• Video, user experience and our mission by Mitchell Baker, Chair of Mozilla
• Video, Mobile, and the Open Web (alternate) by Brendan Eich, CTO of Mozilla

While I understand their reasoning, I hope there is a chance to change that position. In my view, continuing on that path will ultimately hurt the open web, both in the short- and long-term.

Fragmentation

It’s important to understand how supporting H.264 in any way will necessarily fragment the Firefox userbase into “the haves and the have nots”, those Firefox users who can watch H.264 in <video> and those Firefox users who cannot. In many cases, Firefox would be able to rely on the operating system and/or hardware having a patent license for H.264 and an API that allows Firefox to play H.264. But in many other cases, there will be no option for playing H.264 in <video> without forcing Firefox users to run particular software or agree to particular license terms that they would not otherwise need to.

The “haves” would be those running Windows 7, OS X, or Google-approved, unmodified Android (and similar) mobile devices. These all ship with an H.264 patent license and APIs for playing H.264 videos using that license. Firefox could utilize the existing patent license and APIs to play H.264 without any additional trouble on the user’s part.

The “have nots” would be those running Windows XP, virtually any primarily free software desktop OS (such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian, which all ship without H.264 support), and most mobile devices running a custom OS (such as CyanogenMod, Replicant, or SHR). According to Brendan, “dropping H.264 from <video> only on desktop and not on mobile doesn’t matter, because of Flash fallback”. But this doesn’t achieve the open web goal because people will become dependent on Flash (we should instead let it die) and because it doesn’t work on all mobile devices, as Flash is not supported on custom OSes that people may choose to run (and should be free to run if they don’t like the software that came with their phone). Furthermore, web developers would be encouraged to keep using Flash fallback code for even longer than they would otherwise.

This would cause the Firefox community to be split into two factions: those who can play H.264 <video> and those who can’t. We should be very careful to avoid this situation.

Branding

One of the primary strengths (and, I believe, goals) of Firefox is that it works in a similar manner and with similar features and available add-ons across all supported platforms. When people use a program called “Firefox”, they know it will let them browse the web and use add-ons they know, all with a familiar style. The Firefox brand tells users what they can do with a program called “Firefox”.

Because of the fragmentation outlined above, supporting H.264 for some users necessarily means that others will not be able to play H.264 (especially since Mozilla “will not require anyone to pay for Firefox”, according to Brendan). This seriously dilutes the Firefox brand, as people will no longer be able to move from one Firefox to another with an expectation that a site working in one will work in the other. Instead, “Firefox” will come to mean a browser that might play H.264, but it might not and you can’t really be sure unless you know a lot of technical details about the system you’re on (the whole point of a brand is that you don’t need to know these details).

Compromise

Supporting H.264 in Firefox would be a compromise unlike any Mozilla has made before. For the first time, Mozilla would be telling its users (in effect) “if you want a Firefox that works like all the other Firefoxes, you need to run Windows 7 or Mac OS or one of these select mobile OSes”. Anyone who wants something else will have to compromise in their own way, by accepting a user agreement that is against their morals or running software that they are not free to examine (unlike Firefox, which can be examined and modified as they see fit).

This unprecedented compromise will make it harder for Mozilla to reject future detrimental compromises, which is a big loss for the open web. No other non-profit organization has even a small percentage of the influence that Mozilla has on the direction of the web. To lose this positive influence through more and more compromises would be devastating.

To respond to Brendan’s statement, yes, “patents expire”. But what doesn’t expire is the ongoing effort to patent more ideas and then force them upon the unsuspecting public. Compromising on H.264 now makes it difficult to say no to HEVC and other patented technologies later on.

Promises

In his post, Brendan outlined several promises made by big companies that have not been kept, and as a result, have slowed the adoption of WebM, the (still not disproved) royalty-free alternative to H.264. In particular, three promises have not been kept: Google has not converted all YouTube videos to WebM, Google has not discontinued H.264 <video> support in Chrome, and Adobe is still not supporting WebM in Flash Player.

While it is disappointing that these companies have not get their promises, it is crucial that these failures to follow through do not discourage others from continuing along a positive path. By choosing to support H.264, Mozilla would significantly reduce Google’s and Adobe’s incentives to continue with these projects, whose completion would ultimately benefit the open web. If Mozilla instead held firm with WebM and Theora, the open web (at least as far as codecs are concerned) would arrive more quickly.

In essence, by keeping its own promise to users that they will promote the open web, Mozilla would pressure these companies to keep their promises, too.

