Mozilla had to be dragged into this acceptance kicking and screaming (metaphorically).
They were faced with a hard choice, Not implement EME (HTML5 DRM) and risk users moving to other browsers (user loss) or implement EME and risk looking like they are contradicting their core mission (trust loss).
They figured a little loss of trust is worth keeping most of the users on the Mozilla platform - which in my view is the correct decision. If users start to abandon Mozilla (FireFox) in droves then they lose their power to influence the development of the open web.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
What would the web gain if Mozilla could just be pushed into chasing whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google decide to do for fear of some users jumping ship?
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...
Mozilla has been different in philosophy. It's the only browser created by a nonprofit, and it fights for open web causes all the time. I think people that care about that are aware of it.
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.
> Mozilla has been different in philosophy. It's the only browser created by a nonprofit, and it fights for open web causes all the time.
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.
> 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.
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.
1. This isn't a Netflix module. It's for anyone who views DRM'd video content.
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.
Who gives a crap what Hollywood wants. Bending to Hollywood's will has brought us our current endless copyright renewal and the Digital Millennium copyright Act.
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.
> People will not use a browser that does not support Netflix.
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.
Does it matter if it's 30% or 50% or 80%? Ignoring any of those numbers of users is not a viable strategy. People want to watch their Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad or the next high-quality show that comes out, and Hollywood is going to put that show on EME only. That's going to be a lot of people.
We can't predict the specific number but we don't need to - we can very reasonably expect it to be large.
Netflix has 44 million subscibers which is ~2% of the web and many Netflix subscribers such as myself don't use the web client so it's at best a rounding issue.
> 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.
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.
This doesn't need to be hypothetical. We can look at that trade directly. We traded hardware fingerprints that aren't trackable across services for DRM in HTML. That's what we got.
So glad they got in on the ground floor instead of continuing to work to never have it enter the spec at all.
DRM is in HTML. That happened already. Mozilla refusing to implement it is not especially likely to make W3C change their minds. It might slow down the rate of adoption among content providers, but it's not gonna change the spec.
I hope we get more from Mozilla than hardware fingerprints that aren't trackable across services. I hope we get a lot more.
Philosophy isn't just speech, it's deed. This, right now, is a deed.
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.
Well, that movement is about not shrinking the userbase, so surely we agree?
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.
Anybody taking Snowden's revelations seriously would switch to Chrome or another Chromium build. The leaks contained information on exploited vulnerabilities in Firefox. Chrome's sandboxing makes it a safer browser than Firefox.
This is opposite the choice somebody would make if they were philosophically opposed to DRM.
Ok, let's say I agree with you - how many users switched to Chrome or Chromium following those allegations? Practically none. That proves the point, users don't seem to care about this.
(But I don't agree, that was just to make the larger point.)
Sure, but if the only thing to weigh is "will we lose users if we don't implement this feature?" and the only reason given why it's different this time is the assertion that this time it's different, I think you can understand the sentiment.
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.
That's true, but note that Mozilla's proposed EME implementation is quite different from the ones that have shipped so far in terms of how much power it grants the CDM, for example.
The development of web browsers has pretty much always been about chasing what everyone else is doing. You can introduce your own technologies, but unless you want your entire user-base to leave, you had better make sure the content they want to view works on your browser.
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.
So you're saying that keeping their userbase and losing their principles is better than losing their userbase and keeping their principles? Why do we care if users go to Apple/Google/etc. if Mozilla is no better than those companies anyway?
Mozilla has not abandoned their principles, they have compromised them.
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.
Just because Mozilla says they will lose users if they don't do this, doesn't make it true. They've shown no evidence of trends that this is happening. They are simply adopting DRM out of fear.
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.
Indeed... this is just throwing in the towel completely without putting up a fight. Here are various other ways:
- 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".
Er... We have been fighting this proposal for several years, thank you very much.
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.
While I appreciate the sentiment, I have to disagree. Mozilla has real power because they have a real revenue stream, which is (unfortunately, but realistically) almost entirely from Google.
The thing about money (and in turn, power and influence) is that it doesn't have to come from one source.
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.
