ELI5: What is DRM and how much its implementation in Google's Manifest V3 will affect the Internet?

It stands for digital rights management, and basically it's anything that attempts to manage how you use your hardware.

For example, Keurigs that use the qr code to tell the size of the pod are an example of DRM - they attempt to keep you from using 3rd party pods (I think they walked this back).

It's also a great example of how it's more an annoyance that makes the product worse than anything else - you could tape an "official" pod wrapper to the top and it will work with any pod. It also makes it less sanitary and if the wrapper shifts it introduces extra steps between you and your coffee, which should be a criminal offense

It's next to impossible to fully control a device in someone else's hands. YouTube videos use DRM, but you can find plenty of ways to download them in an open format anyways.

The exception is when they call out to a remote server - a lot of video games do this (unfortunately even single player games do this a lot now). They might check for ownership before you start the game, but lately they've been drilling holes in the security of your computer so they can make sure you haven't modified it (even for single player games!), which should also be criminal.

This is much harder to crack, but it can still be done.

Then you get to DRM that runs on both sides, which is what this proposal is. They basically want a 3rd party "attester" to verify that your browser is "legit" (what they mean by that is kept pretty vague). Then, when you access a site, the site checks your request, confirms with the attester that your browser is "legit" and will run their code on your machine as written, and if the attester doesn't give the all clear they send you an error page instead of the site you asked for.

So let's go through some of the concerns I have after reading through the proposal:

Many sites decide Firefox, as the only major browser not based off Google's browser engine, isn't "legit". Already, some sites block Firefox, so this is very likely
Anyone can set up an attester, but sites can decide which they trust. The attester has a lot of access to data which can positively identify you, but they're only supposed to send a bit of it. If Facebook decides they only trust their own attester, they're probably not going to pass up collecting as much data as they can. That could include everything from the phone you have, the apps you have installed. Facebook doesn't need to know where I bank, but if their attester becomes standard, they might get that info even if I never use a Facebook product. Or, all attesters might decide to sell data as their business model
The only privacy considerations seem to be "we had privacy advocates in the group that drafted this proposal". If this is true, I'm not sure who they were, because privacy didn't come up too often

There's zero reason for this to exist, except to lock down our devices. This benefits corporations - it offers absolutely nothing to users. There's no way it could ever offer anything to users. .

All it does is let websites block users based on vaguely defined criteria - it's a proposal so the details are vague, but the most generous reading would be that they could restrict you based on browser, the least generous reading means everyone could tell you to uninstall a competitor's app before you can use theirs (and selling every scrap of information about you imaginable)

14 comments

- I still don't get how people use Internet without adblockers
  
  At least in my experience, ads are rarely that obtrusive. They're usually either shunted off into a sidebar or, in the case of a video site, short and/or skippable. I have run across more intrusive ads in the past, but they were few and far between. I have an adblocker now, but I have more than a few sites whitelisted.
- 50% of 3%, that's a whopping 1.5%! 😅
  But jokes aside, the average Firefox user is probably a lot more likely to have extensions than the average Chrome user.
  
  About 10% of those have an adblocker if I read correctly? I find that hard to believe. Maybe people who leave telemetry enabled are just different.
  
  Not a good example as firefox users probably tend more to have add ons.
It stands for digital rights management, and basically it's anything that attempts to manage how you use your hardware.
For example, Keurigs that use the qr code to tell the size of the pod are an example of DRM - they attempt to keep you from using 3rd party pods (I think they walked this back).
It's also a great example of how it's more an annoyance that makes the product worse than anything else - you could tape an "official" pod wrapper to the top and it will work with any pod. It also makes it less sanitary and if the wrapper shifts it introduces extra steps between you and your coffee, which should be a criminal offense
It's next to impossible to fully control a device in someone else's hands. YouTube videos use DRM, but you can find plenty of ways to download them in an open format anyways.
The exception is when they call out to a remote server - a lot of video games do this (unfortunately even single player games do this a lot now). They might check for ownership before you start the game, but lately they've been drilling holes in the security of your computer so they can make sure you haven't modified it (even for single player games!), which should also be criminal.
This is much harder to crack, but it can still be done.
Then you get to DRM that runs on both sides, which is what this proposal is. They basically want a 3rd party "attester" to verify that your browser is "legit" (what they mean by that is kept pretty vague). Then, when you access a site, the site checks your request, confirms with the attester that your browser is "legit" and will run their code on your machine as written, and if the attester doesn't give the all clear they send you an error page instead of the site you asked for.
So let's go through some of the concerns I have after reading through the proposal:
Many sites decide Firefox, as the only major browser not based off Google's browser engine, isn't "legit". Already, some sites block Firefox, so this is very likely
Anyone can set up an attester, but sites can decide which they trust. The attester has a lot of access to data which can positively identify you, but they're only supposed to send a bit of it. If Facebook decides they only trust their own attester, they're probably not going to pass up collecting as much data as they can. That could include everything from the phone you have, the apps you have installed. Facebook doesn't need to know where I bank, but if their attester becomes standard, they might get that info even if I never use a Facebook product. Or, all attesters might decide to sell data as their business model
The only privacy considerations seem to be "we had privacy advocates in the group that drafted this proposal". If this is true, I'm not sure who they were, because privacy didn't come up too often
There's zero reason for this to exist, except to lock down our devices. This benefits corporations - it offers absolutely nothing to users. There's no way it could ever offer anything to users. .
All it does is let websites block users based on vaguely defined criteria - it's a proposal so the details are vague, but the most generous reading would be that they could restrict you based on browser, the least generous reading means everyone could tell you to uninstall a competitor's app before you can use theirs (and selling every scrap of information about you imaginable)
DRM is protection for a type of media. An example would be Denuvo. The issue is that Google is an Ad company and they need ads to live so they want to add DRM to websites. And since they make Chromium they also want to block ad-blockers on the world most used browser