Next steps

The hurdles that face WebM are not insurmountable. ARM chips that currently ship in Android phones can easily decode 1080p WebM in real-time (direct link). Though many chips can assist WebM decoding already, hardware decoders are ready to go. Nearly a year ago, 99% of YouTube views were available in WebM. And now more browsers support WebM than ever before, especially with Chrome Frame and Perian (see closed WebM-on-Safari ticket).

There is a lot more work to be done to make WebM the standard, but it is achievable. I hope that Mozilla will choose to support only free codecs, so that the open web will arrive sooner rather than later (or never).

Epilogue

If it were Apple or Google or Microsoft deciding whether or not to support H.264, I wouldn’t bother writing this. Those companies are already set in their ways and are not as committed to the open web as Mozilla.

It’s exactly because Mozilla has been fighting the good fight for so long that I think there’s a chance that people at Mozilla would change their mind about H.264 and that I wish to encourage them to keep it up. I believe that this minor corrective action will ultimately accelerate all the good that Mozilla has done already. To everyone fighting for the open web, including Mozilla: keep up the good work!

It was three years ago today that I decided to stop using a Flash player. Since then, I have not installed (or have immediately uninstalled) Flash on all computers I use for more than one hour per year. I define it this way because I want to clarify that I make sure Flash is not on any computer I use regularly (including the computers I use at work owned by my employers), which is more than the computers I own. But I think it would be a bit much to force a friend to uninstall Flash if I’m only using my friend’s computer for a couple minutes to check email.

As a result, browsing for the past three years has been a very pleasant experience. My browser rarely crashes, it doesn’t consume all my computer’s resources for long periods at a time, and I don’t have to worry about whether I’m vulnerable to any of the 166 security flaws discovered in Flash over the past few years.

Why it doesn’t matter (anymore)

Back in 2008, one had to make a conscious decision not to use Flash. Most machines that shipped with Windows also shipped with a Flash player, as did most Apple computers (even System76 preloaded Adobe Flash Player on new Ubuntu machines). Mobile browsing was still in its infancy, as the iPhone had barely been out for a year and Android less than a month.

These days, many people will never use a Flash player because their computer or mobile device doesn’t ship with it and might not even allow it to be installed. Though most machines shipping with Windows still include a Flash player, Apple decided to stop shipping Flash on new Macs over a year ago. Mobile browsing has grown considerably since 2008 and now accounts for 5.5% of all browsing (if you believe the stats). And virtually none of these browsing devices come with Flash: iOS devices disallow it entirely while Android devices allow it but very rarely have it preinstalled.

Based on these trends, it’s not hard to see the number of users with Flash installed falling below 90% soon (if it hasn’t already). This is an important threshold, as web designers are much less likely to assume that enough users will have particular software installed or be likely to install it to view their web site if less than 90% have it already. So fewer and fewer web sites are depending on Flash, which is great for the open web.

The past few years have seen most of my predictions in “Why Flash is doomed” come true. The user base for Flash is indeed dwindling as I subscribed above. Flash is no longer needed for video in very practical ways now. Over 6 months ago, over 99% of views on YouTube were available in WebM without Flash. Only a modern web browser that isn’t made by Microsoft or Apple is required. And though Adobe has managed to build a Flash player for mobile devices whose manufacturers let them, people rarely factor Flash into their purchasing decisions (despite a valiant effort by RIM to make people pay attention to their PlayBook Flash ad), since virtually all of their browsing can be done without it and they care more about the apps anyway (more on that later). Even if they do get a device that supports Flash, it’s unlikely to do so out of the box.

Adobe’s Flash Player continues to be slow-moving due to its proprietary nature, even if I didn’t get the precise ways in which this would affect it three years ago. I recommended to Adobe that they adopt royalty-free codecs in Flash Player 2.5 years ago, but even though they promised VP8 support a year after, there is still no word on when we might be seeing that in Flash Player, nearly 18 months later. The Flash format remains a long way from even qualifying as a Draft Standard according to RFC 2026, since Adobe has still not bothered to create or even promote a second compatible implementation. In fact, Adobe actively seeks to destroy implementations that aim to be compatible with the Flash format. Since few people can fix problems in Adobe’s proprietary Flash Player, it continues to crash a lot, so much so that browser makers built special sandboxes for Flash that prevent it from taking down the otherwise-stable browser.

To sum up, Flash is becoming less and less relevant as fewer and fewer people have a Flash player installed and fewer sites use Flash for anything important. Whether I as an individual continue to browse without Flash is increasingly less significant as more and more people browse without Flash, oblivious to the fact that might be missing something, since what they’re “missing” doesn’t matter anymore.