Where do you think the phrase "sold down the river" came from - from slaves being sold to be sent down the Mississippi River to the slave markets in New Orleans.
I do hope you never use the word 'sinister', which of course comes from the old belief that left-handed people are somehow the spawn of the devil. Or refer to someone getting "their pound of flesh", which is Shakespeare's quaint variant on the blood libel. Etc, etc.
Mozilla has no real power over the web. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have the power (look at the names associated with EME DRM - what a surprise). Mozilla has an illusion of power, which is tolerated by the other actors because it makes everyone happy. But no one should mistake it for real leverage.
Exactly, Mozilla had power right up until the tech community sold out the future of the web in favor of sparkly things given to us by our benevolent corporate masters. Every time we installed Chrome for our parents because it was so minimal, every time we fired up safari because zomg the user interface was "lickable", we were working towards this point. We gave Google and Apple this power because we decided that smooth animations and per process tabs were a fair trade for the future of a global information network not controlled by corporate interests. Mozilla could have had real leverage if the tech community wasn't populated by a fashion driven divas with just enough foresight to see the tip of their own nose, but that isn't the world we live in.
> We gave Google and Apple this power because we decided that smooth animations and per process tabs were a fair trade for the future of a global information network not controlled by corporate interests.
Actually, I decided that hellacious startup times weren't worth it.
All of your hyperbole is a spin-master's way of saying that Chome and Safari beat out Mozilla because, for a significant amount of time, Firefox sucked compared to them.
Perhaps, but how important is DRM, with Chrome shipping it and even promoting it, to you, personally? Less important than having a nice startup time? Whatever floats your boat, but that seems to be a significant reason why we're here today.
Mozilla has had real power for a brief period, when both MS and Google had their eyes off the ball. Once Chrome matured, the game was up. It didn't help that it took them ages to fix widespread performance problems in FF...
This said, if they go back to their roots as "ayatollah of open web and open source", I might consider them again; but until they're just another ad-backed bureaucracy, I might as well stick to a better one.
Mozilla was never "ayatollah of open web and open source". If it has been, firefox would have never been available on Windows, like some people at the time argued.
Google did well technically on Chrome, but investing a huge amount of marketing dollars (like bundling chrome with other nice things like toolbars) didn't hurt them.
Mozilla still has some power, but they don't think they have enough to mount a lone assault on video DRM. I'm inclined to agree with them.
But I'd rather they saved that power for the next fight rather than going kamikaze on this. I'm sure there will be a next fight, and there's a good chance that it will be something smaller, or they'll have another major browser on their side.
> Mozilla has no real power over the web. Google, Microsoft, and Apple have the power (look at the names associated with EME DRM - what a surprise).
That's not right either. It's the users that have the power. Users can pick which browsers they use and which sites they visit.
There was essentially no boycott of EME-shipping browsers (Chrome and Internet Explorer). That shows that we, the people on the internet, did not care enough to fight EME.
EME isn't fought by talking about it and hoping someone like Mozilla will kill it. We would have had to actually do something ourselves, and a successful boycott of Chrome and Internet Explorer would have killed EME very effectively.
> There was essentially no boycott of EME-shipping browsers (Chrome and Internet Explorer).
Or most users weren't aware of their choices. Mozilla could have campaigned to make users aware of it and go back to Firefox. Instead they chose the other direction. :-(
It's hard to mobilize people. There were top stories here on HN about EME when Chrome and Internet Explorer started to ship it, it did get a lot of attention, and HN is a pretty good place for internet activism. But even here, basically nothing happened.
I've talked about this for a long time and tried to convince people about it. People just don't seem to care. I'm surprised at how much attention this is getting now, all of a sudden!
Given that most Chrome users installed it because of the deal with flash or advertising on the Google home page, and updates are silent, it's safe to assume very few of them have any idea what is being introduced or when or what the implications are.
That's pretty much Google's business model, as it was for Microsoft before them: get more market share by making it just a little bit harder to use your competitors.
Er, you claim Google has power. What if Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple implemented EME but Google didn't want to, and then everyone stopped using Chrome for all of the reasons mentioned in this thread? Then, Google doesn't have power. Contradiction!
