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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Microsoft sacrificed backwards compatibility with Vista and look where that got them...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
WHat would the web gain if Mozilla lost most of its user base? Could we trust Apple, Microsoft and Google to have a moral backbone?
edit: Mozilla needs to cultivate its brand, and set itself apart from the other browsers through actual differences in philosophy. Maybe they need a John Legere...
But the facts remain that the vast majority of users don't care about the philosophical differences. When Chrome and Internet Explorer started shipping EME, almost no one switched browser. When Snowden's revelations came out, almost no one switched browser. Etc. etc.
edit: clarified what i meant
Just not, you know, this one.
I understand why Mozilla is making this choice, but it's still the wrong one. I mean, seriously, DRM in the HTML spec, endorsed by Mozilla. I can't think of a bigger WTF.
I'm very much in agreement with Cory Doctorow that all these assertions that Mozilla will lose all its users if it doesn't implement EME have had no evidence to back them up. Almost no one is delivering EME-supported content, and all the cries of "IE and Chrome will leave us behind" fail to mention that's only IE11 and ChromeOS, so any company delivering only EME content would leave many more customers behind than just Firefox users.
At the very least doing this now instead of years from now when it might start mattering (like what happened with h.264) does not exactly demonstrate sticking to their guns.
The reasoning is actually very sound in my opinion. It is true that EME is not a major force on desktop yet. But, Netflix - the most popular streaming video service - has written an EME player. It is moving towards that, and the hollywood studios as well. Those studios will not support anything but EME.
Currently Flash is supported by the studios, to some extent. But even that is problematic - Flash has dropped Linux support and is not present on mobile. Not only is EME being pushed by Netflix, Hollywood, Google and Microsoft, but also Flash is no fallback.
The result is that soon you will need EME to view Netflix. People will not use a browser that does not support Netflix. It's a simple as that. Yes, there are some principled people that refuse to use DRMed content, and those people are already not using EME-supporting browsers like Chrome and Internet Explorer, but look at their market share. The principled people are a tiny minority. That is the problem.
Netflix ended 2013 with 44 million subscribers, by their own numbers [1], with a target of reaching and stablilising at 90 million.
That's it: 90 million out of an online population of around 2.5 billion, or around 4%.
Do you make business decisions on the basis of 4% of your potential ( non-paying ) audience?
1: http://business.time.com/2014/01/22/netflix-number-of-subscr...
2. This is a growing area - we don't need to care just about current numbers but the trend. The trend is clear: Hollywood wants EME DRM on all content.
3. 44 million out of 2.5 billion sounds like a little, but is not the best way to calculate things. Netflix doesn't even sell a service in most of the countries those 2.5 billion are in. In countries like the US, Netflix is large and growing, and especially heavily represented among younger internet-savvy people (who are the heaviest browser users). So your calculation is very much an underestimate.
How have those worked out for us?
Not to well...
Mozilla should do some A/B testing; release a browser with the module and without. See which gets the most traction.
As a flat out statement, that is false. Some people will use a browser that doesn't support netflix, namely those people that don't subscribe to netflix.
The question becomes HOW MANY People will not use a browser that does not support Netflix.
The point is, there was no data provided to use to answer that question.
We can't predict the specific number but we don't need to - we can very reasonably expect it to be large.
Ah, but the flipside:
Doing this now, as opposed to years from now when the technology is established, gives Mozilla more influence over the form that this DRM takes, the protections that are available to consumers and the marketplace in general.
So glad they got in on the ground floor instead of continuing to work to never have it enter the spec at all.
I hope we get more from Mozilla than hardware fingerprints that aren't trackable across services. I hope we get a lot more.
They should put as much energy into propagating their ideas as into redesigning the interface to look like a Chrome knockoff. Cultivate some dial-a-pundits that TV people can count on for an opinion about the Internet. Have a thinktank. Aggressively fundraise. Expanding the userbase is the answer, not chasing corporate behemoths.
More generally, Mozilla's ability to influence the web away from DRM, as well as privacy invasions, stems entirely from the ability of Mozilla to deliver a product that users want. Making sure that users can't watch $YourFavoriteShow would be a pretty dumb move when all other major browsers have taken the necessary steps to make sure that their users have no such limitation.
