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Did Mozilla Have No Choice But To Add DRM To Firefox?
JimLynch (684194) writes "Mozilla has been in the news quite a lot over the last few months. This time the organization is being hammered by open source advocates for adding Adobe DRM to Firefox. But did the folks at Mozilla really have a choice when it comes adding DRM? An open source project like Mozilla is not immune to market pressures. And with so many competing browsers such as Chrome adding DRM for Netflix, etc. how could Firefox avoid adding it? Is it realistic to think that Firefox can simply ignore such things? I don't think so and the reason why is in Firefox's usage numbers over the last few years."
The other browser vendors have implemented EME, even IE, which is (caution, sarcasm ahead) well known for implementing the newest HTML5 technologies. Mozilla's only option was to rescue what could be rescued. Blame Google, MS and the MPAA instead, they have deserved the shitstorm.
Blocking something because RMS does not approve is the opposite of freedom
Nonsense. Choosing not to include some feature in your product is exercising your freedom, unless someone's actually forcing you to do it.
At the end of the day, it will be users who decide between Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, and the multitude of other options out there. These users will make their decision based upon a variety of factors. For some it will be access to DRMed content. For others it will be a completely open source product. Of course there are other reasons too.
I'm guessing that the Mozilla foundation tried to figure out what their user base wanted, and came up with the answer that content would keep more users than excluding the DRM module would. Maybe they are right. Maybe they are wrong. Only time will tell.
I'm not particularly worried about Firefox providing a socket to plug in some DRM module into, because I don't really see much difference between that and other binary plugins. As a Linux user, I'm more worried that anyone who does want to use it will have to rely on Adobe to provide and maintain that module, because their track record has been rather spotty.
Would I use it myself? I honestly haven't made up my mind yet. From what I understand it would be mostly for movies, and my current computer is a bit too loud for that to be an enjoyable experience...
If DRM is really impossible to implement in F/OSS software, without closed source or the threat of political force... Then what's the worry?
It seems like the worst-case scenario is media providers get a false sense of security and start providing content without silly plugins that actually ARE closed and non-accessible (under the threat of legal action).
Wonder what the public key field is for?
As I understand it, RMS has three points:
1) DRM is bad.
2) Firefox implementing DRM is one piece of the problem.
3) Firefox is free to do whatever they want, but if they felt forced to implement DRM, it would have been better if they at least made an effort to warn the users about the risks. Instead they are publicly praising Adobe for their approach to DRM.
People who criticize RMS often don't even know what he said. That is not true of everyone, but most comments on the net are rather clueless about it. DRM is bad, that's not even controversial.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
unless someone's actually forcing you to do it.
"They forced me with money" is the reiterated excuse of some of the most despicable amoral scum.
Just because there's some pressure from the outside to do immoral things, doesn't mean they had to cave in. Evil previls because good keeps silent. Sorry Mozilla, but that was a REALLY bad decision.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Blocking something because RMS does not approve is the opposite of freedom, be it DRM, a binary driver, or whatever.
And denying people the ability to yell "fire" in a crowded theater is also "the opposite of freedom."
However, there's also the caveat that it's better for society to limit certain freedoms,
because otherwise they would otherwise impinge on all of us in a negative way.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1) DRM is bad.
Yep. So are taxes, and work for many people.
2) Firefox implementing DRM is one piece of the problem.
Nope. It is a symptom of the problem. The problem is that there is lots of content that people want that is only legally available with DRM. If you want the content, the choice is support the DRM or steal it. There are merits to both paths.
3) Firefox is free to do whatever they want, but if they felt forced to implement DRM, it would have been better if they at least made an effort to warn the users about the risks. Instead they are publicly praising Adobe for their approach to DRM.
Oh, God no! We are already way too overwarned. Turing every movie into the panic over self signed certs is NOT the answer.
People who criticize RMS often don't even know what he said. That is not true of everyone, but most comments on the net are rather clueless about it. DRM is bad, that's not even controversial.