No. Google has power because it has influence outside of web browsers. Mozilla have basically no leverage - their product is at best highly competitive with a number of other choices. If Firefox becomes irrelevant, Mozilla as an organisation dies - no money to pay the bills. If Chrome becomes irrelevant, Google's still very much a functioning company.
The organization dying or not is off topic. We're talking about which company has the clout to stop the DRM via not implementing it in their browser. Surely Chrome would die out just like Firefox would if Google decided to Do No Evil here. Chrome/Google would fail to stop the DRM, so Chrome/Google didn't have power.
Or do you think that because of Android or something, Google would be able to stop the DRM when every other browser/device supported it?
That's very true. And as more and more people move away from Firefox due to Mozilla's bad design decisions as of late, their limited influence diminishes even further. Their 15% to 20% share of the browser market just can't compare to IE's 20% or more, never mind Chrome's 40% or more.
It was just a few years ago that Mozilla though so highly of themselves that they thought they could use their market position to force the world to change from h.264 to VP3 (with hopes that Google would gift the world VP8 later on).
They failed at reading the situation then, and are failing again now.
Mozilla's whole argument for using their products rests on trust. They have consistently lost out in terms of performance, usability, and other things users care about. I no longer trust Mozilla, so why should I use their software? How does this not result in loss of trust and users?
They still have my trust, but I feel like I just heard by girlfriend cheated. And yes--I have no life. I never thought I would care about stuff like this, but I do.
I'm not sure that thats quite fair— Firefox won't run the CDM without user consent. You can still say no.
Having a choice doesn't magically resolve the issues, it doesn't prevent content providers from making things formerly available unavailable, it doesn't help us (as users) make better more considered decisions rather than clicking yes a lot to get things done, etc. But it does retain the choice to not run this stuff, choice which is not retained in the current closed source alternatives.
If content providers knew that there was a large chunk of users they'd be excluding by choosing the DRM option, they would be less likely to choose it. Firefox may be only 20% of web users, but that's still a lot of revenue to leave on the table if we can rely on firefox users to stick with firefox. I don't know whether or not we can - apparently, Mozilla is worried about it.
The best option might be to sink this development energy into something that will draw users from other browsers, if they can figure out what...
"Content is king!" Have you never heard that before?
You say Mozilla should figure out what will draw users from other browsers, but you've outlined what will draw users from Mozilla to other browsers. In the end, people want content. The content providers have more control. If 70-80% of the browsers already support the DRM they want to use, the other 20-30% will follow or be left out. Which is exactly what happened here.
There is tons of content on the web that has nothing to do with video. There is tons of video on the web that has nothing to do with DRM. If there is 20% of web surfers excluded by Netflix and Youtube, and DRM in fact doesn't matter for securing sales, then that's a huge edge for any new content provider that wants to compete with the incumbents.
All of that said, yes, of course this is something that will serve as a draw for users away from Mozilla. And yes, of course Mozilla might not be able to find something else that can serve as a better (or even comparable) draw that will not compromise their principles at least as much. I'm not casting aspersions at Mozilla and saying "Gee, they're dumb, why don't they just...". I'm saying "It would be better if they had found X" where I'm not at all sure such an X exists.
Oh, I don't know that they made the wrong decision - I have every expectation that they thought about this as well and decided it was too likely they did not have the clout. I said as much.
It probably will be once DRM/EME is available in every browser. At least the chances are increasing, and that's exactly why making DRM ubiquituous and easily accessible is such a bad idea.
The problem is not that Mozilla implementing EME removes leverage to force Netflix into abandoning DRM (this won't happen anyway anytime soon), the problem is that once DRM is readily available without a large technological investment and without losing too many users, virtually everyone will use it for virtually everything, simply because there is little to none incentive not to do it, from a publisher's perspective.
The problem is that no one can guarantee that the "opt-out" choice will continue to be there in the foreseeable future. What will happen when, suddenly Mozilla starts "feeling the pressure" to remove that option? What then? The problem is the building's foundations, not the decoration.
This seems unlikely, and in fact, Firefox has been moving in the opposite direction with other binary components (Flash, Java, Silverlight). Newer builds of Firefox require you to explicitly confirm that you'd like to allow <site> to execute plugin code. I doubt this will change any time soon.
