A majority of websites doesn't use the EME DRM. It's Netflix and some other streaming portals. Any Chrome fork would work with almost all web sites beyond those few.
And with the new edge, there even will be a Chrome fork that supports EME DRM as well, and most likely it will support higher resolutions than Chrome itself as it's using OS built in DRM mechanisms that the studios love.
DRM is not the source of Google's control over Chrome. They use a different mechanism: manpower. They have an insane amount of developers working on Chrome, constantly changing it. Any smaller project forking Chrome and changing some major part won't be able to keep up with the changes unless they upstream. And ultimately, Google employees have control over what gets upstreamed and which contribution gets rejected.
I use Firefox Nightly and I haven't seen an 'install Chrome' banner on YouTube.
The use of Shadow DOM v0 is a pretty good push, though. Chrome is way faster to load a YouTube page than FF. I hope they update their version of Polymer soon.
IDK about your setup, but for me, youtube is using Polymer 3.2.0 since a few weeks already. You can try out by evaluating Polymer.version in the dev console.
Atleast during Login I frequently get the message to install chrome so I can use my security keys and get forced on TOTP. Easily fixed with a UA change and the security keys even work! Who would have thought!
And managing your security keys also requires Chrome, if you're on Firefox you also get told it's incompatible, despite being compatible.
Yes, Google owns Widevine. But if they really wanted to hurt browsers that don't have EME, they'd deploy DRM to all youtube videos, including the free ones and maybe even offer other DRM types like DRM'd text and DRM'd photographs and use them in their web services.
From my long experience with browsers, Google is beating the other main browsers primarily due to competence. Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla have huge teams, and each has their own marketing advantages.
0. Competence at security. Chrome is unbelievably secure - although perhaps this says more about Google tooling and culture than the Chrome Dev team. My impression is that Mozilla and Microsoft have struggled to be secure.
1. Competence at fixing bugs. Chrome absolutely creams the competition here (I have much experience with this. Chrome is amazing, Mozilla is middling, Apple and Microsoft are hideous).
2. Competence at avoiding regressions. Chrome seems to be fabulously reliable software considering its complexity and development velocity. Safari and Edge have given me many many headaches with odd breaking changes.
3. Competence at delivering to wide range of hardware and OS versions. Chrome has hardly given me any problems with Android or multiple Windows versions. I wish I could say the same for Chrome's competitors on their respective OS. Safari only has to deal with known hardware and OS version, yet I regularly discover weird composition faults. I don't know much about Firefox here.
4. Many other organisations break down with large dev teams: Google breaks that trend. That's institutional competence.
> And ultimately, Google employees have control over what gets upstreamed and which contribution gets rejected.
So alternatives? Community edition run by W3C? Socialist version funded by a Google tax? Tongue in cheek, but you seem to imply we should tell Google how to run their operation differently.
As to the issue of DRM, why are we blaming Google for the DRM agreements that economically it had little choice to accept? Everything I have seen implies that the copyright barons are forcing Google to support it. Out of control DRM is our collective failure to control some powerful copyright lobbies. I am not a fan of DRM (or huge copyright terms).
I too am sad that other browsers are failing to compete with Google. I especially want to see Mozilla succeed. But I think we should recognise the skill of the Chrome Dev team.
A large part of that competence comes from their increased manpower. It's almost funny how many more developers they have. I heard from an ex-Google-intern that Google has over 1,000 people working on Chrome. Compare that with EdgeHTML's core dev team, which was well under 100 people (really closer to 50 if my memory serves me right).
> I heard from an ex-Google-intern that Google has over 1,000 people working on Chrome.
And Mozilla (2016): has about 1,200 employees, revenue $520 million. Yet technically not keeping up.
> Compare that with EdgeHTML's core dev team, which was well under 100 people
Microsoft and Apple may choose to have smaller teams. They also only have to make each release of their browser work on their latest OS release, and they don't release to multiple OS's (Native Chrome is maintained for multiple versions of Android, ChromeOS, Linux, Windows, macOS).
And the myth(?) that smaller teams are more productive!