Beyond Flash: new challenges for the web

While Flash’s diminishing importance is good for the web, there are still hurdles to overcome in bringing us closer to a truly open web. Many designers still view the web in a device-centric way, making sure their sites work on particular devices, but paying no attention to how they might look in slightly less popular environments. For example, some web sites present video in a standards-compliant way when they detect someone is using iOS (which doesn’t have Flash), but fail to present the video in that way when someone with a compatible non-iOS browser visits the site, assuming instead that they have Flash installed.

The rise of mobile apps has demonstrated that programs custom-made for particular OSes are (in the short run) better for some tasks than web apps. Standards bodies have adopted important features from OS APIs, such as geolocation and local storage, integrating them into new web standards so more apps can be made for the web. But OS APIs will remain the forerunners in providing device functionality to mobile software developers so it is important that these APIs and the software landscape they encourage remain as open as possible.

Given Apple’s role as an instigator in many of today’s mobile patent fights, it is fairly clear that Apple does not want anyone creating an iOS-compatible operating system (or non-Apple devices that run iOS). So apps made for iOS will continue to run only on Apple devices. Android is in a slightly better situation because anyone is free to build and install Android on their device, but Google still insists that vendors wanting to use Android Market get approval, which makes it harder to make an Android device. Furthermore, most software developers choose to make their apps available only in the Android Market and not also via a separate .apk download, keeping the non-approved Android devices at a serious disadvantage, as I witnessed myself when using Android on my FreeRunner.

While mobile app repositories are somewhat tangential to the web, many people are using mobile apps instead of a browser for the majority of their online activity so it is important that these be as open as possible while the standards are being hammered out. Web-based app repositories, like the Chrome Web Store may move more software developers onto the web, but it’s still unclear how successful these stores will be.

Though YouTube’s adoption of WebM is promising indeed, it will still be a while before all video only is available not only without Flash, but also without patented codecs, like H.264. More efficient WebM decoders, especially for mobile devices, are being worked on, but manufacturers continue to prefer H.264 due to its larger installed base of efficient decoders. Additionally, few devices produce WebM video by default. Most higher-end digital cameras and camcorders still use H.264, for example.

As Flash disappears into irrelevance, we should be constantly wary of these and other new threats to the open web. A world where we can view any information from any web-connected device is not yet within reach, but with more positive developments like the new web standards and royalty-free codecs we have seen recently, it might not be as far off as we think.

• canadian_copyright_and_the_digital_agenda.7z (6.7 MiB)
• canadian_copyright_and_the_digital_agenda.tar.lzma (6.7 MiB)
• canadian_copyright_and_the_digital_agenda.tar.gz (16.4 MiB)
• canadian_copyright_and_the_digital_agenda.zip (16.4 MiB)

You can use 7-Zip on Windows to open the 7z file. Modern UNIX-like operating systems, such as Ubuntu, can open the tar.gz and tar.lzma files natively. Any popular OS should be able to open the ZIP file natively, though it’s quite large so I’d recommend using the other options first if possible.

If you’d like to download a particular PDF individually, I’ve made the contents of the archive available at http://ossguy.com/ccda/. All the PDFs are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Canada license.

Update (2010-11-30): I’ve replaced Vimeo Downloader 0.3.0 with version 0.3.1, which removes the caption from the filename. As pointed out by Mikko, the caption is not guaranteed to contain characters suitable for a filename. I may add the caption option back when I’m confident we have an exhaustive list of suitable filename characters, but for now you can uncomment the FILENAME= line I disabled if you know the caption for your video will work in a filename.

I’ve updated Vimeo Downloader to include Jorge’s changes as well some other minor enhancements:

vimeo_downloader.sh

Here is the complete list of changes:

• download HD version if available (from Jorge)
• use caption as part of file name (from Jorge) – disabled for now; see above
• output the type of video that has been downloaded (from Jorge)
• accept either a Vimeo URL in addition to the Vimeo ID
• revert to basic version if perl is unavailable

To download a Vimeo video (ie. http://vimeo.com/1084537) with Vimeo Downloader, do the following from a terminal window:

./vimeo_downloader.sh http://vimeo.com/1084537

Vimeo Downloader can also use just the ID (this is how the old version worked):

./vimeo_downloader.sh 1084537

After downloading, you will probably have to make the Vimeo Downloader script executable before running it:

chmod u+x ./vimeo_downloader.sh

Vimeo Downloader should work on any POSIX system, including Ubuntu, Mac OS X, or Windows with MSYS. For more details, including how and why I created it, see my original post, Vimeo Downloader 0.1 released.

Thanks to Jorge for the major new features in this release (see Jorge’s comment for the original version).