Stalman is a brilliant man who has done a lot for computing in general. (Not just open source) He is also an uncompromising ass that is very hard to work with. For those of us that live and work in the real world, this is not a path we can take. I prefer the ESR approach to picking battles that make a difference.
Legal vs illegal is pretty cut and dried. An act is either illegal or it's legal. There's no "sort of" when it comes to an issue of legality.
You are obviously not a tax lawyer. :)
Mozilla are not just supporting DRM, you could already view DRM media, the significant development is their supporting for the addition of DRM to the web in a claimed standard, a damaging development for the open web. Mozilla had the choice of supporting the viewing of DRM media outside the web, by using a plugin or by using a separate media player. The DRM web interface they have decided to support, the EME, in not even capable of playing media on it's own, it is just part of a play and the rest is proprietary JS supplied by the content distributor. This is a strategy promoted by the distributors to advance their own selfish interests, by Netflix/Google/MS, it locks the user into using the distributors web based media player, is anti-competitive, and damages the health of the open web market. By supporting the EME Mozilla has made it almost impossible for the open web community to promote alternatives, damaging the open web community, in an act of betrayal.
Mozilla made no attempt to promote alternatives, have not explained the technical details of their EME/CDM design in enough detail for their claims of user security and privacy to be verified, and have refused to clarify that users can even view DRM media via Netflix in all its glory using their EME/CDM which was a key claimed reason for their decision, and have not been honest in the reasons for their decision (it's is not about supporting the viewing of DRM media because this is already possible).
Beyond that? I see not giving Google a list of all my websites to be a plus myself.
RMS is right in this case, DRM just harms everyone. Now Linux might play some more videos, but everyone who wants to run Amiga or Haiku, or another platform will be shutout from accessing that content. This is why DRM is stupid, it keeps the vendor/platform lock in going. For no good reason. It has never stopped pirates from doing their thing.
There is a big difference between a proprietary plugin using a generic interface, and supporting an open web specification designed specifically to support DRM, a specification that does not even allow the viewing of the resource without further proprietary JS supplied by the distributor. It's anti-competitive and damaging to the open web community. How hard will it be to promote an alternative now that Mozilla back the EME, almost impossible, and this is the damage Mozilla have done.
Bending over and adding DRM might not exaclty be a good thing, but I can see how it might be necessary if they want to stay relevant. Though I have to say they really should have waited with that until DRM actually becomes relevant to the Web, jumping on the DRM train this early is really sending the wrong signal. Anyway what they should have done it also just ship the anti-DRM messures right in the browser as well. Add a function to screen capture videos of your browser interaction isn't all that difficult and would have nicely shown just how pontless the whole DRM thing is.
Let's not also forget two other particularly powerful points made in the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) essay:
Brad Kuhn builds on these points in his essay discussing Mozilla's announcement: "Theoretically speaking, though, the Mozilla Foundation is supposed to be a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity which told the IRS its charitable purpose was: to "keep the Internet a universal platform that is accessible by anyone from anywhere, using any computer, and ... develop open-source Internet applications". Baker fails to explain how switching Firefox to include proprietary software fits that mission. In fact, with a bit of revisionist history, she says that open source was merely an "approach" that Mozilla Foundation was using, not their mission."
Speaking of how people criticize the FSF without reading what they say, the FSF is not an "open source advocate" despite /.'s insistence to the contrary such as is stated in this story's headline. The FSF and the free software movement predate the developmental methodology known as open source, and the FSF fights for values the open source movement sets out to deny, namely software freedom. The FSF has published more than one essay on this topic (1, 2) and RMS includes a clear and cogent explanation of this point in virtually every talk you'll hear him give. Archives of these talks are readily available online in formats that favor free software. Mozilla's choice here is another example of reaching radically different conclusions given different philosophies: Mozilla's open source choice versus a free software activist's choice to reject DRM for many valid reasons the FSF points out.
