Well, "doing without" is certainly the principled stand. But there is a lot of (almost certain, moderate) pleasure hiding behind one of door #1 (EME) or door #2 (torrent), and it is difficult indeed to go through door #3, (not this pleasure).

I fully expect torrenting to be made impossible or obscenely impractical and cumbersome inside the next couple decades. The rightsholders are too politically connected, and the general populace too apathetic and ignorant.

For doing without to work, all browsers must agree to do without. As soon as one browser ships it and people prefer browsers that can stream Netflix, everyone else must follow suit or wallow in obscurity.

Microsoft and Google make CDMs; no one else had a chance in this fight.

If I follow, you're implying browsers that hypothetically refused to work with Netflix's DRM would wallow in obscurity.

While probably correct since the majority of users do seem to like Netflix, others ignore Netflix and get their media through, shall we say more "obscure" sources. Such an obscure browser would seem to suit their needs just fine. Tor Browser doesn't need to be popular among the masses for those who use it to find lots of value in using it, for example.

I think you're missing the point here: the minority of users simply do not matter. If Mozilla wants Firefox to remain a browser with large market share, it must implement standards that allow DRM. And that's what they want. They don't want to be obscure like Tor Browser. They want to be popular, and they want to have political clout and influence over standards bodies.

That doesn't remove the ability of a minority of users to use something different and make use of the more "obscure" sources, but it does allow the majority of non-technical users who don't care one bit about all this to play the content they want, and in a way that protects their security much better than the old plugin-based approach.