Apple and Microsoft are both outrageously rich companies: if they choose not to compete, why should we knock Google?
Of course not. But perhaps they should have been ;-p. In 2010 Firefox's market share peaked[1]. Chrome has spanked Mozilla for a decade and Mozilla haven't effectively competed (to me apparently by choice of their focus).
Meanwhile the Chrome team has beaten Mozilla at open source, which should be Mozilla's strength (V8, node.js, Electron, closure compiler, remote debugging, Samsung browser, Edge 76, Chromium, etc etc). The brightest non-browser component to come out of Mozilla to me is rust, which is a tour de force (Mozilla does have some serious technical chops), and as a developer mdn is superb.
Mozilla chased multiple dead-ends during that time, perhaps most notably Firefox OS (even though gonk was based on Android? [2]).
Safari has an upper limit on market-share though because it can only be on iOS or Macs. Looking thru my website's stats, it looks like Safari has the overwhelming majority of iOS users and about half on Macs, and from experience Safari is faster than Chrome on old iOS devices.
> Chrome is and was still better than Firefox technically
I'd really like to see how you came to this conclusion. I hate to be a fanboy but I don't really notice any performance difference between the two in daily use, except in some webGL demos.
Google fought dirty back against Microsoft. Microsoft pulled very dirty tactics to ram Edge down the gullets of Windows users. Google used the same tactics as used by a large percentage of installers on Windows: business as usual?
Or Google actually supported Windows 7 users, because Microsoft wouldn't. Maybe Google really needed a browser that worked and was secure on Windows 7 (not Internet explorer).
Microsoft owned the APIs to their OS yet Chrome beat them on their own turf - ouch!
I think the blame needs to be directed at the video streaming companies, not at Google. Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope. That's on them, not Google. If Netflix cared about a cross-browser experience or open standards, the tools are available to them.
With that in mind, they should really hire someone that has access to Usenet or a private Bittorrent tracker. All of Netflix's shows are available for free in 4k there. Google sold them DRM that doesn't actually work. Netflix paid their employees millions of dollars to have meetings and develop code to work with the idea in mind that Google's magic beans would save their content from piracy. It didn't work, though.
You should be mad at Netflix. Netflix should be mad at Google. But everyone just carries on like everything is great. It's weird.
This is wrong on so many levels. First off, everyone at Netflix knew that DRM wouldn't stop piracy. They knew what Bittorrent was after all. Google didn't sell Netflix anything. Netflix does care about cross browser experience. But you know who doesn't?
The content owners. They wouldn't sign contracts without DRM, because for some reason they think DRM works. Or at least it stops the causal pirates. The ones who would just do a Save As...
And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road, for one, Netflix doesn't make those, other studios make them and then sell it to Netflix exclusively, so once again, it's up to the movie studios as to what goes into their contracts. And secondly, even for the stuff Netflix makes itself, the entire streaming infrastructure is set up for DRM. It would actually be really complicated to offer just a couple of items DRM free, with lots of if/then code branches.
Disclaimer: I worked at Netflix but this is all my own opinion, not the company's.
> And before anyone goes down the "well why isn't Netflix's originals DRM free?" road
This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason).
I might have put up with it for third party content, but certainly not for the Originals.
>This was the reason why I terminated my Netflix contract at the end of the free month. When I'm paying for something, I expect at least the quality that pirates get, but due to DRM requirements, I was stuck with 720p on my setup (and support wasn't particularly keen on acknowledging that DRM was the reason).
I don't know about the individual you spoke to (in general I'm skeptical that support agents are up to date on "technical" issues), but Netflix's own support docs explicitly say that Chrome and Firefox (at least) don't get more than 720p streams. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
The reason for this is DRM: in Edge and other software that gets 1080p and above, the decryption is done in hardware that is tougher for pirates to break. Widevine is a software DRM scheme that pirates are generally believed to have already broken. So Netflix limits Chrome and Firefox users to 720p.
They did have support docs stating the limitations. The agent also seemed to be well aware of the reasons for the limitations, but it sounded very much like there was a policy preventing him from confirming that when I directly asked whether it's due to DRM requirements.
