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I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me

1920 点作者 smaddock大约 6 年前

100 条评论

kwindla大约 6 年前
Let&#x27;s add the US Congress and the EU to the long list of parties to blame for the DRM situation. &quot;Reverse engineering&quot; software for the purposes of &quot;circumventing&quot; copyright is illegal.<p>&quot;Circumventing&quot; is much more broadly defined than it should be.<p>It&#x27;s not just illegal to redistribute copyrighted material. That&#x27;s the point of copyright and has been the case for a long time. It&#x27;s also illegal to watch&#x2F;consume content yourself in any way that the copyright-holder didn&#x27;t explicitly enable, even if you have a general right to watch&#x2F;consume that content. You&#x27;re not allowed to create a browser that can watch DRM-protected Netflix content. And if someone does create such a browser, it&#x27;s illegal for you to use it, even if you pay for a Netflix subscription.<p>That&#x27;s pretty new (circa 1996 or so).<p>In 2002 I went to see Lawrence Lessig argue the Supreme Court challenge of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which introduced these anti-circumvention concepts. Here are my notes: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allafrica.com&#x2F;staff&#x2F;kwindla&#x2F;eldred.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;allafrica.com&#x2F;staff&#x2F;kwindla&#x2F;eldred.txt</a>
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Daiz大约 6 年前
Boy howdy, this is one subject where I loathe saying &quot;I told you so&quot;, but... I sure told you so.[1]<p>HTML DRM is antithetical to the Open Web itself. It was built on a sham of &quot;plugin-free&quot; media playback, but all we did was change Flash and Silverlight for a whole range of closed black boxes, which in turn are effectively all controlled by Big Media (<i>to make it crystal clear: EME was built with third-party decryption modules in mind, and Big Media was obviously never going to support any sort of decryption modules that they couldn&#x27;t control, so even if your custom browser supports EME it&#x27;s completely useless without a Big Media-approved decryption module</i>). And make no mistake: Requiring permission from Big Media to essentially build a fully-fledged browser is a 100% intended and expected outcome of HTML DRM as conceived. Big Media would love nothing more than to turn the entirety of the Open Web into Closed Web that they control, and with HTML DRM they&#x27;ve certainly achieved a great step toward doing so, to the detriment of public at wide. I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;re positively salivating about the thought of eventually reaching The Right to Read![2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7747142" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7747142</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;right-to-read.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;philosophy&#x2F;right-to-read.html</a>
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cmsimike大约 6 年前
I don&#x27;t know if this will be helpful to you but an open source media player, Kodi, recently added support for Netflix in the latest version of the app (by implementing a DRM engine for people to use).<p>This requires the use of the widevine library which then downloads things behind the scenes upon use (I believe). <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.kodi.tv&#x2F;showthread.php?tid=329767" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forum.kodi.tv&#x2F;showthread.php?tid=329767</a><p>I can&#x27;t imagine Google gave the OK to Kodi to use widevine so maybe you can see what they did?
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arendtio大约 6 年前
DRM is just a huge pile of shit. I mean, if it would actually work I would say okay, at least we have a solution that everyone is somehow happy with. But instead we consumers just loose. To give a few examples:<p>- When I want to watch movies on Amazon Prime Video, there are <i>some</i> movies I can&#x27;t watch in HD, even if I paid for HD (so the movie obviously exists in HD; probably dependent on the rights holder). The problem is that I can&#x27;t see if I can watch the HD version before I buy the movie.<p>- On Netflix, I don&#x27;t get 1080 at all with my browser, even if I pay for 4k.<p>- Every few weeks, Spotify pushes a broken version of their web player to the website and from one moment to the other, I can&#x27;t listen to &#x27;my&#x27; music anymore until they fix it. The good news is that it seems to happen less frequently lately. Nevertheless, that would not be a problem if I could listen to &#x27;my&#x27; music with a normal mp3 player.<p>- A few hours ago, I wanted to play a game, but guess what... Steam had a network problem [1] and didn&#x27;t even let me enter the offline mode.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;stats&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.steampowered.com&#x2F;stats&#x2F;</a>
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_bxg1大约 6 年前
DRM often results in a whitelist of media clients, killing standards in favor of a centralized authority. HDCP does the same for video feeds (HDMI, etc.). DRM-protected boxes can only output to DRM-protected displays, giving a central authority the ability to effectively deny new client devices from being made: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;High-bandwidth_Digital_Conte...</a>
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ktm5j大约 6 年前
I also find the title to be rather sensational.. &quot;I tried creating a web browser&quot; ^ &quot;Google blocked me&quot; implies that Google blocked them from creating a web browser.. which is not the case.
