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The Chrome team says they're not going to pursue Web Integrity but...

it is piloting a new Android WebView Media Integrity API that’s “narrowly scoped, and only targets WebViews embedded in apps.”

They say its because the team "heard your feedback." I'm sure that's true, and I can wildly speculate that all the current anti-trust attention was a factor too.

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[-] poopkins@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

The Media Integrity API is something that streaming video services want and applies only to Android apps that are built on web technologies. This has nothing to do with conventional web experiences or even the Chrome browser on Android: it's effectively a solution for when media is served on webpages that are embedded inside an Android app.

Typically an Android app will use native libraries like ExoPlayer to request and serve DRM content, for instance a video from a paid streaming service to ensure that the viewer is permitted to watch it. Chrome is built on top of open video codecs and doesn't inherently support DRM in this manner (as far as I'm aware), so if an app developer wants to use web technologies by leveraging a WebView, they are restricted to which codecs and DRM is available.

It's my understanding that this new library offers a solution to such developers. As a reminder, this doesn't apply to the web at large.

From my perspective, this is no different than DRM offerings that are supported natively in all operating systems, including Android, iOS, Mac and Windows.

[-] bobo@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but they were testing the waters with this one. The hydra's going to grow another head eventually. It'll be interesting to see how/if the media integrity API gets leveraged in the Android Chrome browser. They're eventually going to attack this problem from a slightly different angle.

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this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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