> 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.
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.