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dec0dedab0de大约 6 年前
Right, thats the whole thing that sucks about DRM and these video providers in general. Not only do they want to protect their content from unauthorized viewers, they want to control how it is consumed. Which to me is especially outrageous because netflix and youtube are the only two with a good user experience. (I used to count Hulu, but at some point they really fell off)<p>I would think that Amazon would lead the charge for an open standard for distributing video which handles DRM, subscription, pay per view, etc. and then all the non-Netflixes would publish to that standard, and let player applications thrive. Even when using a Roku it feels like each app is completely different. And most of them suck. Imagine if in 1985 Prism, HBO, and Showtime all manufactured their own TVs and required you to use them, but they all had wildly different layouts and remotes.<p>The idea of syncing up two video streams is awesome, I can see people enjoying that, and it would encourage people to pay for whatever services their friends have. Though it does sound a bit similar to rabb.it
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gnomewascool大约 6 年前
Regarding browser extensions, the Firefox &quot;webextensions&quot; API is (mostly) compatible with Chromium&#x27;s, so with relatively little effort you could target both the Firefox and Chromium families of browsers.<p>Firefox compatibility is valuable because Firefox extensions don&#x27;t have to be distributed through the Mozilla add-on store (they do need to be signed by AMO, but provided your extension isn&#x27;t doing anything illegal, that should not be an issue).<p>Finally, you could try redistributing unbranded Firefox or Chromium with your extension pre-installed. Waterfox (a Firefox fork) can have DRM — it&#x27;s disabled by default, but it can be switched on — and I don&#x27;t think they put a great deal of effort into it, so I think that your &quot;version&quot; of Firefox could also easily have DRM. (I have no idea whether the same holds for Chromium.)
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mmastrac大约 6 年前
The blame for this sits squarely on the w3c for their efforts in trying to replace flash by letting the content companies dictate standards for encrypted playback.<p>If they had held fast, we could have forced the companies to do their key management in something like WebAssembly and avoided this gatekeeping mess.
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NeekGerd大约 6 年前
Had the same issue with an Electron app of mine, published on the AppStore with 10k users or so.<p>It&#x27;s been more than a year that I&#x27;m in contact with Google&#x2F;Widevine, waiting for my license.<p>This is a nightmare. It&#x27;s such an obvious gatekeeping mechanism.
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qntty大约 6 年前
Sorry, for those of us not privy to how Widevine works, what&#x27;s the problem exactly? What do you need Google&#x27;s approval for and why?
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kodablah大约 6 年前
&gt; For the last 2 years I’ve been working on a web browser that now cannot be completed because Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome, won’t allow DRM in an open source project.<p>It can too be completed, you&#x27;re just not gonna have DRM&#x27;d content. I have a browser that has the same problem, and I just leave pages that can&#x27;t do video playback (which doesn&#x27;t include YouTube because they use WebM). There&#x27;s still value in a non-DRM&#x27;d browser for most of the web, and hey, if enough of us use one maybe sites will start being more liberal in the licensing of their video (but let&#x27;s be honest, probably not).
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sli大约 6 年前
&gt; ...the creators of the <i>open source</i> browser Chrome, ...<p>This assumption is a mistake the author is making. Chrome is, for all practical purposes, closed-source and proprietary. It&#x27;s Chromium that is open-source. So far as I know, Chromium does not have Widevine included by default.
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geofft大约 6 年前
&gt; <i>Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome, won’t allow DRM in an open source project.</i><p>Chrome is not an open-source browser. Chromium is, and Chromium doesn&#x27;t have Widevine support.<p>Download and sandbox the Widevine binary blob the same way that Firefox does. Done.
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ohithereyou大约 6 年前
This is why I break DRM when I can, treating its presence as advisory at best.<p>From a balancing test standpoint, if you want a technological solution to people copying your work then I think you should not be allowed to claim copyright protection of your work. Pick a legal or technical solution to unauthorized copying, not both.