I'd rather have a (albeit stupid) DRM executable that only performs encryption/decryption than Flash, Java, or Silverlight, which are the current solutions for this. All three of these offer APIs for doing things other than decrypting DRM content, and these APIs have been proven time and time again to be vulnerable to attack, no matter how much time is spent trying to sandbox them properly.
It's open source - actually open source. If they make the CDM on by default, you change a bool in the .cpp file and recompile it.
Really, come on. You should understand this. Firefox isn't like Chromium, where the 'blessed' Google version, Chrome, has dozens of important features sitting behind proprietary black boxes - the Firefox you download off Mozilla's website is something you could literally compile yourself. I've compiled Firefox dozens of times, sometimes with in-development patches for things like gamepad support added in.
In other implementations you can't tell if its using the DRM or not.
In the land of PDF you can find things like random federal agencies slapping the protection bits on complete inexplicable things, even though the content is public domain by law. ... just because the knob is there.
The 'you can not use it' opt-out ignores the cost of actually discovering that you should. The Mozilla proposal is better than that because it will tell you. This still doesn't solve all the issues, but its better than you'll find in other popular browsers.
Who pressured Mozilla to remove the option to turn off Javascript? To have tabs on bottom? Nobody complained about these options, they decided to remove them themselves.
People don't want DRM, people want content. That content is demanding DRM (via Youtube, Netflix). If Mozilla denied the DRM, Firefox users would be denied Youtube.
In response to this, some of you might say 'well then people would go elsewhere for their content', to which I would ask: did people leave Netflix because of Silverlight?
They did, actually. If not by their own doing then by the fact that Netflix is just not available on certain devices and operating systems. As long as Netflix is a DRM platform, this trend will likely continue.
The irony here is that Mozilla is apparently being badgered into supporting DRM for "compatibility reasons" when the whole point of DRM is to strictly limit compatibility with whatever arbitrary restrictions the publisher wants.
Apple has for political reasons disabled the possibility to install a Flash plugin on Safari/iOS. Why doesn't Firefox do the same with a CDM component for political reasons?
Apple disabled Flash for "security reasons." You can certainly read in politics, but the reason they gave was that it was the #1 attack vector on Macs and they had no way of securing it. And more importantly, nearly everybody else was on Apple's side in this fight. Other browser makers had problems with Flash too. Mac users largely hated Flash because it had terrible performance on that platform. Even Adobe was cooling off toward Flash as it became more and more clear that it wouldn't work on mobile platforms.
Mozilla's position here is not at all similar to Apple's position then, so their options are not the same.
A few years ago there was a cost involved for switching to the iPhone. The only reason why you see this the other way round is that "no Flash" is now established (at least for mobile). On the other hand: no DRM in browser cannot be considered as established - so we are at the same point where the iPhone was some years ago.
Apple also did this for performance and usability reasons. And when Apple did it, there were no smartphone alternatives that provided a sufficiently good Flash experience.
And before you say Android had Flash, I had an Android device that could run Flash in 2011. It was a pretty useless feature.
Saying that Apple "disabled the possibility to install a Flash plugin" implies that that possibility existed at some point. Support for installable browser plugins has never existed on iOS, so there was never anything for Apple to "disable".
Adobe offered Apple an iOS port of Flash and Apple had Access to beta versions of ports. Thus Apple could have enabled the option to install it by default or as option. But for political reasons Steve Jobs/Apple decided differently.
Is there a way to disable all related code in Firefox itself? Just for the sake of it. May be Mozilla can produce clean and tainted builds for that purpose.
The code is 100% open source, so even if there isn't a GUI option for it, it would be easy for people to make builds without it. There are already many forked builds of firefox like iceweasel, etc.
Yes, I expect such thing to surface, but it would be nice if Mozilla could provide such options on their own too. That would be some small positive gesture towards those who don't appreciate their move and see it as a betrayal of Mozilla's core values. It would as well make this issue more apparent. Doesn't Mozilla care about educating the public on such matters? It surely would be a positive thing for the Open Web.
As the blog post mentioned, the EME stuff will be an option that the Firefox user would need to agree to install. That would be an opportunity to educate users on the topic, I think.