Digital Citizen
If you want the content, the choice is support the DRM or steal it.
Why steal it when you could just ask someone to voluntarily send you some data? Have to do things the hard way, do you?
And another option is to just ignore the content completely.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Of course they had a choice. That is not even a serious question.
They are losing market share and their actions will accelerate, not reverse, that trend, just as previous missteps have done. And yes, life will go on, but a great opportunity has been lost. Firefox still has enough users that this matters, and they are throwing their weight behind DRM, and against the open web they claim to stand for at a critical moment. The notion this will get anyone to switch (back) to Firefox is ludicrous. The ones that left because they wanted something more like the other browsers are happy with their other browser, and the rest of us see this is a stab in the back not a feature.
RIP Firefox Long Live PaleMoon.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
1) DRM is bad.
Yep. So are taxes, and work for many people.
No, Taxes and work are something you don't like, but are nessecary. Taxes pay for things like your clean drinking water, roads, street signs and lighting, all the things we actually like government for. Work allows you to purchase food, a place to sleep, clothes, a budget for entertainment.
DRM has no actual upside. There is no "Weeelll but roads are kinda nice" counter point. DRM is bad. Period. It doesn't work at it stated purpose, costs the people who implement it more money to use it, and those of up willing to bypass it do so trivially while those that are not willing suffer under new restrictions while actually being paying customers.
The only thing DRM is good for is keeping DRM manufacturers in business. It literally serves no useful purpose.
I'm concerned that really, between having UEFI Boot forced on us, and now EME with FireFox, even Linux is losing the war against DRM and as such losing the war on Fair use computing rights entirely. I disgree that the Internet is becoming Cable 2.0, but, the issue is that really, this has escalated beyond a technology issue and into a law and society one. I don't see any real solution to this beyond massive changes at the governmental level. Like:
1. Repeal of the DMCA.
2. Copyright roolled back to 14 years as it was at first
3. No Software patents
4. Internet Providers declared common carrier utilities.
Sorry, but Firefox adding DRM, in whatever manner they are, is still a shift in the browser industry going forward. There isn't a mainstream browser, that I see, committed to FOSS philosophies out there anymore. I just heard about Pale Moon, but let's face it folks. Firefox, Chrome and IE are mainstream. The others are side projects. Safari, well, doesn't exist on Linux does it. Even I.E. can be shoe-horned on Linux if needed.
Point is, moving forward, there is no longer a major browser that hasn't caved to big media, and DRM. That is, in itself, a continuation of a disturbing trend we're seeing across the Internet, and computing in general. If you don't think this isn't part of that, you haven't been paying attention.
I think this whole situation has been blown out of proportion. How will this code, that allows loading a 3rd party DRM plugin, be conceptually different than the bit of code that allows loading other closed source plugins (Flash, Silverlight, etc)?
Yes, but adding DRM to the web is actually driven by the distributors, such as Netflix. DRM movies can already be viewed using plugins or separate media players. Netflix want the EME so that they can delivery a rich[sic] experience, beyond just viewing a DRM movie, and the EME is not a compete DRM media player, just a part of it, allowing the distributors to complete the web media player using proprietary JS and lock users into using their web media players. They will likely be able to patent some of the proprietary media player implementation further damaging the open web. The EME that Mozilla have supported is driven by the distributors. Mozilla could have met the demands on the content owners without supporting the addition of DRM to the web, without supporting the EME.
I'm not particularly worried about Firefox providing a socket to plug in some DRM module into, because I don't really see much difference between that and other binary plugins. As a Linux user, I'm more worried that anyone who does want to use it will have to rely on Adobe to provide and maintain that module, because their track record has been rather spotty.
The big win from following a standard for the DRM plug-in is that now it will be obvious what's a DRM plug-in, and what's not. Hate DRM? Write a browser extension that makes use of this standard!