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noodlesUK大约 6 年前
All this content having DRM drives me totally crazy. I don’t have a windows machine or games console where I live that can output 4K, but I have a laptop and desktop running various Linux distros that both have very nice 4K monitors. It appears that the only places where I can get content that will play at native quality on them is through the usual illegitimate sources or through breaking BD drm. Anyone who says that this (Netflix, Amazon etc) is a smooth process doesn’t care about quality (or heaven forbid offline access). I’m sure Netflix likes the free reduction in bandwith for desktop users though...
shawnz大约 6 年前
Google is being blatantly anticompetitive here and it&#x27;s definitely not fair to OP. But as an aside, I actually would prefer this functionality to be provided by a browser extension rather than a separate app, like the OP describes at the end of the article. Please pursue this option! I think it would be much more convenient than having to launch a separate app, even if the functionality is reduced.
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mr_puzzled大约 6 年前
How does firefox manage to play drm content? Maybe OP could use firefox&#x27;s approach? Someone mentioned below that redistributing is not allowed, but downloading at runtime is ok. Not sure about it, but if anyone knows about this, please explain it to the rest of us.
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mangecoeur大约 6 年前
If only we&#x27;d been warned about the risks of handing over so much influence to Google by basing everything around their browser... &gt;-&lt;
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numbsafari大约 6 年前
&gt; Waiting 4 months for a minimal response from a vendor with<p>&gt; such a large percentage of the market is unacceptable.<p>Umm... expecting any kind of response from a vendor with such a large percentage of the market is... kinda arrogant.<p>Who are you to demand any kind of response from anyone? Big project or small? You&#x27;d probably be less offended if you had a better sense of self awareness about the nature of your relationship with Google.<p>Thinking that Google should kowtow to your desire to build a product is pretty foolish. You need to build a product and get some traction and then have some leverage. Widevine is evil. Google is evil.<p>... but so is Electron, and requiring your users to use a custom browser to use your product &#x2F; feature. How about an Web Extension that coordinates playback in the browser, as opposed to a whole custom browser?
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vanilla大约 6 年前
Here is a good talk on that topic[1].<p>Widevine does not come bundled with Firefox &amp; Chrome. Each installation has to download the Widevine binary. You would be able to use the binary to implement DRM support, like Kodi did.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=3Y3R_snaDDc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=3Y3R_snaDDc</a>
wolfgke大约 6 年前
As I often write here on HN: &quot;Learn the lessson not to make yourself dependent on a despot.&quot;.
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whatamidoingyo大约 6 年前
Stop using Google products. Should have used Firefox. Seriously. Stop allowing them to contain their control. As stated in the article, Google&#x27;s browser has 70% market share. Firefox is the browser we need.<p>&quot;Don&#x27;t be evil&quot; has been changed, remember? They now embrace evil, they love it.<p>Edit: downvote this all you want, I really don&#x27;t care. You&#x27;re going to be at fault for the destruction of the web in the future.
jwildeboer大约 6 年前
“I forked Chromium and Google refuses to give me the proprietary bits” seems to be a better headline IMHO.
krmboya大约 6 年前
&gt; “This is a prime example for why free as in beer is not enough. Small share browsers are at the mercy of Google, and Google is stalling us for no communicated-to-us reason.” - Brian Bondy, Co-founder &amp; CTO of Brave<p>Stallman strikes again
nprateem大约 6 年前
Open an EU anti-trust case. If you&#x27;re not an EU citizen try finding someone who can take it to the EU who is, or look into whether you can get the EU to act on your behalf anyway.
lanevorockz大约 6 年前
DRM is just another extension of the lockup of information. Sadly, the information age ended up doing the opposite than I hoped. We should be pushing for a more free and open thinking society, instead we are capitalising all information while banning any dissenters.
holoduke大约 6 年前
Yes there are many more examples not widely known where Google is abusing their monopoly. Firebase fcm push notification system is a good example. If you want to implement your own push notification service on android phones. Well too bad. Only Google is allowed to have special privileges so that their firebase service on phones works even when a phone is in doze mode. If you run into firebase quota issues like our company is having it is just too bad.
