individually.
The fact that I actually agree with the FSF's position is irrelevant. Why is it that, the only time the FSF gets into the news
Yeah... Of all the evils out there why does FSF choose to target Mozilla.. Instead of condemning the other players who implements DRM without any concerns about their users privacy...
I'm no DRM fan, but a practical approach is usually better than closing your eyes and pretending not to see anything...
There was a time when one used IE, but along came Mozilla. Mozilla proved more successfull because it was DRM intollerant. I guess I have to find a browser that is DRM intollerant; any suggestions?
If you want flash or silverlight (netflix) I suspect you might just have to drop that idea...
I would recommend Firefox, as the CDM module still has to be downloaded post-install and you can choose not to use EME.
This is nothing more than special plugin support, only better isolated than flash and it's friends...
One of the best Tweets I found on the issue was somebody threatening to switch to Google Chrome because of this. I think the irony here is clear.
If we're going to use a browser that promotes DRM it might as well be the one with an objectively superior code base. Mozilla can't compete with Google on technology alone and there's really no reason for them to exist if they're just going to be another corporate whore.
So did you read the blog posts by Andreas (CTO at Mozilla) where he writes about how the CDM module will be less privacy invading and not have access to everything on the system, like flash, silverlight, and various other binary plugins.
Flash is a well understood protocol and there are plenty of tools out there to strip the security from flash video streams.
I'm inclined to think it's better the evil we know than some html DRM that we don't.
It's not just flash, it's also silverlight and googles DRM infected videolan plugin that this avoid...
Things like flash have giant codebases and can spy on users, Andreas, CTO at Mozilla did promise in his blog post that he would ensure privacy of users and so that adobes DRM thingy can't spy unhindered.
IMO this is the lesser evil.
Either way, the majority just want to watch netflix, they don't care. And this will provide a less buggy experience than flash or silverlight.
Personally, I think that when the revenue stream from online distribution becomes the primary source of income for the movie industry, then DRM will go away. Because DRM will always provide an inferior experience, more bugs, less stability and it is more expensive to stream... Than some static stream which can be distributed using a simple CDN. I think we have to be patient, DRM will die on it's own.
Mozilla have always had a practical approach... This is nothing more.
This is no worse the binary plugins like flash, silverlight and Googles VLC-based (I think) DRM infected plugin (used by HBO in Europe).
Seriously, this is the less evil.
So doesn't this mean that someone could just fork Firefox without the DRM?
DRM in Firefox will download a binary module from adobe, and it can be enabled/disabled by the user.
No need to fork... that's way too much work...
Most likely this is just like flash plugin, except the API surface will be smaller, the module will be better sandboxed, there will be real security and work to ensure users privacy (Andreas CTO at Mozilla promised this in his blog post on the topic).
With some luck this will allow us to kill flash and silverlight... a well encapsulated module is certainly less evil.
Slashdot Mirror
it also gives the government the ability to disable people's guns at will. This is very scary. You trust them to use this responsibly ignores just about all history of the US government.
Again, nobody said the guns should be networked... That's is just speculation.
On second thought, that sounds pretty appealing.
Imagine a protest where we could simply disable all firing mechanisms of police firearms.
Because when there is a protest the police is always the bad guys? That is a messed up world view...
or mabey we could tackle larger social issues that drive shootings in the first place, but that seems to be too hard.
Yeah, if you want to solve poverty without spending money, that is going to be hard.
On the other hand you could make higher education free, provided free healthcare and wealthfare that covers housing and food for a family in need.
Social mobility is key, it's not enough that there is a slight possibility of making it. It's about making it easy to make it into the middle class.
No, robotic taxis will monetize the poor the same way they do now: by licensing only a limited number of companies to operate the taxis.
How does that monetize the poor? They won't be hire by taxi companies anymore...
The GP really did have it right.
To be fair... I was just saying that the poor, who can't afford new auto-driving cars will keep paying fines for speeding (assuming their cars can speed at all).
I was being sarcastic... the point of my post was that the income from fines is not significant compared to all the other things we invest in transportation.
