Please explain to me how EME is in any way different from ActiveX, NPAPI, NaCL, or any other plugin architecture? Those have always been used for protected content and I don’t see the EFF making a stink about them. NPAPI is going away. Microsoft has ditched ActiveX in Edge. For good reasons too, those APIs aren’t properly sandboxed. EME is an HTML5 standard and the CDM it loads can’t do anything other than handle the content it’s passed.
If anything, EME keeps proprietary code out of the browser. Everything DRM is handled by the CDM while allowing the browser and EME code to remain FOSS. CDMs aren’t browser-specific either, anything that supports EME can use the same CDM, and they don’t have to know anything about it or be approved to handle it. CDMs are a true black box: the browser sends the encrypted stream via EME to the CDM and that’s it. EME never sees the decrypted content, so there is no liability on the browser to comply with anything DMCA related. Where the hell did the EFF get that anyway? Citation Needed.
As for browsers rendering protected content without permission? How? Unless the browser is going to contain code to crack proprietary DRM, which would be illegal anyway, it simply won’t handle it. EME isn’t used for playing all video, just protected content that requires a CDM.
Also, the idea that this will somehow affect iTunes is ludicrous. The iTunes ecosystem has always used proprietary Apple software and DRM. It never has, and never will be a web app.
Here’s the spec for EME. Notice the path of the actual content. It may or not be returned in a decrypted form to the browser if the CDM has platform-specific code to render the media. That’s up to the CDM. The browser side of EME isn’t much more than an API to obtain the DRM keys. When you play protected media now without using EME, all the licensing and decryption is done by a Flash or native code plugin, with full access to the machine, and we all know how well that stuff tends to be written.
oh for fuck’s sake
/me cancels EFF membership
They’ve jumped the shark.
Feel free to borrow my favorite .gif
OH OH OH, it’s this one, isn’t it?
http://cdn.gifbay.com/2013/07/one_of_my_favorite_gifs-64562.gif
Hmmm…maybe this one?
I blame the W3C if I’m wrong.
this one…
So now that we’ve had Save Comcast, Save iTunes, Save Netflix, and Save Firefox, are we going to have Save Flash and Save Silverlight?
FLASH AND SILVERLIGHT FOREVER! Don’t just sit there and allow these tremendously innovative products that transformed the industry to be needlessly suffocated, or something.
Even better: SAVE AOL! SAVE QUICKTIME! (I feel dirty just typing that.)
remember RealPlayer?
not fondly anyway.
[quote=“renke, post:9, topic:77934”]remember RealPlayer?[/quote]saints preserve us
What? We could be “vulnerable to vulnerabilities”? OMG!
I suppose Mozilla could choose not to implement these features. I wouldn’t. If I wanted to view DRM material I suppose I could use Chrome and not care. I run multiple browser. I could run one browser for freedom and another browser for slavery. If the slavery become too onerous I’ll ditch the site that is serving it.
W3C, WTF?!? I spoke with folks that work some of the big web “provider”. What they said to me was, “What do you want us to do, continue to use flash player? Isn’t that a buggy mess?” My response to them was code your own plugin that meets your standards. You may not have the browser. Problem solved.
What do I have to do to put a knife it this? I want to and given the chance I will.
We had that. Most people wouldn’t install it and the ones who would got their computer reimaged by folks like me (along with a stern lecture) because they guessed wrong about which hyper specific plugin was ok to install.
Sooooo no one watched anyone’s videos unless it was Flash or Quicktime. And now just Flash and HTML 5 with a side of Silverlight if you like Netflix.
That is better than the BETRAYAL of the W3C with the EME though, right? Because that’s what will continue to have without it.
Well, I don’t feel betrayed. Can’t speak to anyone else.
OMG quick save the kitten videos!!!
The WC3 wants to kill all the kittens so that there won’t be any more kitten videos on the internet.
EME will also eliminate all porn and online gaming.
You’ll no longer have vowels on your keyboard and monitors will only have 16 colors.
This would have stopped your parents from conceiving you!
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!
(cites some BS claims and no actual logical justification, recycled from previous article with the exact same title with just the words kitten videos swapped out for the flavor of the day.)
I’m considering it as well. I regularly support the EFF, but these insane baseless rants are just too much…it is affecting the credibility of the EFF as a whole. Hurting the cause. grrrr…
At least someone figured out an easy paycheck…just load up the article generator with one article and an -insert company name here- list…set to daily…hit enter. dollar dollar bills yo! 
I didn’t actually cancel but I renew at Defcon in person every year and won’t be renewing this year.
While it seems odd to call DRM encrusted video “part of the open web”, a new “Firefox” that can’t access Netflix won’t gain many users.