Cultivating "dial-a-pundits", as you call them, would be nice, and we certainly take every opportunity we can to express our views on just about everything web-related. And this specific battler (DRM in web browsers) has been fought and lost. We need to regroup, cut the losses and reorder to fight the next battle.
If you wish to help fight DRMs, please make as many people as you can aware of the dangers of DRMs. Also, justa s importantly, we need to convince Hollywood that DRMs are costly and unsatisfying. For this, we need to develop and showcase alternatives, that users will use. This is the only way.
Because we can't fight Google + Apple + Microsoft + Netflix + Hulu + Hollywood on the lobbying front. We just don't have the means.
(Yeah, I'm a Firefox Dev.)
This is opposite the choice somebody would make if they were philosophically opposed to DRM.
(But I don't agree, that was just to make the larger point.)
You're presenting a false dichotomy: "Either Mozilla doesn't compromise anywhere, or they might as well go away". Things aren't black and white.
Besides, I think the argument is more "Either Mozilla doesn't compromise where it's important not to, or they might as well go away", which is a true statement. Mozilla does need to continue to exist, and compromise is fundamental to the web (it's right there in their manifesto), but this was something that should have been fought tooth and nail. The protest of this mostly involved sternly written emails to W3C lists, when it should have been simply not implementing it and holding that ground until it was clear no alternatives were viable and imminent harm was actually demonstrated.
I was making the point that 1 of 4 is still useful. Obviously it is less useful than fighting 4 of 4 or 3 of 4.
P.S. John Legere is full of shit. He's just rebranding a terrible company in an industry where all of the companies are terrible. Its a matter of survival, not ideology.
The have compromised them because they feel they need to do this to maintain relevancy. Principles are of little use without power.
To those that say: Mozilla changed the web once, they can do it again. I say: Mozilla didn't change the web by resisting change, but by embracing it and finding better solutions.
I think we should be spending less time condemning Mozilla for compromising, and more time finding ways that Mozilla can use their power to solve the huge problems that are created by DRM.
Also chasing popularity is like chasing money. It shouldn't be the goal. Those things follow after doing the right thing, and I believe for an organization with the kind of community and userbase Firefox has around it, not implementing DRM would've been the "right" thing to do.
- do the work to implement the DRM thing but keep it disabled ready to hot patch in once evidence shows that they'll be fucked without it
- display "this is bullshit DRM content you shouldn't support, read more HERE, and click HERE if you really don't care and will use another browser to view this anyway" in place of the DRM content initially
etc.
Immediately giving in is hardly "dragged kicking and screaming".
Also: > - do the work to implement the DRM thing but keep it disabled ready to hot patch in once evidence shows that they'll be fucked without it
So when do we decide that? After we have lost our user base? Or when it becomes evident that just almost everybody is already watching movies on the web using proprietary blackboxes that may or may not use DRM, may or may not identify you and may or may not leak your info? Because that has been the case for quite a few years already.
> - display "this is bullshit DRM content you shouldn't support, read more HERE, and click HERE if you really don't care and will use another browser to view this anyway" in place of the DRM content initially
So, lecture users and invite them to change browser? That doesn't sound like a good strategy.
Diversify your sources and wean yourself off the Google teat. Even if Google does outbid everyone, profit shouldn't be the primary motivator at the Mozilla Foundation.
Wikipedia might not be the most glamorous of sites but they are a shining example of what it means to not compromise on your values. Those people are starving while Mozilla employees go to the bank - that is true courage and power. The power to not let profit be the absolute driver of your ambitions and values.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/326500.html
Damn. Thanks for that, had no idea and have probably used it once or twice. Back into passive vocabulary you go. (Non-native english yada yada)
It's the same BS I remember reading on slides from graphics card vendors excusing some other way of selling the user down the river.
Content can adapt to reach their customers. Bend here and the web itself is under threat.
Mozilla needs a social contract like Debian, since it seems clear they can't rely on leadership for backbone.