iheartpotatoes大约 6 年前
I didn&#x27;t follow the extension workaround. Won&#x27;t google block that as well, or are the different rules for extensions?<p>Also, thanks for pushing on them. I&#x27;ve seen numbers posts on HN recently about the opaque walls folks encounter on Google, Amazon and Facebook property monopolies. This is just another great example. Would it make sense to file this with the EFF? Someone has to be collecting all of these issues for the impending class-action suit?
vkaku大约 6 年前
I&#x27;m pretty sure there are options, none of which are efficient, but here they are:<p>1. Firefox consumes the Widevine as a plugin, and the way to load that may be a straightforward one, through an interface.<p>2. Support a different DRM scheme that has an open interface and is popular<p>3. Disassemble Widevine or talk to hackers who&#x27;ve understood it. Clean room disassembly is legal in many parts of the world.<p>4. Don&#x27;t drop this project, but put up a placeholder and evangelise better DRM standards. Pretty sure that if it involves crypto and it&#x27;s not open source, it is an attractive target with an exploit in the works. That&#x27;s what it is going to lead to, and by then you&#x27;d already have a working implementation.
codewiz大约 6 年前
Google blocked... what? The blogpost shows the answer from Google, but crucially omits to say what exactly the author was asking for.
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lunulata大约 6 年前
People seem to get surprised when Google acts like a for profit corporation... why? That&#x27;s exactly what they are and have been for a very long time. I guess they have a good publicist. In reality, Google discourages competition in the browser, search engine, and email space by denying some of their many services (which you shouldn&#x27;t depend on for open source software unless it has an open source license) and worse, blacklisting competitors. I&#x27;ve read posts from creators of search engines and email services on here that eventually were blacklisted by Google to squelch their growth.
peterwwillis大约 6 年前
Is this a late april fools joke?<p><i>&quot;Metastream: Watch streaming media with friends.&quot;</i><p>He&#x27;s complaining that they won&#x27;t let him use DRM. But his project&#x27;s purpose is to literally broadcast media to your friends.<p><i>DRM exists to prevent that.</i>
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todipa大约 6 年前
Send this to the @EU_Commission - they might look into it.
sipos大约 6 年前
DRM never really works.<p>The best implemented DRM makes it hardly any more inconvenient for people to use it, and people accept it most of the time, Steam for example. It always puts some people off, who end up pirating it when they wouldn&#x27;t otherwise have, though.<p>Even the best DRM is always cracked by those that want to. There is no DRM system that has ever been created that will not be defeated, because it is trying to achieve the impossible. You have to give legal consumers access to the content to consume it, so they always have access to copy it. It will never work. If DRM didn&#x27;t exist, piracy would be a lot less common.<p>Most people stopped pirating music when it became easily available without DRM.<p>Ultimately, all DRM gets cracked, and this is the only real response to it.<p>Annoyingly, DRM only doesn&#x27;t hit sales harder because it is defeated. If it was impossible to defeat a particular piece of DRM, it would harm sales of content using it much more, but the harm to the content sellers is limited by the fact that it is always cracked early on and made available to consumers they have cut off. For example, I have a Netflix subscription, which I use in an otherwise open source browser, using the widevine plugin ripped out of Chrome. If this wasn&#x27;t relatively easy, I would just not use Netflix. Netflix is only getting money from me because the DRM they use is easy to defeat illegally. If the DRM worked, I&#x27;d stop paying for Netflix, because I wouldn&#x27;t be able to use it and it&#x27;d be much easier to watch the same content by downloading it from Usenet.
burtonator大约 6 年前
I had a similar response when developing Polar but for Electron and the MS app store.<p>I write a few posts about it here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getpolarized.io&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;13&#x2F;microsoft-blocking-electron-apps-from-app-store.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getpolarized.io&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;13&#x2F;microsoft-blocking-electr...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getpolarized.io&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;dear-app-stores-dont-block-apps-lead-with-the-carrot.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;getpolarized.io&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;dear-app-stores-dont-bloc...</a><p>It took me four weeks to unblock me and I finally had a chance to re-publish to the MS app store and I&#x27;m waiting for their final approval of my app.<p>YES.. I can develop the app without being in an app store , but my distribution will be dramatically reduced.<p>Doesn&#x27;t make sense to have an app with no users.<p>Google is probably not actually targeting this app specifically just that they&#x27;ve been insanely incompetent lately and screwing over developers ALL over the ecosystem including Android, Chrome Extensions, etc.<p>Our chrome extension continues to need approval every time we publish it EVEN if we just update the assets&#x2F;images.<p>Google is really dropping the ball and pissing off developers left and right.<p>Over at &#x2F;r&#x2F;androiddev people are actually talking about protests at Google IO...
