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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

#321

Post by thanatropism »

syntern wrote: post #253
kator wrote: post #133

DRM is a fantasy that uninformed media executives cling onto with a dream that it will put the genie back in the bottle. It's sad to see this stuff but totally understandable considering the divide between the technology people who understand the reality and the people in charge of dreaming of a fantasy that gets them back to the '80s.. Yes I know.. I was an executive as a major record label, trust me it's hard to be…

I'm wondering: what do you suggest to artists, how shall they make money on their work?

Check out Bandcamp. I'm a follower of a number of "post-rock" review accounts on Facebook and occasionally check 4chan for news of interesting releases. I actually buy 2-5 albums a month; often very good ones too.

Not having to hire Alicia Silverman or whomever the cute-blonde-equivalent-in-2014 is for video clips does cut costs.

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

#322

Post by azakai »

magicalist wrote: post #317
ewzimm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are completely and utterly wrong here. 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 t…

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.

That would have been our only hope.

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

#323

Post by jholman »

joaren wrote: post #292
loup-vaillant wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. Are those problems so bad, that even you stooped as low as using a proprietary browser? Was that a sufficient price for your freedom? Mozilla made mistakes, but it doesn't excuse the blindness of its users. Reminds me of GNU/Linux vs OSX. Apple made a shiny new OS that "just works" on their own hardware, and a good chunk of the tech community went drooling over this, instead of getting its act together and fix…

Are you for real? Mozilla gets $300 million per year from Google to maintain the pretense of freedom. Meanwhile I have to pay my own bills and deliver projects that my clients will pay for. To bring money into this argument and somehow blame "the users" for this string of epic mess ups is fucking rich. Was I supposed to not diagnose jank using Chrome's frame analysis tools? Not profile memory allocations in its timel…

First thought: wow, you have a hostile attitude, contrary to the site guidelines.

Second thought: if you're happy using Apple products because the WiFi works better and you don't care about freedom, then where's your stake in this thread? AFAICT, you don't care (much) about DRM, so ep103's exhortation for people to be consistent is not criticizing you. You, AFAICT, are ethically consistent; you suckle the teat of convenience, and you like how it tastes. Power to you! So what's your problem?

Unless you DO care about DRM.

Again, ep103's point is: if Alice complains about Mozilla's philosphical weakness, but Alice is already using a browser (and/or OS!) that is twice as bad as Mozilla, then Alice is a hypocrite and should look in the mirror, because she's part of the problem.

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

#324

Post by vacri »

isomorphic wrote: post #29
michaelt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of replacing Flash with HTML5 video is to get rid of buggy third party plugins that crash all the time and have shitty cross-platform support. If HTML5 video is going to rely on buggy third party DRM plugins, we lose the benefit that was the whole point of HTML5 video.

I run my browsers without Flash in order to avoid Adobe's exploit-du-jour crapware. This means, for example, that I don't run Chrome. If this binary blob from Adobe isn't presented with a similar UI as regular "plugins" (that the user can disable or uninstall), then I will look into writing an extension to disable it, or perhaps rely on a Firefox fork to give me a Flash-lite(tm) free browser.

Chrome now has a built-in 'flashblock', like the Firefox plugin of that name. Enable the setting and you'll not see flash unless you click a placeholder icon.

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

#325

Post by magicalist »

azakai wrote: post #322
magicalist wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely and utterly wrong here. 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 t…

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…

I'm not sure how you think blaming everyone but Mozilla isn't self-serving or convenient.

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

#326

Post by vacri »

kator wrote: post #133

DRM is a fantasy that uninformed media executives cling onto with a dream that it will put the genie back in the bottle. It's sad to see this stuff but totally understandable considering the divide between the technology people who understand the reality and the people in charge of dreaming of a fantasy that gets them back to the '80s.. Yes I know.. I was an executive as a major record label, trust me it's hard to be…

It won't stop it altogether, but it will make more people pay for convenience. Plucking numbers from the air, if only 30% of viewers pay for content and this DRM only increases it to 35%, it's still a (commercial) win despite not being a total lock. On these (purely conjectural) numbers, that's a 16% increase in revenue.

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

#327

Post by iopq »

StavrosK wrote: post #188
pessimizer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

If we have platforms A and B, and A is more aligned with your interests than B, then we have an advantage in having everyone on A rather than on B. You're presenting a false dichotomy: "Either Mozilla doesn't compromise anywhere, or they might as well go away". Things aren't black and white.

Not if platform A compromises until it becomes B, in which case you don't care anymore.

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

#328

Post by Retric »

azakai wrote: post #308
shkkmo wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

#329

Post by iopq »

jasonwocky wrote: post #214
jgon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 smo…

> 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 su…

This is why we can't have nice things. zomg v8 benchmarks, I must use Chrome now. Now we get DRM.
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