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W3C Condemned Over DRM

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 19th of September 2017 08:25:22 AM Filed under
Web
  • HTML5 DRM finally makes it as an official W3C Recommendation

    The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry body that oversees development of HTML and related Web standards, has today published the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) specification as a Recommendation, marking its final blessing as an official Web standard. Final approval came after the W3C's members voted 58.4 percent to approve the spec, 30.8 percent to oppose, with 10.8 percent abstaining.

  • Electronic Frontier Foundation Resigns From W3C Over Encrypted Media Extensions DRM

    [...] The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.

  • An open letter to the W3C Director, CEO, team and membership

    Despite the support of W3C members from many sectors, the leadership of the W3C rejected this compromise. The W3C leadership countered with proposals — like the chartering of a nonbinding discussion group on the policy questions that was not scheduled to report in until long after the EME ship had sailed — that would have still left researchers, governments, archives, security experts unprotected.

    The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.

    But those very benefits (such as improvements to accessibility and privacy) depend on the public being able to exercise rights they lose under DRM law — which meant that without the compromise the Director was overriding, none of those benefits could be realized, either. That rejection prompted the first appeal against the Director in W3C history.

    [...]

    We will renew our work to battle the media companies that fail to adapt videos for accessibility purposes, even though the W3C squandered the perfect moment to exact a promise to protect those who are doing that work for them.

  • World Wide Web Consortium abandons consensus, standardizes DRM with 58.4% support, EFF resigns

    In July, the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium overruled dozens of members' objections to publishing a DRM standard without a compromise to protect accessibility, security research, archiving, and competition.

  • EFF quits W3C over decision to accept EME as Web standard

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation has resigned from the World Wide Web Consortium after the latter announced it was accepting the published Encrypted Media Extensions as a Web standard.

  • Christopher Allan Webber: DRM will unravel the Web

    I'm a web standards author and I participate in the W3C. I am co-editor of the ActivityPub protocol, participate in a few other community groups and working groups, and I consider it an honor to have been able to participate in the W3C process. What I am going to write here though represents me and my feelings alone. In a sense though, that makes this even more painful. This is a blogpost I don't have time to write, but here I am writing it; I am emotionally forced to push forward on this topic. The W3C has allowed DRM to move forward on the web through the EME specification (which is, to paraphrase Danny O'Brien from the EFF, a "DRM shaped hole where nothing else but DRM fits"). This threatens to unravel the web as we know it. How could this happen? How did we get here?

    Like many of my generation, I grew up on the web, both as a citizen of this world and as a developer. "Web development", in one way or another, has principally been my work for my adult life, and how I have learned to be a programmer. The web is an enormous, astounding effort of many, many participants. Of course, Tim Berners-Lee is credited for much of it, and deserves much of this credit. I've had the pleasure of meeting Tim on a couple of occasions; when you meet Tim it's clear how deeply he cares about the web. Tim speaks quickly, as though he can't wait to get out the ideas that are so important to him, to try to help you understand how wonderful and exciting this system it is that we can build together. Then, as soon as he's done talking, he returns to his computer and gets to hacking on whatever software he's building to advance the web. You don't see this dedication to "keep your hands dirty" in the gears of the system very often, and it's a trait I admire. So it's very hard to reconcile that vision of Tim with someone who would intentionally unravel their own work... yet by allowing the W3C to approve DRM/EME, I believe that's what has happened.

»

Chrome 61 Released, Mozilla Firefox Bugfix for GNU/Linux

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 6th of September 2017 11:21:16 AM Filed under
Google
Moz/FF
OSS
Web
  • New in Chrome 61
  • Chrome 61 Brings WebUSB, JavaScript Modules & More
  • Chrome 61 Enters Stable Channel, Now Rolling Out For Windows, Mac and Linux

    Chrome 61 has finally entered the stable channel with a slew of developer-focused features and general security fixes. The desktop version for Chrome 61 has started rolling out today, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It brings the latest WebUSB API, which enables web apps to interact with computer peripherals like keyboards, mice and printers.

  • Google Chrome 61 Released for Linux, Mac, and Windows

    Today Google launched version 61 of the Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux. With this release, we have 21 security updates, numerous improvements and bug fixes, and three APIs that allow developers to further enhance their sites and apps.

  • Mozilla Firefox Finally Fixes An Awkward, 11 Year Old Linux Bug

    It's taken more than a decade, but after enough user complaints, there is finally a patch queued for Firefox 57 to fix an arguably annoying default behavior of Firefox on Linux/Unix systems.

    The default setting on Firefox has long been when the middle mouse button is clicked to open an URL based upon the contents of the clipboard. Most users don't expect this behavior by default and many have found it to be incredibly awkward accidentally opening a new tab with some web-page based upon what's in your copy-paste clipboard.

»

QupZilla Renamed KDE Falkon, Developer David Rosca interviewed

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Friday 25th of August 2017 11:23:11 PM Filed under
KDE
Interviews
Web
  • QupZilla Web Browser Becomes KDE Falkon

    The QupZilla open-source web-browser built using Qt WebEngine and in development for the past seven years is now part of the KDE project and has renamed itself to Falkon.

    Earlier this month the QupZilla developers announced they would be moving under the KDE umbrella and in the process rename itself. Today they made it known their new name for this KDE web-browser is Falkon.

  • The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews David Rosca of QupZilla

    QupZilla, currently at version 2.1.2, is a free software Web browser using the new and very fast QtWebEngine browser. It aims to be a lightweight Web browser available through all major platforms. This project was originally started only for educational purposes by a lone developer, David Rosca, and since then, QupZilla has grown into a feature-rich browser. QupZilla has all of the standard functions you expect from a Web browser. It includes bookmarks, history (including a sidebar view), and tabs. Above that, it has ad-blocking enabled by default with a built-in plugin. Over time, this one-man project has grown to include numerous contributors.