I’m highly doubtful that the courts would rule that jailbreaking is legal given the wording in Bill C-32, especially considering the situation in the US. Although there are no US court cases I’m aware of that decide whether or not jailbreaking is illegal under the DMCA (the United States’ implementation of the WIPO Copyright Treaty that Bill C-32 seeks to implement), at least one large company believes that jailbreaking is currently illegal, arguing in the exemption rulemaking proceeding that “The Copyright Office should reject in its entirety the proposed exemption that would permit jailbreaking.”. If history is any indication, Apple has the lawyers to make that belief a reality should the question of the legality of jailbreaking ever go to court.

So if Bill C-32 passes in its current form, we are left to rely on its review process, which says that the Copyright Act will be reviewed every 5 years and that the government can make additional exemptions to the TPM provisions. This is similar to the US exemption rulemaking procedure, which occurs every 3 years and adds exemptions to the DMCA in an effort to mitigate its many unintended consequences.

Summary of exemption rulemakings so far

In my opinion, the US exemption rulemaking procedure does not have a stellar track record. To show this, I’ll go through some examples:

Watching DVDs with free software

In 2000, during the first rulemaking process, several proposals were made to exempt Linux DVD playing software such as DeCSS from the TPM provisions in the DMCA, such as Tim Lee’s proposal. Linux is an example of free software, which many people, including myself, choose to use because it provides us with more freedom than competing products.

The Librarian of Congress responded, denying free software users the right to play DVDs, claiming that “there is no unqualified right to access works on any particular machine or device of the user’s choosing” (despite free software being available to access DVDs). The ruling also states that “The reasonable availability of alternate operating systems (dual bootable) or dedicated players for televisions suggests that the problem is one of preference and inconvenience, and leads to the conclusion that an exemption is not warranted.”. In effect, the ruling informs free software users that they must purchase Windows or a stand-alone DVD player (in some cases necessitating a TV purchase as well), even though their computer is perfectly capable of playing DVDs.

In DVDs and TPMs: how often is CSS used? I showed that about 98% of DVDs use CSS, which US courts have shown to be a technological measure under US law. And in What C-32 means for DVDs, I showed that libdvdcss (similar to DeCSS) is very likely to be illegal under Bill C-32. So we would have to rely on the exemption procedure to make free software DVD playing legal. And since the US refuses to grant free software users the right to play DVDs, it is likely that the Canadian exemption process would be similarly uncooperative.

Watching foreign or public domain DVDs; skipping DVD ads

In 2003, during the second rulemaking process, the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted four exemption proposals, which would allow people to:

1. Play copy-protected audio CDs that malfunction to prevent playback
2. View foreign region-coded DVD movies on U.S. players
3. Fast-forward through unskippable commercials prior to movies on DVDs
4. Play and make full use of public domain movies on DVDs

In its 2006 rulemaking decision, the Librarian of Congress rejected all four of the above proposals for various reasons, similar to those listed in the previous section. Twenty other proposals were also rejected, including the Linux DVD playing exemption that was proposed as in the 2000 rulemaking process. Only four proposals were approved.

Having used a Blu-ray Disc containing over 10 minutes of unskippable pre-roll ads, I can see why an exemption for skipping ads is required. Denying such a simple and frustration-relieving exemption does not inspire confidence in the rulemaking process.

“Failing Consumers Completely”

In 2005, because of the many legitimate exemption proposals that the Librarian of Congress rejected, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) declined to submit proposals in the 2006 rulemaking process and instead published a paper entitled DMCA Triennial Rulemaking: Failing the Digital Consumer. In it, the EFF describes various problems with the rulemaking process, such as these:

Any digital consumer interested in participating meaningfully in the DMCA rulemaking process must first decipher a bewildering array of legal arcana and independently gather considerable evidence. Rather than receiving public comments and engaging in independent fact-finding, as many administrative agencies do, the Copyright Office has instead laid a heavy burden on the shoulders of those seeking DMCA exemptions

The Copyright Office has also established a number of presumptions that discount the legitimate concerns of digital consumers. First, the Copyright Office has said that exemptions will not be granted so long as a work remains available in an unprotected format, even if that unprotected format imposes additional costs and inconvenience on consumers. Second, the Copyright Office has been stubbornly indifferent when DRM restrictions impose increased costs on lawful activities. Third, the Copyright Office has effectively established a general presumption against all lawful consumer activities that do not strike the Office as being sufficiently “important,” repeatedly dismissing consumer concerns as “mere inconveniences.” Finally, the Copyright Office routinely presumes (on the basis of no independent evidence and contrary to the logic of the free market) that, but for the continued legal inviolability of the DRM technologies that protect them, many forms of digital media would simply be withheld from the market by copyright owners.

The Copyright Office has turned these settled fair use principles on their head in the DMCA rulemaking process. Rather than treating fair use as a forward-looking, evolving regime, the Copyright Office has made it backward-looking, effectively barring courts from addressing the fair use implications of new digital consumer technologies in the 21st century.

