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Comment by Silhouette | Hacker News Reader

Bend here and the web itself is under threat.

Don't bend here and Mozilla itself could be under threat.

DRM exists, many major content providers have shown little interest in releasing their material without a mechanism for preventing casual copying (and you can hardly blame them), and accessing multimedia downloads is an increasingly important function of the Web. Denying that reality isn't going to achieve anything useful.

As much as Mozilla might like to take a principled stand, the fact is that they aren't important enough to force this issue. If someone can't access content in Firefox, they don't not access the content, they just use another browser. The content provider still served their content, the user still watched it, and it was still DRM'd. The only practical difference is that Mozilla lost a user.

You fight the battles you can win. There is no way Mozilla could win this one.

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What's more important Mozilla or the web? This is a case where Mozilla thinks that by sticking around they can do more good than by killing this particular attack on the free web. Can we justify this completely? IMHO, no. Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it. Of course nobody at Mozilla will see it that way. Organizations are made of people and whatever the organization's mission is, the people are foremost concerned with one thing: self-preservation through preservation of the organization.

> Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it.

Except, if Mozilla had committed "ritualistic suicide" over EME, it wouldn't have taken EME with it. Users would move to every other browser with HTML5 DRM implemented, Mozilla would die accomplishing nothing.

A world with entrenched HTML5 DRM & Mozilla strikes me as strictly preferable to a world without Mozilla in which HTML5 DRM is just as entrenched.

But... Mozilla IS irrelevent without it's differentiating principles.

Microsoft sacrificed backwards compatibility with Vista and look where that got them...

EFF is basically Walter Sobchack in this scenario to Mozilla's dude.

EFF: Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the open web? Dude. This is it. Let's take that hill!

Mozilla: what's the point, man? why should I die on this hill?

EFF: it's a fucking important hill dude. Unchecked DRM aggression.

Mozilla: what about my browser market share?

EFF: What the fuck are you talking about? Browser share is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT...

Mozilla: Well, the problem is... They're gonna kill my browser share! Man!

Donny is the open web I guess. His death was predestined by circumstances and certainly not the Dude's fault. Also, I think it would be best if no one tells the EFF how DNS works.

Mozilla: Goddammit EFF, you fucking asshole. Everything's a fucking travesty with you man!

EFF: I'm sorry, it was an accident.

Mozilla: What was that shit about the open web? What the fuck does anything have to do with the open web?

EFF: Dude, I'm sorry...

Mozilla: What the fuck are you talking about?

EFF: Dude, I'm sorry...

Mozilla: Fucking... fuck, EFF.

EFF: Come on, dude. Hey, fuck it, man, let's go bowling.

Or, by forcing developers to provide a DRM-free alternative Mozilla would bring about a competing technology that would at a later date come to dominate and kill the DRM proposal.

The problem is not that there's no DRM-free alternative, it's that major content owners would prefer no HTML5 solution to a DRM-free HTML5 solution. There is literally nothing Mozilla can do about that. People who want to do DRM-free HTML5 video already can, but that's not the problem.

I wouldn't switch to another browser just because Mozilla doesn't implement DRM. In fact that strikes me as completely the wrong reason to switch to another browser. Continuing to use Mozilla and boycotting services that use DRM is a more reasonable approach. The good news is there will likely be an extension and/or custom build of Firefox that removes the DRM. Of course this means we won't be able to watch the DRMed videos until someone cracks the encryption, but if we're boycotting them then that means we weren't going to watch them anyway.

The content providers start blocking firefox from accessing their content. It will eventually be easier to use chrome, IE, or whatever instead of using a work around to keep on firefox. It will lose a large portion of its user base and then its funding as it won't bring in as much from default search provider contracts etc

That's even more of a reason to boycott them and keep using Firefox.

But I want to watch my netflix without having to jump through more hoops than I do already (running it on Linux).

And I know my family who is not tech savvy will just have to move to a browser that allows Youtube, Netflix, and whatever else requires this DRM.

I don't like it but I don't think firefox would make it otherwise.

There is no simple answer. The only thing I can suggest is to just stop using Netflix until someone cracks it, or they decide to stop using DRM. This isn't your fault, it's Netflix and Hollywood's fault, their use of DRM is blackmail on their entire customer base. As in the case of any blackmail, the best option is to stand your ground and not give in.

> This is a case where Mozilla thinks that by sticking around they can do more good than by killing this particular attack on the free web.

How can Mozilla kill it? It simply doesn't have the power, faced with Google, Microsoft and Apple implementing EME.

Yes, Mozilla could have taken a pure, principled stance and avoided EME. Perhaps some thoughtful people would use Firefox for that reason. But those same thoughtful people would have boycotted Chrome and Internet Explorer when they started to ship EME.

There has been no such boycott. If we - the people on the web - wanted to stop EME, that would have been the only way. Mozilla can't do it if the people don't want to.

This is the truth. There has been no effective movement against DRM. The EFF is more guilty than Mozilla in this case because fighting DRM is a core function of the EFF's, while adapting to established web standards is Mozilla's primary function.

Yeah, I wish the EFF had done more, and I wonder what would have happened if the EFF had taken a more aggressive strategy to fight EME a while back.

You are completely and utterly wrong here.

I don't even know how you arrived at this conclusion. The EFF was fighting this with education of the public, procedural maneuverings within the W3C itself, and with invited commentary to the relevant standards groups. Mozilla was also doing these things, and, contrary to what you might assume living in our tech bubble, has a pulpit with far greater reach than the EFF.

But then they implemented the damn thing--which, by the way, is not a standard yet--in their browser.

But, please, tell me exactly what the EFF is guilty of. They might have failed, but that's a very different thing.

The only way to have stopped EME would have been to get Google and Microsoft, it's creators and promoters, to stop pushing it.

The only way to do that would be to affect their bottom line, such as people refusing to use their browsers if they ship EME.

That would have been the only campaign with a chance of stopping EME. Mozilla couldn't lead it - it would look self-serving ("how convenient, a browser vendor wants us to boycott its rivals"). The EFF as a respected third party could have.

That would have been our only hope.

I'm not sure how you think blaming everyone but Mozilla isn't self-serving or convenient.

Mozilla is still against DRM, but it is secondary to their mission to provide access to web standards. The EFF's lack of effectiveness is not a defense. They do good work, but more is needed. In this case, it's not fair to point the finger for a joint loss.

> Perhaps the whole existence of Mozilla was leading up to this point where it could commit ritualistic suicide and take this DRM proposal with it.

The only reason Mozilla taking a "we will not do it" approach to EME would be suicide (ritual or otherwise) would be if doing so would fail to derail the adoption of EME. If users would abandon Mozilla over not supporting EME (well, not supporting the sites that require it), then, sure, it would be suicide -- but it would be suicide because the sites demanding EME would be important enough to users that they would abandon Mozilla and Mozilla's usage-dependent revenue stream would dry up.

If Mozilla could derail EME by refusing to implement, that would also mean it wouldn't be suicide.

many major content providers have shown little interest in releasing their material without a mechanism for preventing casual copying (and you can hardly blame them)

I can and do blame them and I say: let them die like the dinosaurs they are. The world will be better off without them. Mozilla refusing to implement DRM would have been one nail in the dinosaur's coffin.

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