merb大约 6 年前
Basically it&#x27;s possible to download Google Chrome and extract it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aur.archlinux.org&#x2F;cgit&#x2F;aur.git&#x2F;tree&#x2F;?h=chromium-widevine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aur.archlinux.org&#x2F;cgit&#x2F;aur.git&#x2F;tree&#x2F;?h=chromium-wide...</a><p>Basically Arch Linux Downloads Google Chrome, Extracts the *.so file and puts it into the chromium lib directory. (This could&#x27;ve been done in his own browser aswell.
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writepub大约 6 年前
The title is totally and completely inaccurate. Google is NOT blocking the author from creating a web browser. Google is apparently unable to license the DRM code&#x2F;binary to the author.<p>Just to set the record straight, the author&#x27;s browser is based off Chromium, funded largely by Google. However, for whatever reasons (and I can see many legal ones for the inability to license a DRM module), Google cannot license the DRM module. The author is free to implement it himself, Google is not &quot;blocking&quot; him.<p>Another point of note - the author is NOT entitled to widevine, so this pitchforking of Google is simply uncalled for. If the author finds Google to be &quot;blocking&quot; him, maybe asking Apple or Mozilla for WideVine support in a browser that competes with their own offerings is a way to go, and to validate which company is actually willing to work with competing open source offerings
DCKing大约 6 年前
Out of curiosity, is there any reusable alternative for Google&#x27;s Widevine module? It seems both Chromium and Firefox use this, and all other open source browsers are based on them. Safari and Internet Explorer DRM would be tied to specific platforms and also not reusable, I&#x27;m guessing?<p>How (re)usable is Adobe&#x27;s Primetime DRM for something like this? Primetime was removed from Firefox in version 52 (pre-Quantum) in early 2017 [1]. Are there any others?<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;10&#x2F;firefox-52-adobe-primetime-cdm-removal&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghacks.net&#x2F;2017&#x2F;01&#x2F;10&#x2F;firefox-52-adobe-primetime...</a>
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wolco大约 6 年前
So google won&#x27;t let you use there DRM. Firefox doesn&#x27;t support this.<p>Don&#x27;t allow DRM sources hulu&#x2F;netflix otherwise make a deal with each company. Your problem is with the video providers not a third party who has a solution you want to use.
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4RealFreedom大约 6 年前
I wonder if you could fight DRM content in Japan. Last week there was a story on HN about a few people being prosecuted for spreading a virus which was actually just a javascript trick. DRM seems like it would fall under the same category.
ghostbrainalpha大约 6 年前
The core functionality of Metastream (his browser), the ability to sync videos and watch them as a group is very cool and super useful in a classroom or study group environment.<p>Does anyone know if there is another way of going about doing this?
tlb大约 6 年前
I&#x27;d be happy to use one browser for Netflix and another browser with better privacy&#x2F;security&#x2F;adblock&#x2F;anti-track&#x2F;bookmarking&#x2F;speed for everything else. I&#x27;m already in this world: I use Brave for most things, except for a banking site where it doesn&#x27;t work.\<p>The browser should explain clearly what&#x27;s wrong and what to do when a site requires DRM. Don&#x27;t be like QuickTime, where opening any unsupported file bounces you to a FAQ page where the question you most likely have (&quot;how do I view this video&quot;) leads to a huge run-around.
ezoe大约 6 年前
So he tried to create a chromium based browser which sync the DRM protected video playback with other peer and blocked by Google. He totally deserved it. He was just wasting time to build software on top of evil DRM.