The 2006 rulemaking process went on without the EFF’s comments and yet again the Librarian of Congress rejected many legitimate proposals, including (you guessed it) playing DVDs on Linux.

July 2010: Still no 2009 rulemaking decision

The Librarian of Congress usually publishes a rulemaking decision in October or November of the rulemaking year. In 2009, the Librarian of Congress instead chose to postpone the rulemaking indefinitely: “the existing regulation…[shall] be amended on an interim basis to strike the reference to the October 27, 2009, termination date for the list of classes of works identified in the regulation.”. According to the document, the Register of Copyrights “is in the final stages of making her recommendation to the Librarian of Congress” for the 2009 rulemaking process. As of today (July 5, 2010), there is still no decision (see the rulemaking web site), effectively denying the US public of using any potential new exemptions for over 7 months with no end in sight.

Conclusion and recommendations

The US exemption rulemaking process is plagued with problems that make it virtually useless for its intended purpose. The Canadian government should not rely on a procedure like this to fix problems introduced by Bill C-32 after it has passed. Instead, the government should fix C-32 while it is still under consideration.

Fixing C-32 is not difficult. As I have recommended (along with many others during the consultation process), “it is imperative that any TM anti-circumvention provisions added to Canadian copyright law are directly linked to copyright infringement and that the creation, use, distribution, and import of circumvention tools are not restricted in any way”. This means that a given circumvention action would only be illegal if it was done for the purpose of infringing copyright and that the tools required to legitimately circumvent digital locks would be available for those who need to use them, such as free software users. Modifying C-32 to follow these guidelines would avoid the vast majority of unintended consequences that the bill would otherwise have.

I hope that my recommendations will be implemented when Bill C-32 goes to committee. I would be happy to discuss my thoughts with government representatives. I have a meeting pending with my MP, but I would also be pleased to talk to anyone close to the matter. Feel free to use my contact page to start a conversation or arrange a phone call.

Is it legal to jailbreak an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch under Bill C-32? By jailbreaking, I mean what is described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreaking_for_iOS , not merely SIM unlocking. If jailbreaking is legal, which exception to the anti-circumvention laws makes it legal?

Denver

And the response:

Under the Copyright Act, there is no prohibition against “jailbreaking” an iPad or similar device.

Whether a particular technology, such as one used to prevent the running of non-approved applications on an iPad or similar device, would be captured by the TPM provisions would depend on whether it meets the definition of TPM in the Bill. This would be up to Canadian courts to interpret.

Bill C-32 also includes regulatory powers that enable the government to set out exceptions to the TPM provisions, for instance if it considers that the provisions would unduly restrict competition in an aftermarket sector. In the United States, which has a similar mechanism for introducing exceptions to its TPM prohibitions, an exemption has been proposed in relation to jailbreaking smart phones, like the iPhone.

Erik Waddell
Director of Communications
Office of the Honourable Tony Clement

Background on response’s points

By “regulatory powers that enable the government to set out exceptions to the TPM provisions”, I believe that Mr. Waddell is referring to the proposed Section 41.21 in Bill C-32, which begins “The Governor in Council may make regulations excluding from the application of section 41.1 any technological protection measure…if the Governor in Council considers that the application of that section to the technological protection measure…would unduly restrict competition in the aftermarket sector in which the technological protection measure is used.”.

The United States’ “similar mechanism for introducing exceptions to its TPM prohibitions” likely means the process spelled out in 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(C), which says “during each succeeding 3-year period, the Librarian of Congress…shall make the determination in a rulemaking proceeding…of whether persons who are users of a copyrighted work are…adversely affected by the prohibition under subparagraph (A) ['No person shall circumvent a technological measure'] in their ability to make noninfringing uses…of a particular class of copyrighted works”. Bill C-32 also describes a periodic review process in Section 58 of the bill, which will replace Section 92 of the Copyright Act: “at the end of each…period of five years, a committee…is to be designated or established for the purpose of reviewing this Act.”.

The exemption that “has been proposed in relation to jailbreaking smart phones” in the United States probably refers to the first of Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s three proposals in the 2009 rulemaking proceeding to exempt “Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute lawfully obtained software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications with computer programs on the telephone handset.”.

Additional notes

To be clear, my question was meant to broadly refer to all situations where a hardware and/or software vendor artificially restricts what software can be run on top of its products. I used the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch as a specific example because it’s currently the most visible example of such a situation.

I will be posting another article discussing the US exemption rulemaking procedure shortly. It will further expand on the material in this article to examine how effective such a procedure would be in Canada. Update: I’ve posted the article: Will exemption rulemaking work for C-32?.