»

Canonical Invites You to Test Out the Chromium Web Browser Snap on Ubuntu Linux

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Friday 18th of August 2017 01:36:58 AM Filed under
Web
Ubuntu

Canonical's Olivier Tilloy has put out a call for testing for what it would appear to be the very first Chromium Snap package for Ubuntu Linux and other Snappy-enabled distros.

Read more

»

WWW: Chrome 61 Beta and WebAssembly Working Group

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 15th of August 2017 11:44:03 PM Filed under
Google
Web
  • Chrome 61 Beta: JavaScript modules, Payment Request API on desktop, Web Share API, and WebUSB

    Unless otherwise noted, changes described below apply to the newest Chrome Beta channel release for Android, Chrome OS, Linux, Mac, and Windows.

  • Chrome 61 Beta Rolls Out With JavaScript Modules, WebUSB Support

    Google today is shipping the beta version of the upcoming Chrome 61 web-browser release.

    Highlights of Chrome 61 Beta include native support for JavaScript modules, Payment Request API support in the desktop browser, support for the Web Share API for easily sharing content on social networks, and initial WebUSB support.

  • Launching the WebAssembly Working Group

    For over two years the WebAssembly W3C Community Group has served as a forum for browser vendors and others to come together to develop an elegant and efficient compilation target for the Web. A first version is available in 4 browser engines and is on track to become a standard part of the Web. We’ve had several successful in-person CG meetings, while continuing our robust online collaboration on github. We also look forward to engaging the wider W3C community at the WebAssembly meeting at this year’s TPAC.

»

Mozilla Firefox 55 Web Browser Is Now Available to Download, Here's What's New

Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 8th of August 2017 12:31:21 AM Filed under
Moz/FF
Web

It's not yet official, but the Firefox 55.0 open-source and cross-platform web browser is now available for download on GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Read more

»

Browsers: Chrome/Chromium and Mozilla's Firefox, Send

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 6th of August 2017 10:30:36 AM Filed under
Google
Moz/FF
OSS
Web
  • Chrome/Chromium Turns On Support For OpenType Variable Fonts

    Google's Chrome/Chromium web-browser has now enabled support by default for OpenType Variable Fonts.

  • The latest challenge to Google's AI dominance comes from an unlikely place -- Firefox

    Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox internet browser, has begun testing a feature that lets you enter a search query using your voice instead of typing it in. The move could help Mozilla's efforts to make Firefox more competitive with Google Chrome.

    If you're using Firefox in English on Mac, Windows or Linux, you can turn on the experimental "Voice Fill" feature and then use it on Google, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Support for other websites will come later.

    Alphabet's Google offers speech recognition on its search engine when accessed through Chrome on desktop -- it became available in 2013 -- and Yahoo, Microsoft's Bing and Google all let you run search queries with your voice on mobile devices. But searching with your voice on Google while using Firefox on the desktop, for example, has historically been impossible. Now Mozilla wants to make its desktop browser more competitive.

  • Fedora 26 - Firefox Test Pilot send large files.

    This tool from Firefox team let you to send you upload and encrypt large files (up to 1GB) to share online.

»

Mozilla Advocacy, New Test Pilot Experiments

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 1st of August 2017 04:33:55 PM Filed under
Web
  • Mozilla releases research results: Zero rating is not serving as an on-ramp to the internet

    Today, 4 billion people live without the internet. There’s a global debate about how to connect the unconnected, but it’s often dominated by assumptions and not a lot of data or talking to actual users on the ground.

    To better inform this issue, Mozilla recently supported a series of focus groups to investigate how and why people use subsidized services in India, Myanmar, Peru, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. Today, we’re releasing the results of this research carried out by Research ICT Africa, LIRNEasia and IEP.

  • New Test Pilot Experiments Available Today

    Last month, we delivered the first in a series of groundbreaking updates to the browser. This week, the Test Pilot team is continuing to evolve Firefox features with three new experiences that will make for a simpler, faster and safer experience.

»

Google Chrome 60 Released

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 26th of July 2017 12:08:51 PM Filed under
Google
Web
»

DRM-Carrying Flash's Death in the News

Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 26th of July 2017 12:06:39 PM Filed under
Web
  • Google: HTML is Faster, Safer, and More Power Efficient Than Adobe's Flash

    After Adobe's big announcement this morning that they plan to end support for Flash in late 2020, Google Chrome's Anthony Laforge published a blog article asking Flash developers to start transitioning to HTML.

    For a long time, Google shipped its Chrome web browser built-in with Flash support, but it now looks like Chrome will slowly start blocking Flash content, require explicit permission from users, until upstream support is terminated three years from now, at the end of 2020. Google, like anyone else on this planet, believe HTML is faster, safer, and more power efficient than Flash, without a doubt.

  • Adobe Flash will die by 2020, Adobe and browser makers say

     

    For many, though, Flash was simply seen at least as a nuisance, and at worst a serious security risk. 
     

     

    Flash-based exploits have circulated for years, in a game of cat-and-mouse between hackers and Adobe itself. Apple's Steve Jobs famously banned Flash from the iPhone, claiming that Flash hurt battery life and also was a security risk. [...]

  • Adobe Flash is dead (well, nearly)

     

    Tech firms have long been hammering nail's into its coffin, too, and back in 2010, Steve Jobs famously penned a letter that called for the demise of Adobe Flash in favour of a shift to open web standards.

  • The end of Flash
»
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