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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Can some of the more involved please explain the consequence of a choice like this? If Mozilla chooses to not implement this spec, will the effect be that:

    * Firefox is the only browser that can't play certain content
    * Firefox is the only browser that plays all content

I would assume the first, because it should be easy for a content provider to just block a certain browser entirely (and that block could be circumvented, but the majority of people won't do that). People will blame Firefox, not the content provider.

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In the short to medium term, Netflix, etc. will just fallback on delivering streams through Silverlight of Flash. That's what they do know and those plugins will keep working. There's precedent for this in the way that many websites would deliver H.264 encoded HTML5 videos to browsers that supported those, but used Flash when Firefox didn't support H.264.

In the longer term, Silverlight is abandoned and Flash is on its way out. I think it's unlikely that Firefox holds out against EME in the long term, but it could be that it slowly gains a reputation for being bad for many streaming sites. The Flash fallback is buggier and less featureful than the streaming in other browsers, maybe slower as well. At some point, people upgrade their computers and find it hard to get a Flash plugin that works and so they eventually give up and switch browsers.

I'm not sure how technically possible it is, but another option is that Netflix and similar companies will write their own plugin for Firefox which supports DRM. Presumably they will try to make a plugin which is not a platform like Flash, but only serves the purpose of doing the DRM. An equivalent, but probably techincally superior, option is to put the DRM into an asm.js blob.

Some people in this thread believe that the lack of support for EME will put pressure on media companies non-DRM streaming options. This strikes me as wishful thinking. In the short-term, the existence of Flash and Silverlight fallbacks mitigates the pressure on Hollywood and streaming providers. Again, see the H.264 story. In the long-term, Hollywood's smart enough to realize that if there exists a DRM solution for Firefox today, then it will be technically possible in the future as well.

That's why I don't see the point of boycotting EME. If it could plausibly lead to DRM-free streaming options, that would be an improvement, but I don't believe it will happen. On the other hand, from a binary blob perspective, EME plugins are strictly better than NPAPI plugins, and second, users who don't want DRM can always not use it. All boycotting does is reduce the options for users who are willing to accept DRM.

> from a binary blob perspective, EME plugins are strictly better than NPAPI plugins

DRM can't be implemented in a simple binary plugin since the user will still be able to copy the protected content by e.g. modifying the video driver. All system layers from EME module in a browser to hardware will need to be restricted from modification. Do you believe that Secure Boot was created just for malware protection?

The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough.

Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback.

> The mere fact that this works every day for billions of people demonstrates that you're wrong. Flash/Silverlight are easy hacked and yet the content cartels have decided they're enough.

Flash and Silverlight do not provide any real protection and they are certainly not enough for content cartels. That's why DRM solutions are being developed. As soon as the major software vendors will provide complete DRM implementation restricting all levels from user agents to drivers and bootloader, content providers will start to require it.

> Even if the OS starts becoming as locked down, you're still technically inaccurate: a CDM could just be a shim which pass data through to an OS media API which handles the actual playback.

But that shim will not provide any real content protection if the OS is open for modification. For example, someone could make a version of the OS's media API implementation that will allow users to save any media stream decoded by CDM. Thus, the OS will have to be locked down to support DRM, that's what I am trying to say.

Any browser that doesn't implement the EME spec won't be able to play content protected using it. So if large video streaming sites were to use it those browser would be locked out. Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos using EME without plugins for example [1]. Browsers that don't support EME would need to use plugins for as long as the site supported that.

[1] http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2013/06/27/netflix...

Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos using EME without plugins for example

While technically true, it's certainly stretching the truth a wee bit.

Saying "Internet Explorer 11 can play netflix videos using EME without using additional plug-ins because it ships with specific DRM-implementations built-in" would be the more correct version.

I mean... Chrome can play Flash-content without any plug-ins, because the Flash plug-in is built in. When you put it that way, it doesn't sound so impressive any more, now does it? Further extending the browser will require plug-ins.

The special about this thing, is that it's a plug-in architecture deliberately created to enable DRM, to take control away from the user. That's legitimizing DRM as a concept in a supposedly open standard.

That's as just madness and 100% self-contradicting.

That's not entirely the full story. Any browser that supports EME will still not be able to play content unless a Content Decryption Module (CDM) is built for it.

Kind of both:

1) Firefox won't play DRM'ed content by default

2) Firefox could be the browser that allows you to go around all DRM'ed content through 3rd party plugins (they probably won't be able to condone the activity themselves).

The sad thing is the content guys will start yelling from the rooftops afterwards that "Mozilla is facilitating piracy and content theft" or something like that, even though they would keep the browser just like before - the "open web" we all wanted.

But because everyone else will have sold their soul to the content corporations, that sort of censorship will become the status quo, and now Mozilla will be the enemy.

Instead of "open web" being the status quo, I fear that "DRM'ed web" will become the status quo.

Firefox couldn't display those files/streams, but it would notice and could cope, eg. by displaying some informative message instead that lays the blame where it belongs to: the website.

Since FF is still popular enough in certain regions, that it (plus legacy IE versions) could kill EME before it gets popular, except for certain special use cases like Netflix on Chromebooks (where, honestly, a fully custom plugin solution would work just as well).

> by displaying some informative message instead that lays the blame where it belongs to: the website.

Surely the website will detect FF and instead of serving an encrypted stream, display some informative message laying the blame with Mozilla and link to a DRM-enabled browser download.

Of course they're free to do that, like they are now.

So instead of installing a plugin, the user is now expected to install a new browser (with different UI and everything) _and_ a plugin for the DRM implementation. That surely helped the DRM vendors' cause.

Or, the user would see their browser not supporting Netflix, think it's a poor product and which to a 'superior' one.

A browser that refuses to implement EME is an inferior set-top box. Question is if becoming Hollywood's set-top box is really Firefox's (and Mozilla's) mission.

Just because a browser implements EME doesn't mean it can still play content. It needs a CDM written for it first. What if that CDM requires an underlying DRM system that only runs on one OS?

They don't have to install a new browser. Most users already have IE on their system and it'll work just fine with no effort at all except clicking on the blue e.

Probably the first one, if the content ever became available.

But don't forget that implementing something like this will have negative consequences as well. By dodging these consequences Mozilla could - at leas in theory - gain an upper hand.

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