It also seems that on Linux, you can't officially get more than 720p. Looks like Netflix still doesn't want my money.
(I know that there are hacks and extensions that allow some additional resolutions on some setups, but given that it's a DRM thing and not a "we don't believe the browser can handle it", I expect those to break more often than I'm willing to tolerate for a service I'm paying for.)
That non-DRM content is delivered by a different infrastructure that is designed for speed, so that the user has a quick experience, but that system isn't designed for full length content.
Realistically there's no incentive for them to provide DRM-free content. All the arguments just boil down to "we can't profit off it so we'll just support the status quo". Pretty bullshit defense of netflix's values IMHO.
"First off, everyone at Netflix knew that DRM wouldn't stop piracy. They knew what Bittorrent was after all."
The objective of DRM is not to stop piracy, it's to put the thresholds of difficulty or labour beyond the reach of most people. Which it does, as evidenced by the robust revenues of things like films in iTunes, otherwise, that business could not exist.
But yet none of the music in iTunes has DRM and yet it also makes robust revenues. DRM doesn't really stop anyone -- it's convenience that people care about. Otherwise no one would pay for music.
"But yet none of the music in iTunes has DRM and yet it also makes robust revenues."
This is totally misleading.
The music industry was wiped out and digital revenues are net, a fraction of what they would be.
The 'new equilibrium' on the Supply and Demand curve is now 'iTunes' and a few other things.
So yes, in this new crappy market, some people can make money, but it's bad.
" DRM doesn't really stop anyone -- it's convenience that people care about"
You've contradicted yourself in the same statement.
We know 'DRM' won't stop 'everyone', but it's totally misleading to say 'DRM won't stop anyone'.
Everytime someone buys a piece of media DRM 'has stopped someone'
Every Netflix subscriber is an example of 'DRM stopping someone'
Every iTunes film purchase is an example of 'DRM stopping someone'
... because, as you point out 'nobody would pay for music' - or any other form of content, if they didn't have to.
So, DRM puts the 'Supply and Demand' equilibrium up pretty high for most video.
Studios can still make money 'the old way' using our current DRM systems.
In music, for reasons of how it's consumed etc., the 'old ways' are destroyed, so they've had to adjust to a new equilibrium.
It's a really difficult argument to have with HNers, I'm more interested in what kind of logic is going on in their minds.
If movie studios and netflixed released their mp4s, with no DRM or copyright protections, then everyone, including my non-tech savvy mother would just go to the widely available resources found on Google, and just 'watch it for free'.
Obviously this would wipe out film production.
If we want films, which are expensive to make, we have to pay for them, one way or another. There is no way around it.
This has nothing to do with DRM, and everything to do with Google/YouTube removing search results / videos for copyright infringing material and dedicated websites!
Removing DRM doesn't make "piracy" legal !
As a further proof of this, high quality "pirated" versions of TV shows / movies are available a few days after they are available on (DRMed!) optical disk and mere hours for (DRMed!) streaming !
And note also that DRM for video is broken much faster than DRM for video games (and with a resulting "product" that is much more convenient) - all while a not insignificant amount of video games is sold without any DRM, with a whole online store - GoG - using the lack of it to differentiate itself from the competition !
> If movie studios and netflixed released their mp4s, with no DRM or copyright protections, then everyone, including my non-tech savvy mother would just go to the widely available resources found on Google, and just 'watch it for free'.
What is stopping them right now? All that content is already available on piracy sites. Clearly your model of human behavior is laughably incorrect.
I doubt very seriously that iTunes makes a lot of money in 2019 from people buying music. Music sales started decreasing once Spotify came on the scene. It really declined once Apple Music was released.
It only takes one pirate to upload a DRM free rip to a streaming site. DRM doesn't affect pirates at all, only paying customers actually use DRM. Therefore DRM is primarily targeted at paying customers, software vendors and hardware manufacturers. If control over those three groups is your goal then using DRM will work as intended 100% of the time instead of 0% against pirates.
"They wouldn't sign contracts without DRM, because for some reason they think DRM works"
DRM absolutely works, just like the 'war on drugs' actually works.
