DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/

by dzine • 12 years ago

51 72 12 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

Each person will be able to decide whether to activate the DRM implementation or to leave it off and not watch DRM-controlled content.

At first glance this may seem pretty "reasonable", but it really isn't. It's like putting a backdoor in every Intel chip (such as say through TPM 2.0), and then just telling people "look, if you don't want the backdoor activated, you can disable it - Now here's the list of 10 instructions to do so..."

It's an illusion of choice, and nothing more. While some may be content that this option exists, the reality is that DRM is now getting pushed to billions of users out there through the web, as the default for soon most video platforms.

I don't fully blame Mozilla for this. In fact I blame Netflix first, and Google and Microsoft second. This Gang of Three is the one that made it happen in the first place. But I am saying that Mozilla's attempts to alleviate our concerns aren't very effective or particularly useful.

sp3324• 12 years ago

It's off by default, though. Isn't that the opposite of your scenario?

shmerl15• 12 years ago

. We face a choice between a feature our users want and the degree to which that feature can be built to embody user control and privacy.

It can't be said for all users. I don't want it. No DRM junk in the browser please. I understand that she probably means some estimated majority, which is unfortunate (i.e. majority accepting unethical practice like DRM).

Firefox users would need to use another browser every time they want to watch a controlled video

Irrelevant for many users of DRM-free OSes (like Linux) who won't have any DRM backend for EME anyway. I.e. it really sounds like "users would need another OS".

Each person will be able to decide whether to activate the DRM implementation or to leave it off and not watch DRM-controlled content.

I hope there will be a switch for disabling the whole EME altogether. Even better, I'd prefer builds of Firefox free of any DRM sickness. It's very unfortunate that this garbage is finding its way into the open source browser which always stood for the users' rights more than many others.

rayiner10• 12 years ago

majority accepting unethical practice like DRM

Are you kidding? DRM is great. I love being able to just pay money to Netflix in return for content. DRM enables that nice, clear-cut transaction. What's the alternative? Judging by the rest of the web, it involves tracking your internet activity and throwing advertising in your face.

shmerl15• 12 years ago

DRM is never great. Show me one user who actually appreciates DRM itself. What you meant above is that users like the service. They could like it even more if it hadn't DRM garbage attached to it. I.e. DRM has nothing to do with what users like - it always degrades the quality of the service and the digital goods it delivers.

sp3324• 12 years ago

Movie rentals existed before Netflix. It's always been technically possible to make illegal copies of movies. But most people would rather have a legal option. Otherwise everyone would skip Netflix and just use the Pirate Bay.

Edit: To be clear, I'm saying that people will pay for a legal streaming service even if they could rip it off for free.

tomp2• 12 years ago

I also love being able to pay Apple money in exchange for DRM-free music. Also, DRM on video is approximately 0-efficient; pirates will still rip movies and upload them to torrent sites, freeloaders will still find free low-quality streaming movie sites, and the majority of non-technical users wouldn't be able to rip streaming video even without DRM.

So: NO.

josephlord• 12 years ago

What about Netflix requires DRM? I know that the studios currently require it but what benefit does it actually serve? How much of the content on Netflix is not available to pirate if so inclined?

gergles• 12 years ago

This is incredibly shameful. It's now only a matter of time before images, CSS, JavaScript, hell, even the text, are delivered through OS-specific, locked down CDMs. It will start with pissant sites nobody cares about (like the ones who are currently fighting AdBlock), but eventually a large site will demand it - most users will be using a device that handles this, and we will literally never have the Open Web ever again. (If you can't imagine how this would be done, go look at a restaurant website without Flash. Replace Flash with a gigantic EME-required media element. It's closer than you'd think.)

I get that slippery slope arguments are often problematic, but DRM has always been something where we've slid down as much as is allowable as soon as it is allowable. The broadcast flag, Macrovision on DVDs, SCMS, Cinavia, etc. are just a few examples of this.

Highly recommended reading is also this post, which discusses how Mozilla will implement EME: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...

I also don't feel the 'open source sandbox' will be permissible by most developers of CDMs. My opinion is that mozilla will waste countless cycles implementing EME that won't be acceptable to the content mafia. Adobe is not the only player in this space.

secstate• 12 years ago

I think the bigger issue is how little the vast majority of technology users understand these issues. To them, so what if the movie studio wants to limit what people can do with a copy of their movie. "We've got streaming movies from major studios, yay!" they all say.

And I don't know how you educate folks. These are the same people who would shrug their shoulders and say "So what," about NSA wiretapping. "I don't have anything to hide."

There is no thought given to the possibility of abuse in the future once these rules or systems are entrenched and standardized.

And now I officially sound like RMS-lite ;)

ozten2• 12 years ago

Mozilla is working very hard to limit the DRM to Video.

This matches what has happened in practice over the years. Ads and entertainment have been packaged up in Flash with DRM. EME paves that cowpath.

throwaway2048• 12 years ago

Just like they worked very hard to prevent EME?

r00fus• 12 years ago

It's now only a matter of time before images, CSS, JavaScript, hell, even the text, are delivered through OS-specific, locked down CDMs

Do you have any other sources that indicate this push? Seems a possibility but it's the first I've heard of this kind of lockdown. Seems like the cost would greatly outweigh the benefits...

fixermark• 12 years ago

Is it part of the nature of the DRM technology that it can't be walled off in an XPI? I find myself thinking the change would be significantly more palatable for those who care deeply about the division of open and closed source if Mozilla could implement this by building a video-supporting XPI that users can choose to not install (thereby verifying that no closed-source blobs are living in their browser, spying on them or whatever closed-source blobs do that is so undesirable).

