I’ve really been hoping a browser would take this stance. I’ll be pleased as punch if Firefox is that one.
I thought the point of DRM was to get Netflix away from that horrible Silverlight video player?
I feel like we’re treating the symptom here, not the disease. All this is going to do is make Firefox “that browser where video doesn’t work”, or force people to keep their terrible Flash based players instead of moving forward with HTML5.
Media cartels don’t care about innovation, they just want DRM.
Let me just say this right on, Tim Berners-Lee must be afflicted by “when stupid ideas happen to intelligent people”. He is about to undo the web he helped create in one fell swoop. I’m feeling very unfarovable towards him right now in ways that can’t be described in a youth appropriate manner.
That Heinlein quote at the bottom of the article needs to be tattooed on the forehead of every corporate lawyer, so that the judges can see it when they present their cases.
They SHOULD have to keep using crappy Silverlight and Flash plugins. That’s the price they pat for wanting to wall in their content. These content providers should have to overtly keep your own material in a plugin, making it obvious that they are doing something outside the spirit of the internet when they do so. Let them invest time money and effort into third party software to does what they want, and let me opt into installing the plugin if and when I want to. Building their plugin-capabilities into the framework of the internet just hides the fact that they’re doing so, and makes their behavior mainstream.
Based on his statements in the past regarding “openness” I doubt he really thinks it’s a good idea.
Far more likely is that he’s powerless to stop it. He can either endorse the scheme and maintain some amount of relevance and work on the fights he can win, or he can reject it and either be forcibly removed from his position and ignored by industry players who will implement the standard anyways.
It would certainly be a lot cooler if he stood up for what’s right, but he’s just one man against some really powerful people.
Today we learned about the impending market decline of the Mozilla communities flagship web browser due to the fact that soon you will be unable to watch Netflix using Firefox.
The proposed standard is just an API for plugins, so Netflix would get away from Silverlight only to move to some other, similar, thing.
DRM and EME is anti-internet and everything the internet stands for and is built upon. the internet wouldn’t exist as it does today without open interoperable standards, and this is a move in the opposite direction.
No wonder that IE11 is the main browser embracing and pushing this bullshit at this point in time. MS has always been for this sort of garbage. google should be ashamed that they decided to turn their back on their informal “don’t be evil” motto and embrace this. i really hope firefox stands up for what is right.
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