• Pioneer One Episode 1 in Ogg (Theora/Vorbis) – 720p (437 MiB)
• Pioneer One Episode 1 in WebM (VP8/Vorbis) – 720p (265 MiB)

The Theora/Vorbis version will work in Google Chrome/Chromium or Firefox while the WebM version works primarily with pre-release browsers. You may need to use this wrapper page to view the WebM version in-browser.

Transcoding steps

Since not many people are familiar with the process of transcoding (converting from one set of codecs to another), I thought it would be helpful to share the methods I used for converting Pioneer One into Theora/Vorbis and WebM. It’s really not as hard as it sounds and it’s gotten a lot easier recently with pretty graphical tools.

Theora/Vorbis

While not graphical, ffmpeg2theora is an extremely simple tool that quickly converts video from a wide range of formats into Theora and Vorbis (see the WebM section below for graphical transcoding tools). I chose to use the June 20 nightly ptalarbvorm version (ptalarbvorm is like the new Thusnelda, basically a drastically improved encoder), which is available on the nightly builds page. I ran it from the command line like this:

$ ./ffmpeg2theora-ptalarbvorm.linux -o Pioneer.One.S01E01.720p.theora-VODO.ogv Pioneer.One.S01E01.720p.x264-VODO/Pioneer.One.S01E01.720p.x264-VODO.mkv

The builds page has binaries for Windows, Linux, and OS X. Thanks to j for pointing out the ptalarbvorm build on the theora-dev list.

The whole transcoding process took 2 hours 15 minutes on my Core i5 670, resulting in a 437 MiB file, down from the 1118 MiB H.264 original. The quality of the Theora version looks pretty good so I’d say the ptalarbvorm encoder is quite competitive.

WebM

WebM is a very new video format, launched by Google on May 19 of this year, which I blogged about shortly after its release. Because it is quite new, the WebM transcoding tools are more bleeding-edge and less mature than Theora transcoding tools. However, the tools that are available are easy to use once you’ve found and installed them.

For virtually any WebM transcoder, you will need the latest version of the GStreamer libraries. If you run Ubuntu, you can add them quite easily using the PPA for GStreamer developers. Once you have the PPA added to your repositories, you should install the libvpx0 and gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad packages, otherwise transcoding tools are likely to complain about missing video/webm and video/x-vpx codecs (thanks to this post for noting the second package).

After the codecs are installed, you’ll need a transcoding tool. At first I tried Transmageddon, but the presets turned out sub-par audio. I ended up settling on Arista, a similar project that resulted in better-quality output. To get WebM support, you’ll need a newer version than what’s available in the Ubuntu repositories. I downloaded the latest version and then installed it manually. You can do this by extracting the archive and running sudo python setup.py install. I chose instead to install locally to avoid modifying my system files by using python setup.py install --home=$HOME/local and then running PYTHONPATH=$HOME/local/lib/python $HOME/local/bin/arista-gtk, but this isn’t required. In general, you can run Arista by using the command arista-gtk.

Once Arista is running, just select the Source (the video you want to transcode), the Device (Computer) and Preset (WebM) to get it to transcode to WebM. Then click “Add to Queue” and it will start transcoding, showing you the progress by displaying screenshots of where it is in the video.

Transcoding Pioneer One took about 1 hour and produced a 265 MiB file, a significant reduction from the 1118 MiB of the H.264 original. I did notice some popping in the audio so I think some sacrifices were made to achieve that size, but the video looks pretty similar to the original. Adjusting the encoding parameters would probably correct bugs like that. Over time, I suspect the WebM transcoding tools will become much more mature, allowing users to easily make WebM versions of videos that are indistinguishable from the original.

Arista will also transcode to Theora; just choose Theora instead of WebM in the Preset menu. I chose to use ffmpeg2theora because it allowed me to use a newer encoder; most people will be satisfied with GStreamer’s default Theora encoder.

Conclusion

Transcoding videos to free formats like Theora and WebM is a relatively painless procedure these days. There are a variety of transcoding tools that will convert videos without needing to tweak a bunch of settings. Video distributors should spend a few minutes to ensure their videos are available in free formats so that the widest possible audience can view them.

1. Do you know if CSS would be a TPM?

Bill C-32 implements the international standards set out in the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties, which require protection of “effective technological measures” used by copyright owners to prevent unauthorized use of their work.

Accordingly, whether CSS, or any technology, would be captured by the TPM provisions would depend on whether it meets the definition of TPM in the bill, specifically whether it effectively protects a work. It is worth noting that courts in other countries have already examined this question (including the US, which found that CSS was an effective TPM). It would be up to Canadian courts to interpret whether CSS is a protected TPM in Canada.

