Because everything else happening on the page is still regular web stuff, not encapsulated in a proprietary plugin like Flash. Essentially much smaller surface area of proprietary stuff, and because each browser only implements one CDM and they are responsible for the integration it doesn't break as much the way that Flash increasingly did over time.
If I go to a page with a video on it that uses flash, the rest of the page works just fine if I don't have the flash plugin installed. This is identical behavior to not having the CDM. If the rest of the page also uses flash, that's entirely separate. It is even possible that the rest of the page could be flash, while playing a video with either the native <video> tag or through a CDM.
Integration between the video and the rest of the page is going to break without {video tag support with the necessary codec,flash,EME support with the necessary CDM}. Again, there is no difference.
You're trying to pretend that there is somehow a more usable page with EME+CDM over flash, when most of the time the video was the goal.
> having spent the last decade founding and building a premium content streaming service
You're fighting against the General Purpose Computer. Sorry, you don't get to run code on my computer without my approval. You don't get to turn my General Purpose Computer into an appliance. If you care at all about preserving any control over your own General Purpose Computers, stop. You've already spent a decade building the seeds of technology that lock down the web. Now John Deere has used the same ideas to take away property rights. You are adding difficulties to legitimate users while the pirates ignore your CDM and go straight to torrents/etc. Was the delusion that you're protecting anything worth these costs?
I grant you that the point is largely video, and I probably made a poor choice to reference other things happening on the page, but even within purely the video playback, a CDM is hands down far less proprietary code than a plugin like Flash which not only is poorly optimized for any given browser, but also introduces a whole host of other issues which a CDM doesn't get anywhere near (eg. flash cookies).
The rest of your comment is just straight up offensive zealotry. Spare me the ideological rants and go re-read my opening comment carefully. I spent the first 7 years fighting against DRM in direct conversation with rights holders. I have signed deals with hundreds of small distributors to stream content without DRM. I have done more for the cause of avoiding DRM in practice than a million EFF press releases which do nothing but preach to the choir. Furthermore, I am not building DRM, I am only implementing existing industry-standard DRM as required by studios. I can choose not to do so, in which case I won't get the content I need to build a viable business, and then I will go out of business, but the status quo will not have changed.
This nonsense about me forcing you to run code on your computer without your approval is asinine. I am not forcing you to run anything, run what you want, but I'm not allowed to stream certain content to you without it, that is beyond my control. If you only want unencumbered content, then don't use my service. This is not the same class of issue as nerfed hardware like John Deere. Like it or not, there is a legitimate reason for legal copyright which is inherently different from property rights, and conflating the two completely undermines any legitimate point which you might wish to make.
> ...a CDM is hands down far less proprietary code than a plugin like Flash
Sure, but it still relies a binary blob, just like Flash.
> ...I am only implementing existing industry-standard DRM as required by studios. I can choose not to do so, in which case I won't get the content I need to build a viable business, and then I will go out of business, but the status quo will not have changed.
Don't forget the story of how Apple forced the music industry into abandoning DRM on their "high-value intellectual property".
Had Google, Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft all refused to play ball, and also continued to push towards the removal of Flash and Silverlight from the web, we would likely soon be seeing either the same abandonment of DRM'd streaming video, or the abandonment of streaming video by the major studios (and subsequent void filling by smaller players).
Streaming services would most likely move to native desktop applications, like they do with mobile apps, before abandoning DRM. Netflix already has a Windows desktop application, but they don't seem to promote it much.
> Was the delusion that you're protecting anything worth
Dude, that's just not how you make friends and influence people. He knows all the arguments, he said it. Wouldn't it be more interesting to try to find with him a way we can all work together towards a better future, without attempting to shame the counterpart into a public admission of moral failure which will, of course, never happen?
That's why Linux has been successful: beyond the zealots, there were significant amounts of people (including Torvalds) who did not ask anyone to repent their proprietary sins before joining. "We build A, you build B, let's see if we can make something together which is a bit more like A, because we honestly think A is awesome, but hey, we like your B as well! It's just that we cannot help you if you keep it to yourself..."
The thing is, "we" are currently not building anything that might allay studios' fears. "We" don't even understand those fears, or choose to disregard them entirely. Of course they'll go out and do their own thing. If there was a safe way to deliver what they want (encrypted tamper-proof streaming) in an open-source package, they would likely consider it. But there isn't, afaik. Are "we" building it? No, we try to slut-shame "them" into giving up. That ain't gonna work, when there are billion of dollars and millions of jobs at risk.
> If there was a safe way to deliver what they want (encrypted tamper-proof streaming) in an open-source package, they would likely consider it. But there isn't, afaik.
The problem is fundamentally that "encrypted tamper-proof streaming" is not possible regardless of whether the implementation is open source. It would be trivial to write free software that respects copying restrictions. And then people would be able to bypass it using the same methods used when the copying restrictions are enforced by proprietary software, i.e. by writing different software that doesn't respect the copy restrictions.
