Reuben,
I was the one who did the implementation for that bug. It was for
"Forward Lock" DRM, a very weak form of DRM used in the era of flip
phones to prevent sharing of purchased ringtones and wallpapers. A
couple of our partners still have a business model that relies on this
form of DRM, and so having the feature available in FirefoxOS was a
go-to-market requirement for them.
Forward lock is defined by the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance, I think). The
specs for it define a special way of downloading ringtones, songs and
wallpapers: first we download a "download descriptor" XML file. That
file includes a URL for the actual image or audio file, and also
includes a URL that we use to post a success or error code to so that
ringtone vendors know if the ringtone was successfully downloaded (and
can then charge for it). The main reason we needed to implement these
specs is for interoperability with these existing download and billing
services that our partners used.
In addition, however, this is also the 'Forward Lock' part of the spec.
This simply means that FirefoxOS must ensure that ringtones, songs and
wallpapers purchased in this way can not be "forwarded" to other users:
we can't allow users to attach a purchased ringtone to an MMS message or
an email, for example. And we have to be careful that we don't store
the files in plaintext in a storage area that the user can access.
Storing a ringtone in an indexeddb that is private to an app or in the
settings database is fine because those are not accessible to the end
user. But a purchased music file stored on the sdcard must not be stored
in plaintext.
It should be clear from the above that bug 905856 is completely
unrelated to EME and other DRM controversies of today. By today's DRM
standards, Forward Lock seems almost quaint, actually. I don't know how
much use it will get. either. I implemented it for release 1.3, but
have not seen any bugs filed against the implementation, which either
means that my implementation was perfect (and we know how likely that is
:-) or that none of our partners are actually using and testing it. So
it could be that it is a feature that will go unused.
I'm happy to answer any other questions you have about this. Note,
however, that I'm about to fly to Taipei, so I'll be in the air, then
jet lagged, and then busy with meetings. So it may take me a while to
respond to any further discussion.
David Flanagan
P.S. Searching for "OMA DRM FL" should bring up a Wikipedia page and
other information about forward lock. Specs are at
http://technical.openmobilealliance.org/Technical/release_program/drm_v1_0.aspx
though I think you might have to click through some kind of legal
agreement in order to read them.
On 1/17/14 1:47 PM, Rubén Martín wrote:
Hi,
I came across with this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=905856
From User Story Backlogs spreadsheet talking about DRM for various
multimedia content:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtVT90hlMtdSdEd4TVVjWXNfU3ctMlVhWFRrWkpweVE#gid=30
Since there is very few information about this (or I can't find it on
the web) and the parent bug with the full description is private, I
would like to open discussion about this, and the rationale behind.
Thanks.
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