2. Do you know if libdvdcss would be illegal under C-32?

Under C-32 it would be illegal to sell or distribute devices that are designed primarily to circumvent a TPM. To determine if libdvdcss falls under this provision, a court would need to determine (i) that CSS is an effective TPM (as discussed in question 1) and (ii) whether libdvdcss is designed primarily to circumvent the CSS TPM.

Erik Waddell
Director of Communications
Office of the Honourable Tony Clement

While the response doesn’t clear up the issue definitively, I think it’s safe to say that Canadian courts would interpret the TPM provisions as the US courts have. This means that backing up or engaging in fair dealing would be prohibited for 98% of DVDs (see DVDs and TPMs… for how I arrived at this number) under Bill C-32.

I hope that the government will fix Bill C-32 before it is passed by tying the anti-circumvention laws directly to infringement (instead of having a blanket ban with a handful of exceptions like it does now) and removing the distribution restrictions on all circumvention devices as I recommended in my copyright consultation submission. With these changes, Bill C-32 would retain the fair dealing rights Canadians have today for engaging with digital content on DVDs and similarly-encumbered formats, yet it would still provide “adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures” as required by the WIPO Copyright Treaty that the government wishes to ratify with the bill.

• xentac: “with BillC32 can I buy DVDs and rip them…?”; Tony Clement: “So long as no TPM”
• Drew Wilson: “If you have a home movie recorded on a DVD and you back that movie up…, you’ve broken the anti-circumvention law.”; anonymous commenter: “This isn’t correct. Home movies you burn onto a DVD-R/RW are not CSS encrypted, only commercial DVDs are.”

By “CSS”, the anonymous commenter means Content Scramble System, an optional method of obfuscating the data on DVDs (what some would call DRM). CSS seems to be a “technological protection measure” (TPM) according to C-32 (“any effective technology, device or component that, in the ordinary course of its operation, controls access to a work…”) so I will proceed under this assumption. Hopefully someone closer to the bill can comment on the validity of this assumption.

To provide some clarity to the issue of which DVDs are encumbered by CSS (and thus could not be legally backed up or used for fair dealing under C-32), I analyzed 66 DVDs in my household’s DVD collection to determine if they used CSS. Here are the results:

DVDs encumbered by CSS

(illegal to backup or use for fair dealing under C-32)

Big Six and mini-majors

“Independent” studios

DVDs not encumbered by CSS

(legal to backup or use for fair dealing under C-32)

“Independent” studios

Summary

• Of the 66 DVDs tested, 57 (86.4%) were encumbered with CSS and 9 (13.6%) were CSS-free
• All of the 45 DVDs from the Big Six and mini-major film studios were encumbered with CSS (they are all illegal to backup or use for fair dealing under C-32)
• Of the 21 DVDs from “independent” studios (those that don’t appear to be directly linked to a Big Six or mini-major studio), 12 (57.1%) were encumbered with CSS and 9 (42.9%) were CSS-free

Conclusion

The use of CSS in DVDs is very prevalent, especially among the Big Six and mini-major film studios, which made up over 98.23% of the market in 2009 (adding the top 18 figures from Market Share for Each Distributor in 2009). Given this market share figure, the sample of DVDs I used in testing was disproportionately skewed toward toward “independent” studios, and thus had fewer CSS-encumbered DVDs than the average household’s DVD collection would have. I suspect that 98% of the DVDs in an average household’s collection would be encumbered by CSS and therefore would be illegal to backup or use for fair dealing under Bill C-32.

I agree with the anonymous poster who said that home movies are not encumbered by CSS and so they can be backed up legally under C-32. Adding CSS to a DVD is not done by default and is difficult to do, requiring a license from the DVD CCA.

Methodology

To determine whether a DVD used CSS or not, I wrote the following C program, which I linked with libdvdcss 1.2.10 and ran after inserting each DVD:

#include <dvdcss.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
        dvdcss_t dvd;

        dvd = dvdcss_open("/dev/cdrom");
        if (NULL == dvd) {
                printf("cannot open DVDn");
                return 1;
        }

        printf("scrambled (1=yes, 0=no): %dn", dvdcss_is_scrambled(dvd));
        dvdcss_close(dvd);

        return 0;
}

I obtained region code information from the debug output of libdvdcss that appeared when I ran the above program.

libdvdcss and Bill C-32

Ironically, downloading libdvdcss would likely become illegal in Canada under C-32 because it states “No person shall…import…any technology…if…the technology, device or component is designed or produced primarily for the purposes of circumventing a technological protection measure” (Section 47 of Bill C-32, proposed Section 41.1(1)(c)(i) of the Copyright Act). This is because the primary purpose of libdvdcss is to circumvent CSS (which I’m assuming is a TPM), even though it can be used for other purposes, such as checking whether a DVD uses CSS or not. I would appreciate clarification on this point from those close to the bill.