If Netflix allowed mp4's of content to be downloaded, and there were 'no DRM' in the world, there'd be an explosion of 'piracy' (or pick a nicer word). 'Not paying for anything' would be absolutely normative. Netflix would not have a business model, neither would the creators who make stuff for Netflix. Just as if opioids were freely available, your mother who just had jaw surgery and took '3 pills' might want a few more, and a few more, and a few more ... and most of your little cousins at Uni would experiment, and probably one of them would become addicted to the 'Heroin Cola' or 'Heroin Cigarettes' or 'Heroin Vape' or 'Heroin Cookies' that are available every corner store and advertised heavily. Everyone, at some time in their lives would be victim to opioids, it'd cause problems. So they are illegal, and controlled, and you need a prescription in some cases, and the availability is very narrow for most people, they don't have ready access, the legal consequences are rough, and so 'most people' never bother.
The game of 'DRM' (and hard drugs) is not to 'stop all' so-called piracy, it's to keep a limit on it.
This is a game of Supply and Demand, not a game of absolutes.
As it stands, in 2019 - if you want to watch films, you pretty much have to pay HBO, Netflix, Cable, iTunes for most high quality stuff.
'Bit Torrent' for example, is a fairly ugly experiential barrier for consumers, and it helps prove that DRM works - not the other way around. 'Bit Torrent' is way beyond most people's material capability, moreover, you kind of have to really look for stuff, know where to find it, possibly wait forever for stuff to download, you expose yourself to all sorts of creepy stuff and spyware - it's a 'bad experience'.
The state of DRM today is that it's not exactly easy or convenient for regular people to get a copy of the latest Avengers in decent quality - the evidence for this is easy: because they are paying for it (otherwise they would not).
Of course, the economic realities of that system can't be ignored either: if there is no money, there is very little content.
Podcasts and a lot of decent music would survive, but anything that required production wouldn't.
As for Google, Netflix et. al. - they are 'all in on it'. We can't point the finger at one point in the value chain.
Google does things because entities like Netflix will need it.
Netflix does it because content producers need it.
Content creators need it because they have to pay writers, directors, actors, set designers, and of course take a big risk every time as most content that's made flubs.
I understand ideals such as 'freedom of information' etc., this is fine, we should always be talking about DRM, but the level of cognitive dissonance on this issue is painful.
It's very expensive, and very risky to make such content, and frankly, there are very few making huge money from it. If we want that stuff, we have to pay for it. There's no way around that.
Edit: I worked with the music industry in developing a content delivery system (it didn't work out). Yes, it was shocking the level naivte and lack of understanding going on there, which is partly why we dropped the project. There were (and continue to be) some really difficult things about that industry that made it ready for destruction (among other things). Specifically how the unions have worked out their 'rev-share' agreements with respect to minimum revenue per song, etc.. Instead of % rev-share, they have hard minimums like 15-25 cents for certain entities (i.e. writers/composers - this was 10 years ago I fail to remember the group). This poses some ugly realities on price points, but also 'bundling' of music. I suggest that the 'real market value' of most songs, even in a 'fully DRM'd world' is much less than $1. Because of those 'ancient' pacts written by the Moses's of Music Industry, which nobody seems to have enough leverage to influence - it's nary impossible to sell or distribute music cheaply back in the day. If the labels, writers, composers, performers had of 'adapted their model' it's possible they may not have been wiped out, granted, as I noted below, music is different than video.
We have to look at Google's decision in the context of the entire value chain: points of consumption, distributors, producers, and the various creators etc..
Neither DRM nor the war on drugs works. Music is a perfect example. Almost all music is available DRM free. Yet Spotify and Apple Music exist. Why? Because they are easier.
Look at Portugal for proof that the war on drugs doesn't work. The decriminalized all drugs, and you know what happened? Usage went down, because people didn't feel a stigma for getting help.
Spotify and Apple music only exist because of piracy.
If the music industry had stuck to what they wanted, it had been technically feasible, and they'd got the laws they wanted, it would be a very different world. Licenses would be per-device. Streaming fees would be closer to $0.10 per play. There would be no overall vendor for all the different labels. Setting an MP3 as your ringtone would cost extra.