Seriously, if you really want to make heads asplode: write a FF extension that detects a DRM stream, determines the title from context, and automatically torrents the same title instead. If you can't do it as a plug-in, make a fork, since it's a stunt anyhow. I'm perfectly happy with paying Netflix, myself, but I'd certainly cheer if someone wrote this just to show the folly of the entire DRM approach.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
But Mozilla's scheme may be:
1. Implement DRM to make sure the users don't massively ditch Firefox.
2. Attract more users, get >90% market share
3. Ditch DRM
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
1) DRM is bad.
Yep. So are taxes,
Uh, most people understand why taxes are a good thing. There are people who feel that we are being taxed too much, but there aren't many people who want to get rid of taxes. Some form of taxation is necessary for the operation of the government.
Oh, God no! We are already way too overwarned.
Most people don't know the risks of DRM, a lot of people don't even know what DRM is. YOU might have been overwarned, but most people have never heard of The Right to Read, and don't understand why DRM could be problematic. As long as it doesn't get in the way, they are fine with it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The EME is only part of a media player, the part with the DRM decoder, and it can not play content on its own. The distributors supply proprietary JS to make a complete media player. This locks users into using their web base media player and destroys the market for such media players. This was a deliberate tactic by the distributors, they refused to specify a complete standard. It damages the interests of users. Mozilla's support for the EME makes it much more difficult for the open web community to promote alternative and this has damages the open web community. Adding a specialized DRM interface to the web, as a claimed open web standard, is also damaging in many ways, limiting innovation, and has chilling effects.
If you want the content, the choice is to tell the content providers that you will not take it with DRM attached to it.
Which will most likely be met with "fuck off, how else do you expect to lock content down by region so we can charge more in countries where people can afford more?"
You can live perfectly fine without digital content. Not watching the latest movie isn't going to make you sick, like drinking polluted water is.
Watching videos on the internet is completely optional and is in no way comparable to public services.
If someone believes they benefit from using DRM, let them. You don't need their content, they would like your money though.
As soon as they realise they'll make more money without it, they'll stop using it.
If they actually do make more money with it, who are you to stop them?
I have ask, bug Mozilla claim that the source code for the sandbox has not been written. Mozilla have not detailed the planned design in enough detail to verify their claims.
We need an "insightful troll" mod. +0.5, perhaps.
Clearly trolling, but you have perfectly expressed "the enemy's" stance on DRM. "We" need DRM because some people want to preserve their positions of power over the information-have-nots, simple as that.
And I don't even mean music and movies, we can live without those. I mean textbooks; I mean research journal access; I mean "for profit" municipal codes of law; I mean for-profit industry standards specs; I mean proprietary and impenetrable pricing structures like health insurance fees.
So although you troll us, you magnificent bastard, you also have one of the insightful posts on this topic so far.
But Mozilla's scheme may be:
1. Implement DRM to make sure the users don't massively ditch Firefox. 2. Attract more users, get >90% market share 3. Ditch DRM
Not for from it... From what I hear the idea is that when the content industry makes the majority of it's revenue from online streaming, they'll likely reconsider DRM. Most likely it'll go away on it's own, because it's complicated and expensive to implement on the server side. And it provides a buggy user experience.
I suspect that eventually netflix will be ones with the power to kill DRM. Imagine how much cheaper their distribution would be, if they didn't have to encrypt every stream individually.
Part of DRM is that it stops consumers from fulfilling their role in the "supply and demand" marketplace.
Content providers sell content for different prices in different regions. DRM prevents you from buying content at market prices.
Content is sold internationally, consumers should be able to buy content internationally or the market is artificially distorted by the sellers.
If DRM is really impossible to implement in F/OSS software, without closed source or the threat of political force... Then what's the worry?
It seems like the worst-case scenario is media providers get a false sense of security and start providing content without silly plugins that actually ARE closed and non-accessible (under the threat of legal action).
The DRM is effectively forced.
