Mozilla respond to drm issue
Hi all, Jumping the gun a little on the Gnews, but exciting to see some response from Mozilla (no doubt from community pressure like ours). https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/05/12/update-on-digital-rights-management... thanks all, Ben M
Ben Minerds <PuZZleDucK+softwarefreedom@gmail.com> writes:
Hi all, Jumping the gun a little on the Gnews, but exciting to see some response from Mozilla (no doubt from community pressure like ours).
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/05/12/update-on-digital-rights-management...
Concrete actions in response: […] we’ve also introduced the ability to remove the CDM from your copy of Firefox. We believe that these are important security and choice mechanisms that allow us to introduce this technology in a manner that lessens the negative impacts of integrating this type of black-box. We also recognize that not everybody wants DRM, so we are also offering a separate Firefox download without the CDM enabled by default for those users who would rather not have the CDM downloaded to their browser on install. Assuming those work as advertised, how does that affect our position? Is that a sufficient response from Mozilla? -- \ “A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me | `\ at kick boxing.” —Emo Philips | _o__) | Ben Finney
We also recognize that not everybody wants DRM, so we are also offering a separate Firefox download without the CDM enabled by default for those users who would rather not have the CDM downloaded to their browser on install.
Customer: "Netflix doesn't work!" ... Netflix: "You will need to install the CDM version of Firefox." Customer: "Oh, it works now, sorry." i.e. everyone is happy, and there is no pressure on Netflix to change.
On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 12:00:35AM +0000, Brian May wrote:
We also recognize that not everybody wants DRM, so we are also offering a separate Firefox download without the CDM enabled by default for those users who would rather not have the CDM downloaded to their browser on install.
Customer: "Netflix doesn't work!" ... Netflix: "You will need to install the CDM version of Firefox." Customer: "Oh, it works now, sorry."
i.e. everyone is happy, and there is no pressure on Netflix to change.
Well no, because they have actually made it the default. If you want the non-CDM build, you have to go to https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/38.0/win32-EME-free... which is just a directory listing. I visited firefox.com in a Windows build of Firefox (installed into a Windows Vista 32-bit Wine prefix), and this is the file it downloaded from the main page: https://download-installer.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/38.0/win32/e... I did not notice any links to download a non-CDM version advertised anywhere from the main download page, so I had no idea what version I was going to get - even if I was already aware of the issue. After installation, the "Play DRM content" box was there (and already ticked), and the "Primetime Content Decryption Module provided by Adobe Systems, Incorporated" add-on was already listed in the Plugins section, along with a warning "Primetime Content Decryption Module provided by Adobe Systems, incorporated will be installed shortly.". From https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm the supported platforms include 32-bit versions of Firefox for Windows Vista and newer. There is no support for Mac OS X or GNU/Linux. Recall Les claiming that it could be considered problematic of Firefox to even create a build for proprietary operating systems, and I disagreed for a number of reasons. However, those reasons assumed Firefox would be equal for all operating systems. The risk here as I see it is that Firefox will support something like NetFlix only for people running proprietary operating systems, and many of those people won't recognise the harm (and may not even realize Netflix is using browser-supported DRM). Those people will now have an even harder time when they want to migrate to GNU/Linux, since that's one more application they will need to immediately replace. So in this case, if Mozilla is going to implement a bad solution, I feel it would be better that they made it *equally bad* for all platforms, as strange as that may seem. Of course if DRM is going to continue to be supported, I would rather that download not be the default - or better yet, not even advertised. Let Netflix advertise that specific version if they require it, so users have a clearer idea what is happening. -Adam
participants (4)
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Adam Bolte -
Ben Finney -
Ben Minerds -
Brian May