> 'Bit Torrent' is way beyond most people's material capability, moreover, you kind of have to really look for stuff, know where to find it, possibly wait forever for stuff to download, you expose yourself to all sorts of creepy stuff and spyware - it's a 'bad experience'.
Which is why most people just get it on a portable drive through good old sneaker net, the people downloading torrents are a minority of pirates.
My dad always questioned me downloading music off Napster during high school, but fast forward to the past couple years, and he's coming home from work with 1Tb external drives filled with pirated movies given to him by a coworker. That was as surprising answer when I was at my parents' house and asked about the random hard drive on their computer desk.
He's not a tech guy, so I'd say this is probably at least not uncommon.
I'm sorry but selling drugs is illegal in Portugal.
Do you think that you can import a ton of heroin willy nilly and 'it's call cool'?
The 'example of Portugal' continues to prove my point!
Portugal has taken some nice steps towards how to handle addicts etc, but fundamentally - Portugal continues it's 'war on drugs' with a slightly different tool set.
By the way: weed is still illegal in Portugal.
2) Music.
The music industry as we know it almost vanished, and it's taken on a completely different form.
The same has not happened in video content production.
Madonna (and others) abandoned trying to make money from sales, and they moved to 'touring' instead - because of privacy.
Do you see Brad Pitt at your local theatre 'because he can't make money in film or TV'?
No.
So 'DRM' is working in video, the industry is alive - the obvious reasons have to do with the nature of how we consume music, vs. how we consume video.
And it's not a happy story for content-creators in music. 'Making a living' in music is really hard, and they've been pushed into all sorts of commercial activities.
Thankfully - music production is not hugely expensive. A 'great album' can theoretically be made very cheaply - so we'll continue to get great music.
'Avengers' will cost $300M to make there is no way around it.
The level of cognitive dissonance on this issue is stupefying.
Again - I understand that there's elements of issues of freedom, and there are also many studio execs who are deluded, some are greedy - but there are real factors at play here that cannot be denied.
Thankyou for making these arguments. Anti-DRM groupthink in geek communities has always been one of the more grating aspects of the software world. Video game producers have detailed data on how DRM protects their sales - they can literally see their sales curve tank the moment a crack comes out, and they can see the sales return to normal when the cracks are patched. Movie studios have similar data. They also know that protections will be broken and then repaired, but it's a simple financial calculation - is the impact on sales greater than the cost of developing and repairing the DRM? Yes? Then they do it. And who can blame them, they're just being rational economic actors.
It becomes apparent the moment one is on the 'other side of the equation'.
You make an app, stuff gets stolen, you feel very legitimately aggrieved, and then the logic starts to add up more clearly.
I think the true 'market clearing price' for a lot of content is much less than what Hollywood thinks. Especially films in the theatre, but by enlarge, everyone making such content is taking a big risk. I think many directors and producers should earn more than baseball players who earn ridiculous amounts of money.
I upvoted your comments because even though I don't agree with everything you're saying, I think the discussion is valuable, especially the comparison of the music and movie industries.
You noted that music artists have a tough time making money in the modern, digital model. I would point out that this was true with the old model as well. Most artists I know who have experienced both models will say that they both suck because exposure is controlled by large distributors who are able to control where the lion's share of the money goes, but at least in the modern model they can connect with their fans directly over the Internet and there are some opportunities in that.
To compare this to the movie industry. Because music files are smaller and bandwidth used to be more limited, Hollywood watched music go digital first, it watched the old music business models and companies implode, and it took notes. Hollywood was consequently able to do a much better job of preserving their business model through DRM and legal action. Now we have $300M Avengers movies marketed worldwide.
I liked Avengers. It was not bad. It also wasn't some amazing pinnacle of human creativity that needs to be preserved. I don't see anything about this model that is inevitable, best, or essential to keep around. In fact most people will agree that Hollywood movies, designed around the "Four Quadrants" audience theory, are rather bland and mindless, because the goal of the studios is to go as huge as possible and get as many people in the theater as possible.