Edit: Ah, I see. https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi... clarifies the intent to remove plugins from the web altogether.

cwyers• 12 years ago

The handwringing over this strikes me as extreme. Mozilla already ships with the ability for users to enable closed-source, proprietary DRM schemes to view web content -- the Flash and Silverlight plugins. Moving from the current regime of Flash/Silverlight to the EME is a move towards openness, not away from it -- the DRM scheme is still closed, but the content itself is more open and standard than before, as you're no longer tying yourself to Flash's implementation of video streaming.

quasque4• 12 years ago

I agree, and think the sandboxing of the DRM plugin is a positive step towards more openness as well - the opaque algorithm implementing the DRM can apparently only touch the video streams it's being fed, and a unique identifier generated by the browser. Much better than the current situation of Flash having arbitrary network access and suchlike.

In concept, I think it's not too much different from server-side website code being mostly closed source. The only difference is that this component happens to be running on your computer.

Also there is prior form for this in similarly open systems, e.g. tainted modules in the Linux kernel, which seem to have turned out okay.

ademarre• 12 years ago

Mozilla should implement the closed-source portion as an official addon. They can give the user a choice to include it or not during the installation. Maybe this is what they're doing; their post wasn't completely clear on that.

noonespecial• 12 years ago

A number of content owners (in particular film and TV studios) require technical mechanisms to reduce the ways in which people can use that content

Drm is the opposite of serving users. By definition. The "challenge" is actually to select which privileged users you still want to serve in spite of the not-serving default.

chimeracoder4• 12 years ago

It will be easier for Firefox users to play DRM-enabled videos because they will not have to download Flash or Silverlight first. Firefox users will be able to choose whether to activate the new DRM system before it is accessed.

Why not have this downloaded upon first use, the way that Flash and Silverlight have been?

Also, isn't this what users on many Linux distros (e.g. Iceweasel on Debian) will have to do anyway?

grincho• 12 years ago

Mozilla employee here, speaking for myself but pretty close to the info source.

That's actually what we're looking at doing: the sandbox would be in there, harmless, by default, but the actual crypto module (the "CDM") would download from Adobe upon first need. (And they have committed to support the platforms we support, Linux included.) The exact UI is still up in the air. I could imagine us using the opportunity to display a message to educate users as to what DRM is and whose phone number to call if they don't like it. ;-)

chimeracoder4• 12 years ago

I could imagine us using the opportunity to display a message to educate users as to what DRM is and whose phone number to call if they don't like it. ;-)

Please do this!

I understand that Mozilla has been backed into a corner on this, so I get why you'll be adding this (much as I wish you didn't have to). But that doesn't mean forgetting about the issue entirely.

I wouldn't ask this of any of the other major browser vendors, but I like to hold Mozilla/Firefox to a higher standard. :)

jejones3141• 12 years ago

With that title, a Damon Knight story leaps to mind...

jordigh2• 12 years ago

So... how long until we reverse-engineer the CDM and write a free decryptor? Is there any indication that reverse-engineering the CDM would be technologically unfeasible?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_cow_problem

u124556• 12 years ago

At least as feasible as a feature-compatible flash replacement.

jordigh2• 12 years ago

Do we need all that much? This isn't all of flash, which is a lot of work. This is just something that decrypts data streams, AIUI.

aqme282• 12 years ago

You often don't need to decrypt the content. Nothing is stopping you from screen-recording video that's behind DRM and putting it up on Piratebay.

__david__2• 12 years ago

Sure, but re-encoding will degrade the quality. It's much better to just strip the DRM.

davexunit• 12 years ago

Mozilla should have done the right thing and stood by their beliefs that DRM is harmful to the free web. Instead, they folded to the media corporations and implemented EME. I understand the tremendous pressure they must have been under, but it was the wrong decision. Mozilla is not serving the users by allowing Netflix, Amazon, and others to trample their freedom for the sake of watching TV shows.

Mozilla, please remove this anti-feature. Do the right thing.

mconley_• 12 years ago

Mozilla can't serve it's mission, or it's users, by dying valiantly on a hill somewhere.

cjkaminski• 12 years ago

I wish I could be against all DRM. Like many things in life, it's not that simple. I'm proud of Apple for successfully taking DRM out of the equation from music sales. But what about non-sales interactions?

We don't get DRM-free copies of all our music from Spotify, nor should we reasonably expect that. We are subscribing to a service that allows us access to music so long as we are paying customers. Why shouldn't there be light-touch DRM in place to keep us from flagrantly abusing the system and retaining all copies of the music after if/when we cancel our subscription?

Should we reasonably expect to be able to keep a copy of a television show that we streamed from abc.go.com? ABC makes far less money from showing us ads than if we purchased a copy from iTunes. They do this, part and parcel, because we don't get to keep a copy of the show after we're done watching.

From my perspective, DRM has no place in a "sales" relationship. We should have full usage rights whenever we buy a book, movie, or song.

DRM should exist for subscription services and ad-supported streaming. DRM should essentially serve to enforce the social and legal contract that says we are "borrowing" the books, movies, or songs for long as we have that relationship. Once that relationship is over, we can't use that stuff any more.

I suggest that we create an open-source DRM system designed to fairly protect the content creator in cases where the audience is "borrowing" the creative work (whether ad-supported or subscription).

__david__2• 12 years ago

We don't get DRM-free copies of all our music from Spotify, nor should we reasonably expect that.

Why not? I use a number of internet "radio" stations that send DRM free mp3 streams to my computer (complete with ads). Some even have paid accounts that stream at a higher bitrate.

The only reason Spotify can't do that is because the recording studios act like frightened little children, scared that someone is going to take their toys away. They've (somewhat successfully) planted the meme that DRM is required or the evil pirates will just steal everything and they'll go out of business. But I just don't buy it.

DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users

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