But... firefox is a chunk of shit. And the content companies have been doing this since Silverlight. And all of it is mobile anyway. But then I find that you can get Firefox for Android, and that the first rating for it is 'fast and furryous' and it's from my buddy Cliff who died of brain cancer last year. We'd been in Seattle an hour before we went to his memorial. So now I don't even know what to think, other than I hate Cory Doctorow browbeating me and I miss Cliff.
It's really hard to be an advocate for something important but which most people don't care about and which the opposition has deep pockets. Have mercy on Cory Doctorow, he's better at it than most of us. Content companies have been doing it since Silverlight, but Silverlight wasn't a standard, and that's not a trivial difference. If it's in the standards not only does every browser have to support DRM, they have to support it faithfully because, unlike every other bad behavior browsers try to circumvent on your behalf, not working against your users' interests with respect to DRM is illegal. But yeah, Firefox has gone to shit, and from the stories coming out of Mozilla it's not going to stop going to shit until the bulk of the work moves out of the Mozilla foundation or there's some kind of coup to get rid of the people in charge.
I don't know much of the history or much about how browsers work. Could you explain a bit more about why the issue is important but most people don't care about it? I'm not sure I understand what the issue is about that he's an advocate for. He's not actually advocating saving the actual Firefox, is he? I got the sense from reading the article that he was hoping for another browser that was like Firefox in the early days that changed the standard and cared more about customers than commercialism. That's not really the Firefox of today. We need more browsers that treat their users, rather than publishers, as their customers. It's the natural cycle of concentration-disruption-renewal that has kept the Web vibrant for nearly 20 years (eons, in web-years). We may never get another one, though.But yeah, Firefox has gone to shit, and from the stories coming out of Mozilla it's not going to stop going to shit until the bulk of the work moves out of the Mozilla foundation or there's some kind of coup to get rid of the people in charge.
We need more Firefoxes.
He's not really talking about Firefox, but the role Firefox used to fill, of being the browser that exclusively worked in the interest of its users. Having DRM standardized obligates browsers to work in the interests of the entertainment industry against their users, even when, absent DRM, there are uses of encumbered data that would be legally permissible, like saving a local copy of streaming media so you could play them offline or just to have a backup. Like all IP issues, it's something most people don't care about because unless you're in the entertainment industry, where any kind of restriction on the use of IP is good for you because it creates artificial scarcity that you can use to keep your old business model viable now that there's no inherent cost in reproducing data, or in the technology industry, where restrictions in the use of data based on legal bullshit are always a burden and never a benefit, even and especially when the suits think they're a benefit, it looks like some arcane legal thing you have no reason to care about. Also like all IP issues, you should care because it's your culture you're not allowed to participate in because your legally-enforced role is to be a consumer, not a participant. Homer would get his ass sued off today. In particular, you should care about you software working against you because your software is working against you.
Thanks for the explanation. My level of not understanding is more basic than your explanation. But I think I'm getting the issue if you say that under this policy, you wouldn't be able to save a copy of some data without a DRM and play it. For example, you couldn't copy a youtube video even if the owner gave you permission. (I don't know if you can do this now because of youtube, but that's the principle.) I really do care when my software is working against me. I just wasn't sure in what way this was supposed to be doing that. Maybe I can ask in another way. Does this mean that no new browser today could get around the standard that the W3C set as the author is explaining here? This is the opposite of every W3C standard to date: once, all you needed to do to render content sent by a server was follow the standard, not get permission. If browsers had needed permission to render a page at the launch of Mozilla, the publishers would have frozen out this new, pop-up-blocking upstart. Kiss Firefox goodbye, in other words. What would have to change for there to be a browser to change this feature?This system, "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME) uses standards-defined code to funnel video into a proprietary container called a "Content Decryption Module." For a new browser to support this new video streaming standard -- which major studios and cable operators are pushing for -- it would have to convince those entertainment companies or one of their partners to let them have a CDM, or this part of the "open" Web would not display in their new browser.
Thanks. Could the browser developers take advantage of this (in the wiki)? Sec. 103(f) of the DMCA (17 U.S.C. § 1201 (f)) says that you are allowed to reverse-engineer a protected program in order to figure out how to get it to interoperate (i.e., exchange and make use of information) with other programs.Reverse Engineering and Circumvention
Depends on the context. I recently read about a rapist who was let off in Oklahoma or Kansas, somewhere in that region, because their law didn't specifically bar having sex with someone who was unconscious due to intoxication. Letter beat the spirit to hell in that case.
I'm writing this mainly because there are still many people who didn't hear about this: have you tried Refresh Firefox option? If your complaints toward Firefox are largely about performance this can have major impact, especially if you have: - Used same updated-over instance for a long time. - Use a lot of add-ons. If it's about content, law-thingies or some of the decisions on their part… I have no idea, I'm mainly interested by browser internals. Just take a deep breath and count to five if your first reaction is going to be a rant on Firefox fans :P. I'm fond of *foxes, but it a rather objective measurement that this one option up there can bring you a major improvement. It speed-up my startup time in my Firefox by a factor of 12 and if repeated about twice a year (not much of a hassle if your add-ons have 'save/restore settings to/from file') you can rather reliably eliminate a lot of the performance drops.