I can _absolutely_ imagine other models, quite possibly yielding better entertainment, smaller productions that are more tailored to specific audiences, and are more enjoyable than the typical Hollywood blockbuster, and I would have zero issues with watching Hollywood implode in the process, just like the old music industry did.
tl;dr Hollywood only survived because they had the benefit of hindsight, their product isn't that special and just like Thanos they're not as inevitable as they want you to believe.
Good points - but Hollywood did not survive because of 'hindsight'.
They are dysfunctional, and their playbook was simply 'DRM everything' and 'cross their fingers'.
They really didn't do anything fundamental. They just pushed hard on the value chain for DRM.
They are not sophisticated or coordinated to do anything really.
They survived because the game is simply different - how and when we consume content. The investment scale etc..
It doesn't matter that 'the Avengers' isn't exactly historical, people want it, and stuff like that - and of course, there are great films made at that scale.
If you can _absolutely_ better models, then you should share. Remind yourself that industries and consumer behaviours are hard to break, and that if people can 'easily' view 'free stuff' they will even if it's copyrighted.
Ultimately, someone has to pay, or there have to be ads.
There are just only so many ways you can configure that equation.
Be it Hollywood, Netflix, Network TV, Public Broadcasting - most of the models are tried.
Making even a $20M investment in a film is very risk - even with DRM and copyright - most films fail. It's a treacherous business.
I personally do not think anything will change: video will be DRM'd, big pirates will be aggressively pursued, small time stuff will be fairly common, but most people will end up paying for video one way or another.
And you know where you can? Warez sites. For all the garbage people throw at there users, it doesn't help. Last I checked, a cheap chinese HDMI splitter can strip the protection, though I heard murmurs about a newer version which stopped that? Anyway, I almost (almost) understand on software with the critical one-month-after-release window, but it doesn't help video one whit. I wish they would just stop.
Maybe some one with more industry knowledge can enlighten me as to why they do it? Is it just to discourage the average person? Terrarium TV, Kodi, etc. have made it idiot-proof.
Browsers could have said no to Netflix. Netflix/Amazon/Hulu could have written native apps instead of shoehorning DRM into the browser.
I'm pretty sure nobody at Netflix has illusions that DRM actually works; it's checkbox security. Hollywood requires them to have DRM so they have DRM and everybody moves on.
They tried (namely FireFox), but most users don't care about DRM, but they do care about Netflix and Hulu working, so the user pushback was just too much for them to not do it.
It was pretty nice when there were native apps for Netflix. I'm pretty sure I'm not halucinating, and this was a real thing, back in the old days when Netflix still used Silverlight.
I just remember that there was a nice, very performant Windows client at one time, and then there was a newer version released at some point which was much, much worse, and I switched to using the browser all the time.
Companies do shit because it's profitable, not "just because".
YouTube's business model is centered around ads. (There's also Premium, superchats, the new paid subscription mini-Patreon thing.. but it's still mostly ads.) If they needed more money, they would fight ad blockers harder, e.g. by fusing the ads and the video into one stream. But they aren't doing this.
DRM is antithetical to the ad-supported model, because you want to spread content with ads as far as possible, make it as accessible as possible, to get more views and clicks. Restrictive crap gets in the way of that.
> Can you go to Netflix and just download a .mp4 of their latest show? Nope
You're fundamentally questioning the need for DRM - which is naive. Netflix AND the studios would go out of business in no time without the ability to protect their work.
I'm not sympathetic to the Studios who've historically been sharks, but Netflix (with DRM) is an equitable model - stream anywhere for a fixed monthly fee.
FYI - you can save Netflix shows for offline consumption, within the app
>Netflix AND the studios would go out of business in no time without the ability to protect their work
This is literally precisely what the music industry said. Repeatedly and ever more loudly as Apple in particular turned the screws. And then they did away with all DRM on buying digital music. Oh, turns out that was all a pile of bullshit, they didn't go out of business, and their motivation for DRM was not piracy but rather control. Their dream was to repeat the format change gold mine, where they could resell the same content over and over again. But in terms of selling once nope, DRM-free was no problem.
