I now have a trilogy of articles about why you shouldn’t use Google Chrome and Chrome-like browsers, great. This isnt’ a good thing, but here we are. The first part was a history lesson from the age of Internet Explorer dominance. The second was about Manifest v3 and the crippling of ad blocking. And now, the finale is about web DRM and internet gatekeeping. The story arc just keeps getting worse.
What’s DRM?
DRM (Digital Rights Management) is “technology” that (tries to) prevents piracy. For example, you can’t freely download a movie from Netflix and share it. You can’t give a copy of a digital game to a friend. That would lead to bankruptcy of many businesses. DRM prevents illegally distributing digital files to protect publishers and developers of work.
There’s a problem with how DRM is enforce though. It’s very excessive without being effective, and even harms the people that pay fairly. Things such as:
- A single player video game requiring internet connection to play
- Or not allowing you to change your hardware
- Printers only accepting official, recently made, expensive ink cartridges
- Companies preventing devices from working when parts aren’t replaced by their repair service
- A “downloaded” Youtube premium video being deleted when removed from Youtube servers
DRM went from “discouraging users from pirating” to “you will play by our rules and buy our products and services”. It ruins everything it touches, and the people who pay/use fairly are abused the most.
For example, some games use a program called Denuvo for DRM. Denuvo makes changing your hardware difficult, requires internet connection, has kernel-level access (meaning it has access to everything on your system, basically malware), can reduce game performance by a noticeable amount, and can make benign modding difficult.
One hardware reviewer, Daniel Owen, was trying to benchmark a game with Denuvo in it. He had to try multiple hardware configurations to gather data, but the game thought he was using too many different machines and blocked access to the game. He paid fairly for the game and was abiding by the rules.
Denuvo is disabled in a pirated game; you can play it offline, there is no performance penalty, and you can play it on any hardware. A pirated movie can be freely shared and isn’t restricted to just streaming. DRM harms the people that pay fairly and doesn’t do anything to someone who illegally obtained something, it’s very ironic. I have a policy to avoid buying any game with Denuvo in it, no matter how much I like it.
What about DRM on the web?
A while ago, a few Google engineers wrote a proposal for implementing DRM on the web. If you want the technical details, here’s the Github repository for this proposal. I recommend looking at the “Issues” page, it’s quite the read. The important part from the repo is:
Allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device
Here’s a simplified English translation:
A website gets a gatekeeper to determine if a visitor is “trustworthy” or not, based on the visitor’s device
It’s basically an airport security check, but to see if you can make Google ad revenue instead of safety. For example, things that can deem someone “untrustworthy” might be:
- Not using a Chromium-based browser (more on this later)
- Using an ad blocker or unapproved browser extensions
- Using an unapproved OS (Linux, rooted Android)
- Not using Google-approved hardware
- An outdated phone or computer (planned obsolescence)
- A device without Google backdoors built into it
Like the translation says, Google is basically becoming an internet gatekeeper. If they don’t like what your device is running, they can block you from accessing the site. This is a huge problem.
Google already dominates the internet. Web apps are sometimes hard coded for Chromium-based browsers, Google determines what file formats become the standard (WebP and JPEGXL), most internet traffic goes to Google services (Google search, Youtube, Google Drive, Maps, etc.), Google is responsible for a lot of internet data harvesting and ads, and they bend web standards to their will. The only thing Google is missing is absolute control over the internet, and that’s what web DRM will lead to.
Who is affected by this?
Literally everyone. If you use an ad blocker or non-Chromium browser, Google is trying to make you use their tech, whether you like it or not. I don’t like Google, so I’m certainly against this.
I use Chrome without an ad blocker, why should I care about this?
Even if you’re playing by Google’s rules, the company is basically eliminating any alternatives you could switch to one day. Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? It’s like wondering why anyone should be care about privacy if you have nothing to hide. Google is trying to kill off freedom; the freedom to choose your browser, the freedom to use whatever OS you want, the freedom to block annoying ads, and the freedom to browser the web without tracking. I want that freedom. You should too. If you don’t, you’re admitting that you’re Google cattle.
are you paranoid?
No, I’m just worried about the implications of web DRM. The point is that Google has the potential to completely dominate the internet with web DRM. Wouldn’t you be worried if a controversial law or regulation was enforced? It could negatively affect people, or it could not. I want the choice to not have to worry about it.
Escaping Chromium
The only real long-term solution is a pipe dream. Simply put, people need to use Firefox or Safari. Any other browser is still Chromium-based.
What is Chromium?
Chromium is an open source browser developed by Google. Chrome is a proprietary browser based off of this. Modern web browsers are extremely complicated, that’s why most browsers tend to use Chromium as their base; it’s an active project and takes care of the hard work. Some big browsers that are basically reskinned Chromium are:
- Edge
- Opera
- Brave
- Vivaldi
If you use a browser isn’t Firefox or Safari, it’s probably Chromium-based. So if you don’t use the two non-Chromium browsers, you’re still using Google technology. And since most people don’t use macOS for a laptop or desktop, you need to use Firefox or a derivative browser. The less people use Google technology, the less power they have. Google won’t be able to enforce “standards” like web DRM if they were weaker.
Want to get started? Download Firefox. Are you stubborn and want to use Apple software? At least use Safari on all your devices. Each person that leaves Chromium is one more person resisting Google.
Why a pipe dream?
Let’s be honest, normies don’t care about web DRM. They probably don’t even know what DRM is, let alone Chromium and browser engines. People instinctively gravitate towards Chrome or whatever Chromium-based browser they use. Convincing billions of people to change their personal habits is impossible. This is just my rant into a void, to a hypothetical reader who is interested in this topic. It would be great if Chrome’s market share decreased. Google already has too much power, and Firefox really needs a resurgence to stay alive.
This is my last anti-Chrome article. I know things will likely get worse, but I don’t see the point in writing further. I won’t be surprised if Google mandates Chromium firmware in CPU microcode and UEFI in the future. In the worst case timeline when web DRM is enforced, I’m going to cut down on my internet traffic considerably or become a Gemini refugee. If you’re a cool person that uses Chromium-based browsers, I hope you switch. Don’t use a Chromium-based browser, use a based browser.