I going to just flat out state that you've obviously never attempted to run the Netflix plugin from a ChromeOS machine (ChromeBook/ChromeBox) on another Linux platform, and discovered it won't run.
The modules in this case do navel-gazing and examine the container program to verify that the container program ins an unadulterated official build, such that you can't just compile up your own version of the browser, and expect the module to continue operating.
For Netflix on Linux desktops, this Navel-gazing took the form of utilizing the HAL, which was deprecated by its authors in 2008: http://www.freedesktop.org/wik... which was then used to generate a unique device identifier, which was used in the authorization and decryption process for the data, after having been watermarked with the same identifier at the source so that you could tell who exactly rented the content that was then stripped of DRM, and uploaded to a copy site.
This same (deprecated) module was required by Adobe FlashAccess beginning in February 2012, and was the reason for the sudden failure of rented content from both Amazon and YouTube, which both used FlashAccess as a means of DRM'ing "premium content" starting on that date.
So it's about as true to say that the DRM "isn't forced" as it's to say that the HTML "trusted proxy" mechanism would not be forced in order to allow you to make HTTPS connections, should it be standardized, thus giving a centralized ISP choke point, nominally for caching content, but practically, for introspecting HTTPS streams to make sure they are not transporting "unapproved content". If you can't access content without DRM, or you can't access HTTPS without authorizing the proxy at your ISP to listen in on the conversation, effectively instituting an automatic MITM attack for all your communications, it's kind of hard to credit participation in the scheme as "unforced" (Sure... you could choose not to have encrypted internet connectivity at all, instead of encrypted activity your ISP or anyone who got a single FISA order into your ISP could listen in on, but is that really a choice?).
Agreed. Here is an old joke ..
"A liberal will interpret the constitution, a conservative will quote it!"
We at Mozilla do not regard popularity as an end in itself. Instead, we regard it as an essential part of our strategy for executing on our mission. The amount of influence we have to make the Internet better is, in many spheres, proportional to Firefox market share.
As to whether we'd lose users due to Netflix, Hulu etc eventually not working in Firefox ... nobody seriously doubts this.
Brad Kuhn misquotes Mitchell. She did not say "an approach", she said "MozillaÃ(TM)s fundamental approach".
I'm a socialist. And by that I mean that I'm strongly against both capitalism and communism. I believe everyone should profit from his work and only from his own work. I believe it should be illegal to profit from someone else's work. So you can guess I'm also totally against social democracy and taxation.
That's......an unusual viewpoint for a socialist.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nonsense. All they needed was an HTML5 tag identifying DRM content that starts and external player that the user can decide to use or not use.
By using Firefox, you are tacitly supporting DRM, even if you never view and DRM'd content, because they have cooked the technology into the cake. It didn't have to be that way. They could have kept Firefox open and still allow the movie industry to peddle their poison.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The distributors (and the Hollywood studios that provide them with content) will never accept an "alternative" that has no DRM.
So for Mozilla the choice wasn't "support EME" vs "promote a better DRM free alternative and convince websites to support it", it was "support EME" vs "tell users who want to use HuLu, Netflix etc to use a different browser"
I for one like the way Mozilla has done it, the browser plugin can't talk to anything other than a narrowly defined set of interfaces specified by Mozilla (so no direct network or disk access). Also, I believe the plugin will be available for Linux as well which means sites like Netflix will work on that platform.
Which is why all the music I buy these days is so heavily encumbered with DRM. Despite the shrill protests of the public, the only way to get the content was to accept DRM on my music files.
Oh wait, no, I don't.
It is not a losing battle to fight against DRM. Between the easy accessibility of non-DRM - albeit copyright-infringing - music and a company (Apple) with a large enough market-share to say, "You know what, screw DRM!", nowadays I can download all my songs in unencumbered MP3s. And - despite all their fears to the contrary - the music industry hasn't gone bankrupt because of this. Given an equitable price, combined with the convenience and legitimacy of an above-board purchase, music sales continue to be profitable.