> That ain't gonna work, when there are billion of dollars and millions of jobs at risk.
There is no risk to money or jobs. There is literally more Netflix content on torrent sites than there is on Netflix. Netflix nonetheless makes substantial profits.
Eliminating DRM would reduce piracy by improving the experience of legitimate purchasers without having any effect on the experience of people who download from torrent sites.
> Are "we" building it? No, we try to slut-shame "them" into giving up.
When you encounter someone who is demanding that everyone look for water using a divining rod, you don't build them a divining rod. You teach them that it isn't possible to find water that way.
> The problem is fundamentally that "encrypted tamper-proof streaming" is not possible
In an absolute sense maybe not, but you can have decent approximations. As OP points out, music ended up being ok with watermarking. Hollywood might be ok with something like hardware tokens (which imho would be superior to "just download and execute this blob and shut up").
> There is no risk to money or jobs.
If that was the case, we wouldn't be hearing musicians crying foul about Spotify every other day.
> Eliminating DRM would reduce piracy by improving the experience of legitimate purchasers
At current prices, that's unlikely. The experience is not terrible with current players either; what drives privacy at this point is mostly price. Hollywood doesn't want to give up margins that are unrealistic in the digital age, which is why they fixate on DRM.
> When you encounter someone [...] You teach them that it isn't possible
There is teaching and there is shaming. Shouting at them that they are morally-corrupt buffoons is not "teaching".
> In an absolute sense maybe not, but you can have decent approximations.
No you can't. It's all inherently snake oil. The nature of the universe is such that if you can see something then you can copy it. Either you get people to respect copyright by believing in the social contract or you lose. There is no technological solution.
> As OP points out, music ended up being ok with watermarking.
Watermarking isn't DRM. (Though it shares a lot of the same failings in the sense that it reduces quality for legitimate purchasers and can be removed by pirates.)
> Hollywood might be ok with something like hardware tokens (which imho would be superior to "just download and execute this blob and shut up").
That kind of hardware is just software embedded in silicon. Any "hardware token" can be fully emulated in software as soon as you extract the keys out of it, which somebody is going to figure out how to do and then tell all their pirate friends how to do. By the time the hardware is in enough hands that you can require it to be used, it's already broken. And you can't patch silicon over the internet, so the pirates win for a decade. Then you come out with some new hardware that pirates have several years to break before it's in enough hands that you can require it again.
> If that was the case, we wouldn't be hearing musicians crying foul about Spotify every other day.
Spotify has DRM. Losing money to competition is not the same thing as losing money to piracy.
> At current prices, that's unlikely. The experience is not terrible with current players either; what drives privacy at this point is mostly price.
It's mostly not. A Netflix subscription is extremely affordable. The problem with it is that their app kind of sucks, and even that is rainbows and sunshine compared to the unmitigated horror of cable TV set top boxes. Movie companies should stick to making movies and leave the software to Canonical and Apple and Google.
> Hollywood doesn't want to give up margins that are unrealistic in the digital age, which is why they fixate on DRM.
Except that those two things have nothing to do with each other.
> There is teaching and there is shaming. Shouting at them that they are morally-corrupt buffoons is not "teaching".
That's because there are three different sets of people: The actual artists, the morally-corrupt buffoons, and legislators. Teaching is what the artists need. The others need something else.
Exactly. What I have found is that when I examine deeply enough, most DRM content is not even worth it, and even for purely entertainment purposes, there exist plenty of non DRM solutions: movie theaters, libraries, outdoor activities to name just a few. I found Michael Niedermayer's quote very nice in this regard:
"Breaking DRM is a little like attempting to break through a door even though the window is wide open and the only thing in the house is a bunch of things you dont want and which you would get tomorrow for free anyway"
(https://ffmpeg.org/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2016-January/18824...).
And if you really don't even want to accidentally support or open such DRM content, you can configure the browser appropriately (media.eme.enabled and --disable-eme in Firefox).
> If you don't want DRM, don't watch media that requires DRM.
Well, obviously I don't.
> Nobody is making you use it.
The point is that there are fears that this could change once DRM is entrenched enough -- and getting into browsers is a Big Step along that road. (Hence the talk about changing General Purpose computers into appliances.)
Yes, perhaps in the future, movie and computer game studios will lobby hardware manufacturers like Intel, AMD and ARM for locked-down hardware (non-free BIOS etc.) in order to protect their DRM.
I think general purpose computers and entertainment computers really need to be separate. Movies and AAA computer games cost a lot of money to produce, so I understand that the studios want to protect their investments with DRM. However, locked-down computers that users don't control themselves are fundamentally incompatible with a free society.
The only solution I can see for people to both preserve their freedom and enjoy some AAA content is to own 2 computers: 1 for AAA entertainment and another for everything else. Fortunately, computers are getting cheap and tiny.
I was working for Mozilla when EME first came up, and sat in one of the big sessions at that year's Mozilla Summit about it. Wrote up some thoughts here:
