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Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

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Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#221

Post by dllthomas »

neura wrote: post #158
dllthomas wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dev…

"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…

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.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#222

Post by [deleted] »

Navarr wrote: post #156
wyager wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I, at least, am saying that keeping their userbase is better than becoming irrelevant.

[deleted]

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#223

Post by wolfgke »

duskwuff wrote: post #128
wolfgke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#224

Post by BrandonM »

pdeuchler wrote: post #218

Seriously, who is building this DRM software/hardware? If you are a software developer you have no excuse but ignorance, and as someone who makes a living on a computer (where the Internet resides) that excuse is waning extremely thin. I harbor a hairs breadth more grace for the hardware engineers designing locked down chips, but that's no more than a rhetorical nicety due to the fact that I'm am not very familiar wi…

> It's easy to work remotely

Is it? I get a pretty steady stream of offers from recruiters and LinkedIn, and I can't recall a single one that offered remote work from day 1. Care to share all of these opportunities you know about?

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#225

Post by spoiler »

13throwaway wrote: post #46

If all major browsers support eme, every website will use it. Say goodbye to youtube-dl. Maybe next year eme will be updated to "protect" html. Soon the entire web may be a closed system. It doesn't matter what the FCC decides on Friday, today is the day the web dies, at mozilla's hands. There is always a choice mozilla, please make the right one.

That's bullshit. In what extremist world do you live? How on Earth did you manage to correlate DRM and "protected HTML"? This is like saying: "maybe next year my security system will be updated to hide my furniture from me!"

I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to protect content. Frankly (I'm a hypocrite, becsus the I have used it, myself), isn't the YouTube downloading plugins some type of breaking copyright or TOS anyway? If you were an artist, and everyone was downloading your work for free, I bet you'd be pissed as fuck.

Or, if you're a publishing company, I bet you'd be pissed if everyone was downloading the shit you published for free. Just because the company is "big" does not mean they don't have the right to protect their content or service. This is utter hypocrisy!

To draw a paralle: I can eat the pie on the table, but you can't. Why? Fuck you, because human rights and shit, dude; this side of the table is the only one with rights.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#226

Post by spacelizard »

msbarnett wrote: post #124
IgorPartola wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Or…

> 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 stri…

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.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#227

Post by CHY872 »

vehementi wrote: post #162
GuiA wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ding ding ding! You've hit the nail on the head. 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.

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.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#228

Post by azakai »

wolfgke wrote: post #205
azakai wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

> 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!

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#229

Post by higherpurpose »

Navarr wrote: post #156
wyager wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I, at least, am saying that keeping their userbase is better than becoming irrelevant.

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.

Re: Can This Web Be Saved? Mozilla Accepts DRM, and We All Lose

#230

Post by wolfgke »

dchichkov wrote: post #172
ep103 wrote: post #138

There are so many people here claiming this is the wrong choice, and yet I wonder what percentage of the commenters here are using chrome? By most sources I've seen, Chrome has 2x the marketshare, and actively pushed FOR EME. Perhaps if FF had Chrome's current marketshare, they would have been in a position to say no, but its the users who made that impossible. Mozilla should be commended for fighting as far as they…

Interesting. So literally, what we see here is Google pressing Mozilla to support DRM... Google... Don't be evil. Please? Pretty please?

> So literally, what we see here is Google pressing Mozilla to support DRM

Could you give a source (it doesn't sound implausible, but for statements with such a scope I'm interested in reliable sources)?

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