> Netflix AND the studios would go out of business in no time without the ability to protect their work.
The fact that every video a streaming studio gets is available to pirates to download within moments of it becoming available suggests that DRM does not in fact give them anything but the appearance of security.
It's required by content providers and film studios as a matter of course, but has no reflection that it actually works in the real world.
I pay Netflix for convenience. I most certainly would not cancel my subscription if they removed DRM. In fact, I'd probably pay a bit more for the ability to download content for the rare occasions I want watch it on a different device.
An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators
> An anecdote is irrelevant. There's vast amounts of peer reviewed research that supports the need for DRM, and unequivocally proves the financial harm piracy can inflict on content creators
Could you give an example (or many) since as you say the evidence is vast. I did a cursory search, and couldn't find sources, but perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places.
Amazon Music went DRM-free in 2008. The iTunes Store went DRM-free in 2009. Bandcamp has always (AFAICT) been DRM-free. Were musicians harmed by these?
I can't find any musician, economist, or researcher who has ever complained about this, or suggested that DRM would help their financials.
We're taking about streaming services (Netflix specifically). The accurate comparison is that Apple Music, Google Play Music, Spotify, etc. all DRM their services.
Most of it being financed by the big 4. Also, most mentions rights holders not content creators. That's a big and important difference. It's the difference between hard working people and rent seeking capitalists abusing their market power.
Another Also,when you are a service provider, DRM is a expensive anti-feature thus detrimental to the quality of service provided and convenience experienced by the customer.
There is no research necessary to see this stimulates piracy.
The big studios will probably cease to be able to enforce their business model but firms like Netflix won't care about piracy / free marketing since their model is based on providing a service that beats piracy.
Google's massive browser market share has opened the door to some ugly things. I can't help but shake my head whenever I come across a "Chrome only" SaaS startup.
I may have the minority opinion here, but I don’t even think DRM should be in web browsers, rather, use vendor provided apps to consume Netflix, Google Play Movies, Hulu, etc.
On mobile, I prefer using web versions of services and not using apps. I make an exception when consuming content that I pay for.
Always surprised how few people realize this. Yes, on a random OS with no binary builds by Google I can have the Chromium browser. It does not have the ability to watch Netflix, though. To get that you need to run a Linux binary chrome in a Linux API translator.
The other large binary blob in the non-opensource builds, apart from DRM, is the wifi network detection module.
It will look at what wifi networks are close to you, and Google finds out your physical location that way without your computer having a GPS chip or a cellphone network chip (Google has the full database of the center of gravity for every wifi network from the streetview cars, so the information of which network is how strong for your computer allows location by something like +- 10 meters).
I'm not sure what the status of publishing and disclosure is in Chrome right now. A few years back the location via Wifi was a feature of the binary builds only (like DRM) and wasn't in open source Chromium.
Using wifi networks around a device is Google's standard, low-power way to determine a device's location. In a cellphone it is used so that you don't have to fire up the power-hungry GPS chip.
Since they built the entire infrastructure and database of wifi access points and locations (by scanning from the streetview vehicles and syncing with GPS) they also use it for the desktop browsers.
Which if you legitimately need the location of a "desktop" (which here includes Laptops) would be a nice way to go. It's just a bit of an unclear situation with regards to consent, especially informed consent.
(this is not to be confused with Chrome's private API chrome.networkingPrivate, which is used by the device owner to be able to pick and configure wifi networks without leaving Chrome)
Although it's limited, there is still a chance of competition. This prevents pure open source browsers, but it doesn't prevent a large software company from forking Chromium and adding DRM themselves (as Microsoft is doing).
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And with the new edge, there even will be a Chrome fork that supports EME DRM as well, and most likely it will support higher resolutions than Chrome itself as it's using OS built in DRM mechanisms that the studios love.
DRM is not the source of Google's control over Chrome. They use a different mechanism: manpower. They have an insane amount of developers working on Chrome, constantly changing it. Any smaller project forking Chrome and changing some major part won't be able to keep up with the changes unless they upstream. And ultimately, Google employees have control over what gets upstreamed and which contribution gets rejected.