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nerdile大约 6 年前
So the article is complaining that companies that chose to create a gated consortium to protect content are exhibiting gatekeeping behaviors and not representing open ideals.<p>Um, duh?<p>These entities have elected to participate in two communities - open where it commoditizes their competitors (e.g. Chromium, Netflix service infra) and closed where it protects their differentiation (e.g. Chrome, Netflix licensed content).<p>As an open community, instead of demanding access to the gated communities, and whining when companies innovate behind walls, we should be building better, richer solutions in the open.
apk-d大约 6 年前
What IS the point of video DRM anyway? I can&#x27;t remember a single instance of a thing I wanted to watch not being available for torrenting over the years, maybe barring some really obscure television episodes I wouldn&#x27;t find on Netflix anyway. I do pay for (most of) the content I watch these days (now that I can kinda-sorta afford it), but it&#x27;s not because it&#x27;s not available one thepiratebay search away. Mainstream stuff usually comes out within hours of the release.
kowdermeister大约 6 年前
This sucks, I know how bad if feels when you rely on a major vendor that can make or break your product. I was somewhat relieved that it happened when I already abandoned the project for a better one but had I invested more time into it I would have been furious.<p>The only thing I wonder here is that DRM was a thing when he started working on this project, didn&#x27;t he see this coming? By this I mean that project research should start with the hardest part, at least that&#x27;s what I usually do.
cprecioso大约 6 年前
Maybe a solution for the problem in the post: one way to simulate Electron but using full Chrome instead of the DRM-less Chromium, is to make the app target Carlo[1] instead. It&#x27;s basically what a Chrome app used to be (now deprecated), but run from a Node.js script.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GoogleChromeLabs&#x2F;carlo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;GoogleChromeLabs&#x2F;carlo</a>
deadmik3大约 6 年前
Another story to add to the long list of &quot;don&#x27;t like X? just create your own&quot; fails thanks to the monoliths running the internet
1337shadow大约 6 年前
I already use chromium for most streaming, and firefox as main browser that i spend 97% of my time on (with noscript of course). If your browser is better than firefox I will switch, but you&#x27;re not helped by my factor of love for firefox.<p>As for DRM users, just post a version with the crack somewhere with a tor browser and fake identity and let the streisand effect be.
shurcooL大约 6 年前
&gt; the open source browser Chrome<p>That doesn’t sound right. It should either say “open source browser Chromium” or “closed source browser Chrome”.
ben509大约 6 年前
If you had to run this stuff on another platform, you&#x27;d just spin up a VM or container, right?<p>To get around the legal issue that they won&#x27;t do this for an open source project, just create a shell corporation.<p>That shell corp then writes a closed-source plugin wrapper in another project entirely.<p>Put widevine in that wrapper. Then your open source project just has to include that plugin.
yellowapple大约 6 年前
Maybe look at how Firefox does it? Seems to have no problem downloading and running Widevine on-the-fly (it even sandboxes it).
maketechfair大约 6 年前
I hear you, it seems that technology is all about stonewalling these days...<p>I&#x27;m trying to bring to light a bug that allows to skip Ads in YouTube (no add-ons, extensions, etc.), but just can&#x27;t get any attention: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;maketechfair" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;maketechfair</a>
ggggtez大约 6 年前
Sucks, I agree, but this shouldn&#x27;t be surprising. No one wants to open source their DRM. The title made me think they blocked you from creating a browser, which clearly isn&#x27;t the case, unless you really feel that Widevine support is necessary for a browser these days (is it? I have no idea...)
yason大约 6 年前
I would assume Google would not even be allowed to let third-party developers use their DRM implementation even if they wanted to. The real stakeholders would grumble a stern no. If this is true the real fix would be to patch the copyright law, IP licensing, and the contracts with content producers.
avmich大约 6 年前
Is the Chrome web browser buildable from sources?<p>If yes, what&#x27;s the difference which allows Chrome to work with DRM and doesn&#x27;t allow another code to do that?<p>I don&#x27;t think I understand the problem. What does it mean &quot;won&#x27;t allow DRM&quot; - you can always write code which you like, right?
