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Comment by calcifer | Hacker News Reader

Can we at least stop with the FUD please?

> DRM

EME is not DRM, it's a fully open source spec to support third-party DRM modules. If you don't actively choose to install a DRM module, there is no DRM in your Firefox.

> 3-rd party apps

Like what? Pocket is fully owned by Mozilla.

> analytics, tracking

So far this has been 100% opt-in. It might change with this new thing, but even that's not for certain.

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> Can we at least stop with the FUD please?

Please don't use uncivil internet tropes on HN. If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully. Your comment would be fine without the first sentence, but experience unfortunately teaches that flamebait has more impact than its accompanying substance does.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15072694 and marked it off-topic.

> Can we at least stop with the FUD please?

Can we please stop with using the word FUD for things that are not? The very idea of accepting DRM as a possibility in the browser was a slap in the face to those who believe in internet freedom.

> Like what? Pocket is fully owned by Mozilla.

Check your facts: it was added to FF 1.5 years before Mozilla bought it. It was an example of them just not giving a shit and adding it anyway.

> So far this has been 100% opt-in.

Check your facts: the Google Analytics in the extensions page that I linked is explicitly "opt-out" and even that happened only because people found out about it and (rightly) raised a stink.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753546 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=697436#c14

(And really, of all the analytics choices, they fucking picked Google Analytics?!)

Apparently Mozilla has a special deal with Google regarding their use of Analytics but it really doesn't make it that much better.

So freedom is not having the choice to use DRM?

I don't buy that argument, sorry. Because it requires something as anti-freedom as DRM to exist in the first place.

You would outlaw locks for the front doors of houses too?

No, because physical goods and 0's and 1's are not the same.

All 0's and 1's occupy real electrons in real space. They are not part of the ether. You are making a distinction between electronic information and the physical that is artificially derived.

I think perhaps you are saying that a pattern of information should not be locked up, but instantiations of a pattern can be.

DRM was already possible in browsers by using NPAPI or similar plugins. EME is no worse in that regard, and is from a technical perspective a much better solution.

Pocket's integration during that time amounted to a button which sent a request to a potentially useful service. Such buttons have existed in firefox long before pocket ever existed, and you are of course welcome to no click on them.

Pocket was included almost two years before the acquisition: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po... https://venturebeat.com/2015/06/09/mozilla-responds-to-firef...

> EME is not DRM, it's a fully open source spec to support third-party DRM modules

So, it exists only to facilitate DRM. And I could have sworn that it defaults to enabled?

> Pocket is fully owned by Mozilla

It wasn't when it was added.

>> analytics, tracking

> So far this has been 100% opt-in

Other than the Google Analytics on the add-on pane, maybe.

> And I could have sworn that it defaults to enabled?

It does not.

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