Mozilla's Route For Implementing W3C EME (HTML5 DRM)

[ssokolow]

Paraphrasing Linus with Nvidia: Fuck you, Mozilla.

First they deal in an odd way with Oracle, now they deal with Adobe. What will be the next? Microsoft?

They are getting more corrupt in each step, giving advantage to propietary software. They are traitors of open source, thanks to them the web will be more closed than ever.

Why the hell do we need the shitty DRM to play movies? People will rip it and publish the content on torrent sites (HDDVD, Bluray, HDMI... they are all got cracked), this is a pain in the ass to the user that pays for the content. So here they have, less people will find benefit in paying for content.

Mozilla sells out on another issue, surprise! The act of supporting this is not justified by the mitigative measures (not included, sandbox). It goes against Mozilla's mission and posted values; they simply chose money.

Here's a response that just showed up on Planet Mozilla for people with your viewpoint.

TL;DR: "We tried; we failed. Now, we have to avoid becoming 'the one browser which can't do what users want' so we can retain enough market share to possibly make a difference in future issues."

[anda_skoa]

TL;DR: "We tried; we failed. Now, we have to avoid becoming 'the one browser which can't do what users want' so we can retain enough market share to possibly make a difference in future issues."

It is extremely naive if they think anyone buys into that anymore.

They have show twice in a row in short time, that they will cave in if their market share is threatend.

So whatever future issue arises that Mozilla might oppose, it is just a matter of working with the proprietary browser vendors until Mozilla tucks its tail between its legs and comes running.

The no longer have any negotiation power, the best they can do is delay the inevitable.

But of course it has to be said that they are still needed as an alternative to the whole sale sell out of users privacy by the proprietary vendors. It is just that their bargaining power is now zero and they should really start to admit that.

Cheers,

[Delgarde]

Mozilla sells out on another issue, surprise! The act of supporting this is not justified by the mitigative measures (not included, sandbox). It goes against Mozilla's mission and posted values; they simply chose money.

Well no, they're not choosing money - they're choosing survival. You might see it as a plus, being "the only major web browser to reject DRM", but most people will see it as "the only major web browser to not support watching movies".

Mozilla simply can't win this fight - they've been trying to steer things in the right direction, but given that every single one of their competitors has decided to adopt DRM, what else can they do? Keep fighting against the tide, and sink into obscurity as their users abandons them? Or accept they're lost this fight, and keep going in the hope they might have more luck next time?

[corebob]

Yep, I'm embarassed on behalf of Hollywoods desperate attempt to keep the markes rigged. The future is definitely crowdfunding through bitcoin donations

[liam]

It's unfortunate that Mozilla is forced into this position but, due to folks having moved to chrome/chromium, Mozilla has less say now than they once did. While I like Google, no other organization is as pro open web as Mozilla.

[Prescience500]

Mozilla held out a lot longer than I would have, considering my background in economics. Chrome/Chromium and it's users have single-handedly beated and reversed Mozilla's open internet revolution. I knew the moment that Chrome began to eat Mozilla's market share a few years back that Mozilla would no longer be able to play hardball anymore, but they kept doing it. They hemeraged market share every month because of it. Now they have lost most of their influence due to not enough market share relative to the others. It doesn't help that Mozilla is spending so much resources on things not in it's core focus.

[tessio]

Will YouTube relly on this technology?

[dee.]

This is why I can't really hold conversations with other open source advocates.

Nobody seems to understand that businesses are there to make money, and they want to protect their money. That means they're -going- to use DRM,

Also in the news today: drug traffickers are -going- to keep smuggling drugs, weapon merchants are -going- to keep selling weapons, factory owners, oil companies, etc. are -going- to keep polluting, and human traffickers are -going- to keep kidnapping children and selling them as sex slaves...

I'll take a crappy HTML5 binary blob over Silverlight/flash. It'll be progress.

How? What changes? What's going to be better in any way? The definition of "progress" usually demands at least some kind of improvement in some way or form. What does EME improve? It's just the same shit in a rebranded package... it's not going to be cross-platform any more than flash/s-light is, it's not any more open, it's just as much of a black closed box, even written by the same incompetent hacks as the previous blobs... how is this progress?

[smitty3268]

I wouldn't be surprised if it has desktop Linux support. This is basically the only platform for which this is interesting.

Looks like it's for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Probably x86 only though.

He said one of the reasons they went with Adobe's DRM is that they'd support linux.

Also said that Mozilla expects the major video sites to make deals and support all the various DRM providers, so that the videos will work everywhere and you won't have to switch browsers for different sites. We'll see if that actually happens or not.

[smitty3268]

It's unfortunate that Mozilla is forced into this position but, due to folks having moved to chrome/chromium, Mozilla has less say now than they once did. While I like Google, no other organization is as pro open web as Mozilla.

There are only 4 browser companies that matter.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Mozilla.

Microsoft and Apple both command huge market leads in their markets (desktop and mobile, respectively) and completely control their entire OS.

Google, meanwhile, is catching up with both through desktop chrome and android.

Mozilla is the only one that doesn't have that platform control, and which is already losing users to Chrome and IE. It puts FirefoxOS in a different light when you think about it this way, doesn't it?

It only takes a little common sense to show how little real power they have. At least not if the other 3 companies all band together. They have no way of vetoing what the rest are doing. Their real power is building consensus - if another browser company wants to do something, then Firefox can agree and all of a sudden it's a standard, rather than 1 company doing their own thing. That's been very helpful over the years.

But in this case when the other 3 have all agreed, the only thing they can do is either try to keep their 20% marketshare and keep attempting to improve things, or make a pointless stand and lose all their marketshare. Then there would only be 3 browser companies that matter, and they'd all have the same DRM anyway.

Guess which option linux fanboys would prefer?