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shapiro92大约 6 年前
Can someone explain to me why this project requires a DRM? From my understanding the DRM is used to block people from taking the content itself, but if this has public&#x2F;private&#x2F;offline abilities what is the point of a DRM? it is supposed to be between peers.
tathougies大约 6 年前
Um... I think you can just re-use the widevine shared object that Google Chrome comes with. You can&#x27;t distribute it, but you should be able to include instructions for those downloading your project on how to acquire it.<p>But, I mean, Google is crappy. No surprise there.
gregknicholson大约 6 年前
&gt; I’m now only left with two options regarding the fate of Metastream: stop development of a desktop browser version, or pivot my project to a browser extension with reduced features.<p>Is there some reason you can&#x27;t make a fork&#x2F;distro of Firefox?
conmarap大约 6 年前
&gt; Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome<p>Uhm... Chrome is positively not open source. Chromium is.<p>Getting past this technicality, I can&#x27;t help but wonder what other browser vendors that have forked Chromium did in order to not get blocked.
new12345大约 6 年前
I think its logical step on the part of Google. They invested in integrating Widevine in Chrome and they want it to be a distinguishing feature of Chrome. Why do you expect a profit seeking company to help their own competition?
voldacar大约 6 年前
So is widevine essentially just a bunch of built-in javascript functions that the netflix website calls when you try to play a video?<p>If so, couldn&#x27;t you just copy and paste the implementation into your browser from the chrome source?
gregknicholson大约 6 年前
&gt; the creators of the open source browser Chrome<p>Chromium is open source, and Chrome may _look_ 99% identical, but we have no idea what hidden differences there are between Chromium and Chrome, because Chrome isn&#x27;t open source.
snurk大约 6 年前
A very misleading title. But the content is nothing to get upset about. Reasonable people can easily disagree:<p>* Google didn&#x27;t can can&#x27;t block a new web browser from working. * OP is making an _opensource_ browser * OP&#x27;s browser is specifically made for showing videos in some kind of P2P architecture. * OP is upset because he can&#x27;t play some other peoples&#x27; videos in his new browser.<p>The R in DRM, standing for Rights is relevant: this isn&#x27;t your content, OP. Thousands of creatives, artists, and investors put time, sweat and blood into these. They&#x27;ve chosen DRM as the way to get paid. You have no right to their content. If you don&#x27;t like DRM then vote with your feet - watch others&#x27; content, and find another way to compensate them.
alvalentini大约 6 年前
The real issue I see is that there is no commercial appetite for such a solution and that this world is so dominated by humongous corporations that things like this simply have no solution.
chadlavi大约 6 年前
Are there grounds to sue someone like Netflix under the ADA if their content is not accessible in a standards-compliant browser that happens not to be allowed to access closed-source DRM?
ikeboy大约 6 年前
Interestingly, Amazon prime didn&#x27;t give me HD video on Ubuntu chrome, but worked and gave me 1080p if I changed the user agent to a recent windows one, in chrome.<p>Still can&#x27;t get 4k anywhere.
charlesdm大约 6 年前
Not completely legal for distribution, but you can embed the Chrome Widevine binary in a Chromium Embedded Framework application. I have done so myself in the past. Works great.
Driky大约 6 年前
&quot;Don&#x27;t be evil&quot; they said... Most people working at google might be nice people but the one in control are the they ass holes that you will find anywhere else :-(
bredren大约 6 年前
Regarding the product, is this for allowing friends to watch Game of Thrones and other shows together remotely?<p>Because I had this idea and was wondering what tech would be required to solve it.
cyborgx7大约 6 年前
I have lost all sympathy for the big media industry. Pirate it all. Paying you just gives me a worse experience and you more power to make things worse.<p>It&#x27;s a lose-lose-lose proposition.
miki123211大约 6 年前
When Doctorov cried wolf. Nobody listened. The wolf is here.
mikorym大约 6 年前
Are users here who use others browsers than Firefox?<p>For example, if you are browsing the web without looking at pictures, I sometimes find Lynx useful to filter out the clutter.
shmerl大约 6 年前
DRM is not compatible with open source approach. So ditch DRM if you are making an open source browser. You&#x27;ll deal with less garbage in result.
babypuncher大约 6 年前
Is there anything preventing a Firefox-derived project from using the Widevine CDM plugin? Or does that only work with official builds from Mozilla?
pytyper2大约 6 年前
This seems like poor planning, I would have recommended to verify licenses for all required technology were available before investing time.
trhway大约 6 年前
Well, Google blocked the poster from creating a DRM player, not web browser - those are 2 very different things. DRM is eating the web.