I meant it a bit further. Not just disabling the EME external module, but disabling all related code in Firefox itself on the build stage. While functionally it won't make much difference, it would have more of a symbolic nature of making a point. Plus such builds would guarantee that it can't even be enabled at all (without user's knowledge for example).
If there would be build switches to disable that, I'm sure Linux distros with similar to Debian policies will ship versions where it will be disabled altogether.
> no. drm will still be an add-on, just like it is today.
Flash is not an add-on, but a plugin. And there is a good reason why plugins have a bad image and browser developers and users prefer to get rid of them.
Right, the evergreen of explanations by those that betray their principles and users (or, you know, voters).
They exercised a freedom of choice they had, and this is the decision they made. This is what we judge them on. No backsies, no "but I didn't want to", just pure "go fuck yourself Mozilla".
What real alternative did they have? Unlike RMS, Mozilla have always played with a more pragmatic strategy. If you want to win this war, you need to educate users. Being that only a handful of people out there actively care about privacy issues and platform openness, you need to produce a compelling product first and foremost, and then push your agenda on top of that. If Mozilla were to not implement EME, they'd cripple their own capacity to reach those users, and the war would be as good as lost.
A browser 1% of the internet uses is a browser nobody can use. We already have extensive problems with mobile sites being tuned to only work against webkit - or even worse, only work against safari - if Firefox's share drops into the single percentage points because things like Netflix, Farmville and Youtube don't work, due to the exclusion of proprietary web features like plugins and H264, it will become so insigificant that web developers don't even consider it during development.
They haven't just lost this one battle though - they've set themselves up to lose a thousand further battles in the future. This puts Mozilla in a very bad strategic position; once DRM in the form of EME is relied on by a large chunk of the web, they have no way of resisting demands from content providers and their EME module provider to make it more invasive in an attempt to make it more robust. If sites like Youtube start relying on EME, something they will not do without widespread browser support initially, Mozilla will hardly be able to risk losing support for them.
They've taken the proposed 'uncompromised moral stand' before, with H264. And it was an utter failure: Google promised to support them, then quietly stabbed them behind the back and helped advance the cause of proprietary video on the web. Eventually it was impossible to do any good and they had to cave and support H264 - their users would have literally been better off to begin with had they merely implemented H264 in the first place, because some of them would have been able to remain on Firefox instead of having to switch to Chrome to use H264-only websites.
Once Google+Microsoft or Google+Apple or god forbid Google+Microsoft+Apple have decided to do something, there is literally nothing Mozilla can do to stop it. It's too late. If Mozilla manages to slowly build up a larger market share, at that point they may have leverage in those situations. Right now they don't, and pretending to have leverage only further erodes their marketshare.
The war isn't lost because at the end of the day customers and distributors like Apple or Amazon despise it. I just bought this movie and it says my beamer isn't HDCP ready? Nobody wants to deal with that.
Today, we just lost a battle. In it, the Google funded Mozilla mercenaries were slaughtered, their forces diminished. We could award them a medal for their valiant effort, but you know they are dead. The war in the future isn't won or lost on their actions.
Bullshit. Sometimes you're forced to either do something shitty or be competitively displaced by actors that will do it anyway. Do you really want Mozilla to fall on their sword and leave us with worse alternatives? I don't understand how you could be upset with Mozilla about this. The decision is basically being made for them.
Give me one site whose videos you can't watch on Firefox for Windows or Mac currently.
The only real contender is Netflix but only once the Silverlight plugins reaches EOL. At that point Netflix will have to choose if they want to risk loosing 16% (est.) of their Firefox customers. Of course if Mozilla decides to implement DRM right now it won't be an issue for them.
That's only if in the toss up between losing Netflix and changing browser, they pick changing browser every single time. Which they won't.
One thing you might not have thought about, is that at the moment, we have Flash, Java, Silverlight, etc which all periodically are found to have mahoosive security flaws - because they can do general purpose things. If Firefox moves to supporting a plugin which is used for exactly the same thing, but that can only do decryption, then suddenly the browser becomes much more secure. If anything, it's an advantage.