Like all these stories, $5,000 may be the "sticker" or asking price. How many sold at this price or at any price is the important metric.
The market for this kind of software is fairly small.. so 5k is very cheap... it's probably not feasible to hire real developers to do this.
I wouldn't be surprised if this guy could be making more money making enterprise software. SharePoint plugins, various CMS plugins, etc...
To a petty thief 5k is a lot of money, but for a legitimate business it's rather cheap, compared to doing any kind of development.
As it is now, people are forced to fight and win/lose, the system costs rise.
Speeding tickets is the one place where plea bargins makes sense... So yeah consider that...
On topic, this article is ridiculous.. most Americans won't be able to afford a new self driving car for years... So the poor will still have to pay tickets for many years to comes (you really have well rigged system for the rich).
Either way, when self driving cars are dominating you'll also see other things, such as: fewer accidents, less time wasted in traffic, less wear and tear on the road. All things that save the state money.
Not to mention all the productive hours people spending in traffic, where they could be productive, make money and generate even more taxes.
Better transportation is probably good for the economy.
Once the police are happy enough with the technology to use it exclusively, then a mandate is appropriate.
I'm not holding my breath.
That makes sense... whilst the police, in the US, certainly have a legitimate need to carry arms. They also have an incentive to use these guns, if they are reliable. As it'll make it harder to use an officer's gun against him.
:)
:)
I am surprised by this outbreak of common sense from an organization that often have very little empathy for.
Don't worry I'll stop my preacher on why guns shouldn't be allowed in the first place, fixing a America is beyond the scope of a slashdot post anyways
My point was: There is too much common sense.
Regarding mandates, why don't you take that discussion when the technology is reliable. Maybe you should have build in camera too
Or maybe you should just reduce the classes of weapons available to normal people for other than sports with appropriate safety measures...
Either way, take that discussion when technology is mature.
yeah right - just like in communism the government is supposed to eventually fade away...
I haven't heard that one before... But I suspect that like most Americans you probably don't really know what communism is... And have a tendency to confuse it with totalitarian dictatorships.
:)
Either way, I fail to see the relevance
That is some serious wishful thinking.
Maybe... But DRM is the case for now with or without Mozilla. There is no way the content industry will let NetFlix and Hulu will drop DRM right now.
So what is the alternative, denying people NetFlix and Hulu? We all know they'll go to Chrome and IE, or NetFlix will make a binary plugin for Firefox, which won't be sandboxed.
The only reason DRM went away on music is because Apple did some economic jujitsu on the publishers making them choose between money or control, apple's complete domination of music DRM meant they could dictate terms to the industry as long as the industry required DRM.
Let's hope netflix grows powerful enough...
(1) Why do you think they encrypt the streams individually instead of just once and store the encrypted files on their server just like bluray discs of the same movie all have identical encryption?
NetFlix don't implement DRM out the evil in their hearts :)
They do it because the content industry requires it... And the content industry requires each stream to be encrypted individually... They require a complicated protocol that ensures that each device is uniquely identified...
Security through obscurity is complicated (no surprise there).
(2) Encryption is super cheap now that dedicated hardware is built into modern CPUs - a typical Xeon processor can do 700MB/s with AES-NI on just one core. Intel makes Xeons with 15 cores per chip nowadays.
But building a large CDN with this kind of special hardware is expensive, very expensive. Without DRM movies could be streamed directly from a normal CDN.
I think the other EU countries need to start getting together and saying to the UK that they need to either adopt ALL of the EU rules (including the Euro, Schengen, Net Neutrality, human rights etc etc) or get out of the EU completly and fend for themselves.
Lot's of EU countries have exceptions to their EU membership. There is a lot of countries without the Euro.
Ideally, the EU shouldn't be pick and choose... but some pragmatism is necessary.
For example, my country is going to vote on whether or not to join the new EU patent court. I recommend people to vote "NO".
I generally like the EU, but I don't trust the patent system and making it bigger only makes it worse.
You are assuming that without membership in the EU, the UK and/or the members of the EU will start imposing mutually harmful restrictions. In whose interest would that be?
