If Google succeeds with the new DRM policy, will that affect functionality of browsers like firefox which uses a different engine?

Comments

• empireOfLove@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It depends how websites choose to implement it, and how other browsers choose to implement it.

  If Firefox et.al chooses not to implement browser environment integrity, then any website that chooses to require strict integrity would completely cease to work on Firefox as it would not be able to respond to a trust check. It sounds simply be dead. However, if they do implement it, which I imagine they would if this API actually becomes widespread, they should continue to work fine even if they’re stuck with the limitations on environment modification inherent to the DRM (aka rip adblockers)

  Websites will vary though. Some may not implement it at all, others may implement a non-strict integrity check that may happily serve browsers that do not pass the check. Third parties can also run their own attestation servers that will report varying levels of envirnment data. Most likely you will see all Google sites and a majority of “big” websites that depend on ad revenue implement strict integrity through Google attestation servers so that their precious ads don’t get blocked, and the internet will become an absolutely horrid place.

  Frankly I’ll just stop using anything and everything that chooses to implement this, since we all know Google is going to go full steam ahead with implementation regardless of how many users complain. Protecting their ad revenue is priority 1 through 12,000 and fuck everybody else.

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  • ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s weird. The internet really seems to be pushing me not to use it these days.

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    • empireOfLove@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Welcome to late stage capitalism. The free Fed money train is over, time to squeeze the plebians to death.

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    • opt9@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Not the Internet, that is neutral. It is only one large corp that is trying to control the Internet. If everyone boycotts them, then they will fail.

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  • joe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I have a weak grasp of this, but a developer working on this responded to some criticism.

    If the developers working to implement this are to be believed, they are intentionally setting it up so that websites would have an incentive to still allow untrusted (for lack of a better term) clients to access their sites. They do this by intentionally ignoring any trust check request 5% - 10% of the time, to behave as if the client is untrusted, even when it is. This means that if a website decides to only allow trusted clients, they will also be refusing trusted clients 5% - 10% of the time.

    The relevant part of the response is quoted here:

    WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.

    This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”. Any sites that attempted to restrict browser access based on WEI signals alone would have also restricted access to a significant enough proportion of attestable devices to disincentivize this behavior.

    Additionally, and this could be clarified in the explainer more, WEI is an opportunity for developers to use hardware-backed attestation as alternatives to captchas and other privacy-invasive integrity checks.

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    • opt9@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And what happens when they decide to revoke that 5-10% after they got everyone onboard?

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    • calabast@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That sounds nice but there’s no guarantee they’ll implement it, or if they do, that they won’t just remove it someday down the road. This could just be a way for them to avoid criticism for now, and when criticism has died down a bit, they can just remove it.

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    • gothicdecadence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If this is the case then what’s actually the point?

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    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The developers working on this should not be believed and anyone who sees their resume for the rest of time should put it directly in the trash.

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  • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Wanna talk about web safety? Yeah, et.al now comes up as a website link.

    Thanks Google! Thanks for letting pretty much any .bullshit top level domain…

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The grandparent commenter should’ve written “et al.” instead. The “alii” is the abbreviated part, not the “et”.

      Agreed about the bullshit TLDs, by the way.

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    • gothicdecadence@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      How is that Google’s fault?

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  • azula@feddit.rocks ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Thanks for such a detailed explanation. I really hope firefox doesn’t follow through with this.

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  • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    lemmy.ml/post/2481063

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  • Littleborat@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Hasn’t there been this thing that told you you are opening a sketchy website for years?

    Why do we need more policing, who asked for that?

    If you fall for some scam website then it’s on you. Don’t use the internet. The end.

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    • nulluser@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      This isn’t about browsers blocking users from scam websites. This is about websites blocking users with browsers that remove ads.

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• over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Mozilla has already posted their protest to this…

  lemmy.ml/post/2481063

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  • scutiger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Sure, they’re against it, but if it gets implemented by Chrome and by many major websites, they won’t have a choice but to implement it as well. Otherwise, their browser just won’t work and people will have to use Chromium browsers or nothing at all.

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    • empireOfLove@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Honestly, they could have good grounds for an antitrust lawsuit if this API comes to pass and everyone uses Google attestation servers. It’s gardenwalling the browser space just like Microsoft was.

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    • over_clox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Then don’t use Google. I’m slowly but surely working towards degoogling myself. Not there quite yet, but I’m working on it.

      dispostable.com

      ^ Free anonymous email, for the B/S that asks for an email when they got no business with one.

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    • Sloogs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Mozilla has been bullied exactly this way in the past into implementing DRM measures I believe.

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    • Maiznieks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I already use ff and if there’s a site that requires drm to work, i don’t care for that site. They need visitors not the other way around.

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  • azula@feddit.rocks ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I don’t understand why others like Brave, Opera, Vivaldi…etc are silent on this big of a threat.

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    • eldnikpw@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Vivaldi has a post on their blog regarding this.

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• Phen@lemmy.eco.br ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It will affect for some sites, not for others. You’ll no longer be able to bypass paywalls to read news, for example, because those sites will most likely adopt the DRM. Some streaming services may do the same, maybe even some social networks. But places like lemmy will still be generally unnaffected.

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  • Nioxic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    All lemmy links to another site wouldnt work then… lol

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  • azula@feddit.rocks ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I really hope they cancel this

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• cheezoid2@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yes, because it will implicitly discourage the use of any other type of browser

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  • Kekzkrieger@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Sites that implement it will drop traffic which will lower ad revenue which will mean less money.

    If browsers that do not implement it gain a higher market share it might have them miss out on so much money that they don’t block the browser or not implement the drm.

    it’s a battle of browsers now and i am happy to stand on the site of firefox.

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  • azula@feddit.rocks ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Seems like it’s much more than a discouragement

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• starman@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I’m sure they will use it on their own products, so maybe it’s time to replace google products?

  I will probably switch to protonmail when gmail won’t be accessible from firefox

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