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.
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.