None, but the EU was constructed to prevent this...
Without the EU, it would happen in small bits... France would try to protect it's movie industry... And then there is another exception...
And somewhere down the road Europe would be back to where it was a 40 years ago. EU ensures big agreements where everybody agrees not to protect their own industries and this results in a large free market.
Is a blockage going to help the ultimate objective, that is to stop crime? Does it not drive criminals underground in many cases?
It certainly complicates access... And whilst most slashdotters won't have a problem connecting to a dark net.. It's a high barrier of entry.
Stopping crimes is not always about making it impossible, just more complicated and harder to do...Even a locked car can be stolen.
Oh wait, stopping crime is not the ultimate objective, control of communication is. Go ahead.
Go ahead and bluntly assume every country is corrupt, just because yours is...
IMO dns blocking is an acceptable counter-measure. Because technical people who wants to go around it can just pick a non-default DNS-server. But if your not technically inclined it raises the barrier and complicates access.
Note, this could be illegal images, terrorist videos, illegal casinos or scam sites (these really should be blocked).
One can only imagine what other functionalities this CDM module will have.
Yeah, it might mine bitcoins, but if it wants to inspect your computer, get a cross-site unique id, look at your files, etc... It'll have to break out the sandbox in which it is placed. See the picture here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...
So unlike the flash plugin, it won't be able to do much...
Believe it or not, chrome is also sandboxed, and has been for years.
I'm not familiar with how chrome sandboxes it's CDM. Nobody cares, because nobody expects privacy from chrome.
But I know Mozilla won't expose cross-site unique identifiers to the CDM module, so that's something.
By the way, I use both Chrome and Firefox.
I will move into your place then. I am less invading than a whole family, so obviously it is ok.
I'm currently not invaded by a whole family, but if I were, I would happily take the trade :)
A "lesser evil" is still an evil and we are free to voice our disgust at this bending over to profit and popularity at the cost of the freedoms they claim to protect.
Absolutely, by the way thank you for also mentioning "popularity"... After all, even the best of us want netflix :)
Most likely this is just like flash plugin, except the API surface will be smaller, the module will be better sandboxed, there will be real security and work to ensure users privacy
What about support for all platforms, including ones Mozilla doesn't ship binaries for and need to be built from source?
I don't know... I hope that there will be linux support :)
In fact I suspect that because of the sandboxing, it'll be a lot easier to port it to other platforms and there will be no platform dependent libraries to link against...
From what I read the binary CDM module will be locked down, and by that extend likely not have access to platform dependent functions.
What could possibly go wrong?!
Plenty of things... But it will be sandboxed.
In sandbox provided by Mozilla. So adobe doesn't have to do anything security related. See the picture here:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...
Compared to binary plugins like flash, which isn't sandboxed, this is much better.
Real security from Adobe? Bwahahah! Name an Adobe security success in the past decade!
Check out the picture here: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014... :) :)
Then notice the open source sandbox around the CDM module
I have confidence that the CDM can be locked down in a sandbox where regardless of how stupid the code is, it won't hurt the user experience or user privacy...
This is better than flash, where adobe made the sandbox. This time Mozilla will be making the sandbox, not adobe. Adobe will only be playing with the sand
As you suggest, it's probably best that adobe sticks doesn't do anything security related, in this setup, Mozilla will do the security, and adobe will do the "obscurity" (which we from flash that they are good at).
Will this 'lesser evil' have a unique ID?.. Based on your hardware?
Nope. Read the blog post by Andreas (CTO at Mozilla) on the topic, he says:
By contrast, in Firefox the sandbox prohibits the CDM from fingerprinting the user’s device.
(Source: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014...)
So contrary to other DRM infested browsers and other DRM delivery mechanisms, CDM is sandboxed and the sandbox will provide the CDM module with a unique identifier. The unique identifier will be different between sites, etc.. In order to ensure users privacy.
So, no super-cookie for you.
Websites could demand you run ads and use the DRM to make damn sure you don't disable them.
Websites could also demand that you run silverlight... They don't do that...
