From el Reg
Of course we can discuss the various sides of if DRM has a place on the internet, my personal opinion is that I would rather it is not there but this solution seems about as good as it could be.
What really interested me was "Firefox will run Adobe's CDM in a sandbox, so that the software will only send the minimal amount of data on a user's machine back to the content provider". While I do not know what exactly they mean by a sandbox, I would interpret this as meaning that firefox could make it look like your machine is anything. This could completely subvert the point of DRM meaning that you could download and store any stream that is sent to the monitor / speakers. I could be wrong, what are your thoughts?
Mozilla has announced that it will add Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) for digital rights management into a future build of Firefox, even if the organization disagrees with the technology on principle.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is to add EME into the specifications for HTML5 at the behest of Microsoft, Google, and Netflix. Sir Tim Berners-Lee supports the move, but Mozilla had been objecting to the plans as technically unnecessary. However, it has decided to cave.
"We have come to the point where Mozilla not implementing the W3C EME specification means that Firefox users have to switch to other browsers to watch content restricted by DRM ," said Chief Technology Officer Andreas Gal.
"This makes it difficult for Mozilla to ignore the ongoing changes in the DRM landscape. Firefox should help users get access to the content they want to enjoy, even if Mozilla philosophically opposes the restrictions certain content owners attach to their content."
The W3C spec requires the use of proprietary Content Decryption Modules, which is one of Mozilla's big objections to the system. Gal said that Mozilla would reluctantly use Adobe's CDM system, but it would have to be software that users download and it won't be built into Firefox directly.
For added user protection, Firefox will run Adobe's CDM in a sandbox, so that the software will only send the minimal amount of data on a user's machine back to the content provider and ensure it has no access to either the user's hard drive or network.
Of course we can discuss the various sides of if DRM has a place on the internet, my personal opinion is that I would rather it is not there but this solution seems about as good as it could be.
What really interested me was "Firefox will run Adobe's CDM in a sandbox, so that the software will only send the minimal amount of data on a user's machine back to the content provider". While I do not know what exactly they mean by a sandbox, I would interpret this as meaning that firefox could make it look like your machine is anything. This could completely subvert the point of DRM meaning that you could download and store any stream that is sent to the monitor / speakers. I could be wrong, what are your thoughts?