3327大约 6 年前
HI Please post this and bring to the attention of the DOJ.<p>Microsoft got broken up for anti-trust behavior that is PEANUTS relatively speaking today. Bill Gates was right, (proven overt time) - that the OS is not the competitive advantage - its the platform and ecosystem as a whole.<p>Google should be broken up, so should facebook and so should Apple.<p>Amazon? I don&#x27;t know they seem fairly diversified and although are decimating e-commerce its a more difficult sell.
Exuma大约 6 年前
What is &quot;synchronized playback&quot;?
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wesleyvicthor大约 6 年前
the size of this comments thread and the amount of information on it is directly proportional to the even bigger hole you are getting into. You either come with a well defined plan of revenue for a company, so you can fulfil their Legal statement or you will only transmit DRM free content.
jokoon大约 6 年前
I noticed that some video streaming services are using HTS, some weird tech that is not file based, which makes it quite difficult to download those files, even downloadvideohelper won&#x27;t do it directly, you need some third party executable.<p>The web is mostly open, but there are still things out there built to explicitely prevent users from doing what they want, and it seems that even firefox supports this tech.
sigi45大约 6 年前
Sooo the author builds a browser with the assumption that he just can use DRM stuff?<p>Thats an assumption i would say is not given. If you build something like this and you expect to support DRM, do your homework on DRM before you start building stuff around it.
musicale大约 6 年前
How about the browser just tells the DRM that it&#x27;s Firefox?
emilfihlman大约 6 年前
What&#x27;s the effort being done in cracking these DRM schemes? Surely they are only running on the browser userspace and thus entirely crackable?
tapatio大约 6 年前
&quot;Don&#x27;t be evil.&quot;
timmit大约 6 年前
anyway, you deserve my star. :thumb up
KorematsuFred大约 6 年前
Can someone please give me a Tl;dr for this post ? Why would google have any say in someone making a web browser ? Where does their path have to cross ?
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gcb0大约 6 年前
let&#x27;s address the elephant in the room.<p>Google got the authority from everyone here who accepted chrome and IE DRM by default, to the point that even Firefox was forced to give in, so you all could be sedated by Netflix and other DRMed content.
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drosan大约 6 年前
I certainly agree that overpowered Google folks are basically bunch of shady dweebs now, and DRM is garbage practice overall.<p>However I simply cannot empathize with you because you made another Webkit&#x2F;chromium-based thing, and that is certainly not the thing we need right now. With Google monopoly in the web the thing we need is the actual good deviation of their w3c &#x27;standards&#x27; realization, like Firefox.<p>Reskinning Chrome with arguably useful &quot;multiplayer&quot; play-pause feature is just meh.
sureaboutthis大约 6 年前
This is the only reason you can&#x27;t watch Netflix on FreeBSD using chromium or Firefox, too.
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hnsukas大约 6 年前
I tried make any comment. Hacker news shadow banned me.
sonnyblarney大约 6 年前
Anyone care to explain why widevine would not support specifically an &#x27;open sourced&#x27; solution? As opposed to a &#x27;closed source&#x27;?
andrewmcwatters大约 6 年前
&quot;I tried creating an Electron app with Widevine support and Google won&#x27;t let me.&quot;
jsdevtom大约 6 年前
What is a DRM?
amsdmasdmasdasd大约 6 年前
That&#x27;s a good thing tho
alexnewman大约 6 年前
I wont use browsers with widevine. I refused to include widevine in any browser I worked on. Widevine is clearly a backdoor and chrome is often installed setuid root
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boramalper大约 6 年前
Since when HN started (up)voting items by their title?<p>The title is nothing but a textbook example of clickbait: it&#x27;s sensational but worse, it&#x27;s deceiving (Google&#x27;s response is NOT at all related to your electron based browser with &lt;0.001% market share, nor has Google &quot;blocked&quot; you in the first place...)<p>Gosh I am angry.
toyg大约 6 年前
(Burning some karma...)<p>So he built an app that is a thin layer over someone else’s app, to play someone else’s content, and he’s upset he cannot get for free the nice things someone else paid for (in development time). My heart bleeds.
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otterley大约 6 年前
Flagging for inaccurate&#x2F;inflammatory title. Google isn’t stopping the author from creating a web browser.
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