Also note, that the CDM module won't be downloaded without user consent.
All in all this is better than Flash and friends, and Mozilla is actively tasking steps to lock down the CDM module and restrict what it can do.
More, better DRM is never a good thing.
Agree, but if netflix goes CDM then silverlight is finally dead. So in terms of lines-of-code and API surface we'll have less DRM.
Long copyright terms need to die and DRM needs to die with it.
Copyright terms is a political issue, but regarding DRM, I think it'll change when the content industry makes most of revenue from online streaming. It's not cheap to encrypt every stream and license DRM technology from various providers. I'm sure netflix will work hard to kill DRM.
And they certainly have to power to do this.
But Mozilla's scheme may be:
1. Implement DRM to make sure the users don't massively ditch Firefox. 2. Attract more users, get >90% market share 3. Ditch DRM
Not for from it... From what I hear the idea is that when the content industry makes the majority of it's revenue from online streaming, they'll likely reconsider DRM. Most likely it'll go away on it's own, because it's complicated and expensive to implement on the server side. And it provides a buggy user experience.
I suspect that eventually netflix will be ones with the power to kill DRM. Imagine how much cheaper their distribution would be, if they didn't have to encrypt every stream individually.
The fact that I actually agree with the FSF's position is irrelevant. Why is it that, the only time the FSF gets into the news
Yeah... Of all the evils out there why does FSF choose to target Mozilla.. Instead of condemning the other players who implements DRM without any concerns about their users privacy...
I'm no DRM fan, but a practical approach is usually better than closing your eyes and pretending not to see anything...
There was a time when one used IE, but along came Mozilla. Mozilla proved more successfull because it was DRM intollerant. I guess I have to find a browser that is DRM intollerant; any suggestions?
If you want flash or silverlight (netflix) I suspect you might just have to drop that idea...
I would recommend Firefox, as the CDM module still has to be downloaded post-install and you can choose not to use EME.
This is nothing more than special plugin support, only better isolated than flash and it's friends...
If we're going to use a browser that promotes DRM it might as well be the one with an objectively superior code base. Mozilla can't compete with Google on technology alone and there's really no reason for them to exist if they're just going to be another corporate whore.
So did you read the blog posts by Andreas (CTO at Mozilla) where he writes about how the CDM module will be less privacy invading and not have access to everything on the system, like flash, silverlight, and various other binary plugins.
Flash is a well understood protocol and there are plenty of tools out there to strip the security from flash video streams. I'm inclined to think it's better the evil we know than some html DRM that we don't.
It's not just flash, it's also silverlight and googles DRM infected videolan plugin that this avoid...
Things like flash have giant codebases and can spy on users, Andreas, CTO at Mozilla did promise in his blog post that he would ensure privacy of users and so that adobes DRM thingy can't spy unhindered.
IMO this is the lesser evil.
Either way, the majority just want to watch netflix, they don't care. And this will provide a less buggy experience than flash or silverlight.
Personally, I think that when the revenue stream from online distribution becomes the primary source of income for the movie industry, then DRM will go away. Because DRM will always provide an inferior experience, more bugs, less stability and it is more expensive to stream... Than some static stream which can be distributed using a simple CDN. I think we have to be patient, DRM will die on it's own.
So?
Mozilla have always had a practical approach... This is nothing more.
This is no worse the binary plugins like flash, silverlight and Googles VLC-based (I think) DRM infected plugin (used by HBO in Europe).
Seriously, this is the less evil.
So doesn't this mean that someone could just fork Firefox without the DRM?
DRM in Firefox will download a binary module from adobe, and it can be enabled/disabled by the user.
No need to fork... that's way too much work...
Most likely this is just like flash plugin, except the API surface will be smaller, the module will be better sandboxed, there will be real security and work to ensure users privacy (Andreas CTO at Mozilla promised this in his blog post on the topic).
With some luck this will allow us to kill flash and silverlight... a well encapsulated module is certainly less evil.
Truly, we got an offer we couldn't decline.
That is not true. Please, don't make accusations like that without evidence!