Filtered by: Scitech
SciTech
Firefox can now play protected video content on desktops
Mozilla's Firefox browser can now play protected media content, at least on its desktop version.
In a blog post, Mozilla's Denelle Thayer said content wrapped in Digital Rights Management (DRM) can be played within the HTML5 video tag.
"As we explained then, we are enabling DRM in order to provide our users with the features they require in a browser and allow them to continue accessing premium video content. We don’t believe DRM is a desirable market solution, but it’s currently the only way to watch a sought-after segment of content," she said.
She said this was a hard decision because of Mozilla's mission and the closed nature of DRM.
Presently, Firefox includes an integration with the Adobe Content Decryption Module to playback DRM-wrapped content.
Thayer said the CDM will be downloaded from Adobe shortly after an upgrade or installation of Firefox and will be activated when a user first interacts with a site that uses Adobe CDM.
"Premium video services, including Netflix, have started testing this solution in Firefox," she said.
Thayer also said Mozilla designed a security sandbox that sits around the CDM.
"We can’t be sure how other browsers have handled the 'black-box' issue but a sandbox provides a necessary layer of security. Additionally, we’ve also introduced the ability to remove the CDM from your copy of Firefox. We believe that these are important security and choice mechanisms that allow us to introduce this technology in a manner that lessens the negative impacts of integrating this type of black-box," she said.
Also, Mozilla is offering a separate Firefox download without the CDM enabled by default "for those users who would rather not have the CDM downloaded to their browser on install."
Other new features in Firefox 38 include support for the Ruby HTML 5 markup, which is used to help show the pronunciation of words in Chinese and Japanese and a couple of tweaks aimed at making developer’s lives easier, The Next Web said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News
Tags: mozilla, mozillafirefox
Find out your candidates' profile
Find the latest news
Find out individual candidate platforms
Choose your candidates and print out your selection.
Voter Demographics
More Videos
Most Popular