What is the proportion of Firefox users using Netflix. Most of Firefox users are in other countries than the US which typically don't have access to Netflix anyways. As soon as DRM becomes accepted by all major browser vendors nothing prevents other site from adopting the same thing which then spreads the usage of DRM. I don't think this is desirable.
For DRM to work it needs to have direct access to the hardware. Otherwise it's too easy to run the plugin in isolation and capture the output. So while the API surface is smaller it's still problematic because DRM bypasses all the sandboxes. Issues like cross-platform support still aren't resolved because DRM providers don't typically provide linux runtimes. I really don't see where this is an advantage versus no DRM.
What's the reason to prefer Mozilla if they're just going to implement all the crap too? Might as well try to figure out the combination of plugins that will make Chrome comfortable. It'll sync with my Android phone easier anyway.
hink the average customer watches Netflix et al through an app on their shitty Samsung smart TV, not through their Firefox browser. So I think this impression that users will suddenly all abandon Firefox is overblown and false.
As I noted above, this decision doesn't make or break DRM. I think we should just take note that Mozilla would betray their principles for some .5% of market share.
It might be the right choice, but it would be nice if somehow they displayed that the content displayed is protected by DRM (like for encryption, http/https). It might help people choose different sources for information/entertainment/etc..
What makes you think Mozilla does not pay taxes? It most certainly pays taxes. I'll save you the web searching: https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... is the latest set of financials that are public; see pages 4 and 5. For 2012, the Mozilla Corporation had $311 million in revenue, $208.5 million in expenses, and paid $37.6 million in income taxes. The federal corporate income tax rate in the US is 35%, fwiw, and California's is 8.84%, so it's not like Mozilla is trying particularly hard to evade that tax liability (0.4384 * (311 - 208.5 - depreciation) likely comes out pretty close to 37.6).
> then I could simply compile a Mozilla browser without DRM.
Sure. And you can and will be able to.
> How does one achieve "trust" through closed source (e.g., the binary blob from Adobe)?
Don't install it? The blob won't be shipped with the browser by default and will require explicit user action to install.
"What makes you think Mozilla does not pay taxes?"
Corporate structure. (Mozilla Corp. is wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. Only Mozilla Corporation pays taxes.)
2008 IRS audit.
2012 settlement with IRS.
Perhaps a better statement would have been that Mozilla tries to avoid paying taxes.
Anyway, if what you say is true regarding compilation and exclusion of the DRM code then I'm not sure what everyone in thie thread is complaining about.
Now, how easy is it to compile Firefox these days?
I have not done it in years.
I gave up on X. (Following your exact advice, even with open source: "Don't install it.")
I use UNIX with no graphics layer and simpler text only browsers and even simpler TCP clients to retrieve content. Then if necessary I view it on graphical devices running closed source software.
The interesting thing is when I want to watch video, the last thing I need is a "browser". The core of the video player software I use is the ffmpeg libraries which have nothing to do with web browsers.
I only use HTTP (and other protocols) to transfer content (i.e., to request it), not to watch it.
I see no reason why a single application has to support both (request/transfer and playback).
Why video players have to support "streaming" or why "web browsers" have to play video are still open questions in my mind.
But that's just me. Stuck in the UNIX "one utility, one job" mindset.
> Perhaps a better statement would have been that Mozilla tries to avoid paying taxes.
That flies in the face of what I'm seeing in the Mozilla Corporation financial statements.
> Now, how easy is it to compile Firefox these days?
It depends on which OS you're doing it on, but there are pretty detailed step by step instructions at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Simple_Firefox_buil... and the things it links to. The biggest hassle is making sure that the various prerequisites (a compiler, some development libraries, autoconf 2.13, etc) are installed. On most modern Linux distros or Mac this is not a big deal. On Windows it's a slight bit more annoying.
They were faced with a hard choice, Not implement EME (HTML5 DRM) and risk users moving to other browsers (user loss) or implement EME and risk looking like they are contradicting their core mission (trust loss).
They figured a little loss of trust is worth keeping most of the users on the Mozilla platform - which in my view is the correct decision. If users start to abandon Mozilla (FireFox) in droves then they lose their power to influence the development of the open web.