It’s important to note that the primary use case for libdvdcss is playing DVDs using free software, such as VLC, not to make illegitimate copies of DVDs. Because the DVD CCA will not provide a license for free software players (because they cannot comply with Section 6.2.4 of the CSS Procedural Specifications, which states “All implementations…shall include features clearly designed to effectively frustrate…attempts to discover decrypted confidential CSS Keys”), people who wish to play CSS-encumbered DVDs with free software must necessarily circumvent the CSS.

A major reason for publishing the above list of DVDs which use CSS is that I couldn’t find an existing online source that provided similar information. Perhaps it is because of the effective ban on libdvdcss in the US due to the DMCA that such information is not more widely available. It is important for those considering new laws to consider these and other unintended consequences of anti-circumvention clauses. The EFF has compiled a detailed list of such unintended consequences of the DMCA: Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA. Perhaps we can learn from the US’ mistakes.

Ubiquity in web browsers

The most critical factor for a video format’s success is how many people can view it. Within a year, over 90% of web users will have a WebM-compatible player in their web browser. This is primarily because Adobe is adding VP8 support to Flash. As most users of Adobe Flash Player update regularly and about 93% of web users have Flash, Adobe’s VP8 support alone should push WebM usage share close to 90%. Once one factors in all the WebM-capable browsers: Firefox, Opera, and Chromium, that figure will easily pass 90%.

Perhaps most importantly, the ubiquity of WebM decoders in web browsers will allow web developers to deliver their content using a single, royalty-free codec, which has previously been quite complicated. With Flash support for WebM, a developer can simply place a <video> tag around a Flash embed, ensuring that both WebM-supporting browsers and browsers without intrinsic WebM support (such as Internet Explorer and Safari) but with Flash will be able to view the video. By using a single royalty-free codec, web developers can avoid the hassle of encoding their videos in both H.264 and Theora (as is currently required for complete coverage) while at the same time freeing themselves of the legal shackles imposed by H.264.

While not all software players have official timelines for WebM support, it seems very likely that within a year, all of the software I mentioned will support WebM. Relatedly, I hope that Adobe will clarify their stance on WebM support as their public record endorses VP8, but not the Vorbis audio codec, which is required to fully support the WebM format, a combination of the two. Assuming Adobe Flash Player gets full WebM support, Adobe will have finally implemented the solution I proposed to fragmented codec support, for which I applaud them. This would give Flash a second royalty-free audio codec, Vorbis, in addition to the Speex codec it already supports.

Implementations for mobile devices

One of the big reasons Theora hasn’t become more widely-adopted is its relative lack of support among mobile devices. No cell phone I’m aware of ships with a Theora decoder by default. Firefox for the N900 renders Theora, but its implementation is not optimized for the hardware, making even 320×240 video difficult to decode in real-time.

WebM is launching with a long list of mobile hardware manufacturers that will support the effort, including ARM, Broadcom, MIPS, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. Broadcom plans to launch WebM support in its VideoCore chips in Q3 2010 while Android will support WebM in Q4 2010. This will give WebM a major foothold in the mobile markets, something which no royalty-free video format has had before.

Hurdles

Neither Microsoft nor Apple has indicated they will ship WebM support in their operating systems or mobile phones. On the desktop side, this won’t be an issue since Flash’s WebM support will make up for Windows’ and Mac OS’ WebM deficiency. However, on the mobile side, the iPhone’s 15% market share could pose a problem if Apple refuses to support WebM. Note that Apple and Microsoft will support WebM for browser video playback (just as they currently support Theora), but only if the appropriate codecs are installed, which is often too much hassle for the average user.

WebM does not appear to specify profiles currently, as H.264 does, which could limit its usefulness in the mobile space where guarantees on decoding complexity are important for rendering smooth video consistently. It seems that WebM is still under development so this situation may be remedied in the future.

Learning from Theora

Theora will remain an important codec for the foreseeable future, as web sites and browsers transition to WebM. While the quality of Theora videos is demonstrably on par with H.264, many leaders of the web choose to believe otherwise, instead claiming Theora takes up too much bandwidth and H.264 is “a vast improvement in quality-per-bit over Theora”. With attitudes like these and with no help from Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, or hardware manufacturers, Theora was unable to gain the momentum needed to become a dominant player in web video. Thanks to a large corporate backer that can afford to pay for the necessary hardware and software implementations, a new brand with no bad press or preconceived notions of inferiority, and its royalty-free nature (allowing it to be used in Firefox and Opera), WebM will over time replace H.264 as the new de facto standard for web video.