[paultopia]

Wait, what is this person trying to do? They're not happy that Google open-sourced Chrome, so they also demand that Google open-source some DRM system so that they can make a media player for Netflix or something? Forgive me for not feeling sorry for someone who wants to make a browser polluted with DRM who complains that someone else is enforcing their copyright.

[danShumway]

If your goal is that new browsers should only be able to be made without DRM, then you're effectively saying that we can't have any new mainstream browsers unless they're built by already established companies and commit to not doing anything creative or new that Google doesn't like.

I run Firefox without DRM support on my computers, and I believe that the web would be better today if DRM had never been forced into the standards process. However, ideology aside, if you want to make a browser that ordinary people can use, then it is unacceptable for that browser to not to play Netflix. DRM on its own is a threat to the Open web, but DRM that is only usable by a few big players is an even bigger threat to the Open web.

I would argue that we should be concerned when the largest browser on the market effectively has the power to decide whether or not websites will work on competing browsers. To me, that undermines the entire point of having web standards in the first place.

A bit of rant, but this is something that advocates warned about when DRM was in the process of being added as a web standard. It would be better if we didn't have DRM on the web at all. But at the very least, if we are going to have DRM, then there needs to be a consistent, accessible licensing model that allows any browser to interface with that DRM component. I'm sorry if Netflix has problems with that, but Netflix's current business model is not more important than the platform that literally created and enabled Netflix's currently business model. And companies like Google should not be allowed to decide who can and can't compete with them, it's anticompetitive through and through.

If you want a diverse browser ecosystem, then anyone building a browser should be able to interface with Widevine to play protected content.

[smaddock]

The intention was to build a media player based on a Chromium-derived web browser. Functionally it would playback content on Netflix, Hulu, and other DRM-enabled services.

The problem isn't the closed source nature of Widevine CDM, but rather that access to use it is rather difficult to come by.

DRM goes against the concept of an Open Web in which anyone can build a web browser without asking permission.

[codemac]

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

Yes, someone attempted to build a tool that was interesting to them, and ran into DRM related roadblocks.

Life is not all or nothing. Even GNU is a a matter of free software improving over time rather than a purity test. Do you really think RMS refused to run grep until it was FLOSS?

[anthk]

>RMS refused to run grep until it was FLOSS?

RMS and anyone could implement a dumb grep from within GNU ed easily.