Firefox had an opportunity to be an Apple here; they could have helped redirect the market into a new direction. Instead they caved into prophetic bullshit about declining marketshare and now all its users suffer for their shortsightedness. Mozilla could have said to big media, "this is a shit idea" and rather than sacrifice that huge potential audience the media conglomerates would have found a more favorable alternative.
No one is forcing you to use the DRM in Firefox. They are simply allowing it as an option.
The government doesn't take away your privacy by running the NSA. They are simply adding surveilance as an option.
The mafia doesn't force you to pay protection money. They are simply allowing you to continue running your business.
That mugger doesn't force you to hand over your wallet. He is simply offering you to give him your money, you know, as an option...
It's all whitewashing. DRM is evil and there is no good side to it. Allowing it allows it to spread and grow. If you want to know why RMS disapproves, read The Right To Read.
At least the man has a spine. Something we can't say about the Mozilla Foundation anymore, unfortunately.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I see this as Mozilla giving US the choice instead of making it for us. If they choose not to support DRM, then I have NO choice in watching DRM material with Firefox and I have to use another browser I dislike. By supporting a DRM plugin, "I" now get to choose whether to use it or not and if I choose not, then it doesn't affect my browsing experience at all.
Mozilla could have promoted a better DRM media player that is not part of the web. They chose to promote the EME adding DRM to the web.
It is not a losing battle to fight against DRM.
These days there is more DRM encumbered media and streaming services than ever before!
Mozilla could have said to big media, "this is a shit idea" and rather than sacrifice that huge potential audience the media conglomerates would have found a more favorable alternative.
I like your optimism but I don't think Mozilla have that much clout. Perhaps it's time to fork Firefox? Though I'm pretty sure there are quite a lot of popular forks already that are unlikely to implement this DRM so maybe one of them should make an attempt to do what you say.
So I'm a bit confused all this. How close is the following chain of events?
1. Netflix/___ others start trying to wrap their "tasty content" into wrappers that (try to) require baked in DRM.
2. Uneducated Firefox users suddenly discover that their browser won't play that tasty content anymore "because Mozilla didn't add that Dr. Thingy stuff" to make it work.
3. Said uneducated Firefox users then jump ship to that dulcet siren's call such as Chrome because yay the tasty content works again! "Everything is Awesome!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
So what about PaleMoon? Scuttle has it a bunch of people are headed over that way not least because of FF29 UI Shenanigans. So why not DRM? Their entire point was to unbake bloaty parts of reg FF. So why not if they unbake the DRM from their copy?
And what does Opera have to say about all this? How about Chromium and/or Komodo Dragon? (Non-Googly clones of Chrome.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I get that, but what if along the way of obtaining popularity, you lose the purpose of your mission?
Not saying that that's what you're doing, it's just that it's not so clear-cut to me what the right decision is in this case.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Nobody said the analogy fails because they are not exactly the same but you keep thinking somebody does.
Perhaps not you, but S.O.B. above said this: "Anyone who equates someone who accepts DRM with someone who accepts the systematic slaughter of an entire people by the state needs to have their sense of proportion adjusted."
Then you must isolate that element and present it as analogous to the similarity in the situation being discussed. An analogy breaks down when you try to transfer the meaning of a cause-and-effect scenario from one context to another but can only retain the cause *or* the effect which is what has happened in this attempt.
An analogy breaks down when it's useless or irrelevant.
If I understand it, the point was that people accept all sorts of nonsense in their attempt to live in the "real world" and keep its convenience. Scared of the terrorist bogeyman? Let the government do as it pleases; you have mouths to feed, and it's much too cumbersome to do anything stop it. Something to that effect.
The key factor of *choice* has been lost in the analogy which is why it fails
If he said they were similar in that way, then you'd be right. But he didn't.
The problem with using such analogies isn't that they're always wrong, but that people will inevitably misinterpret you, making it a complete waste of time.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
As someone who used to love Firefox, I claim the usage statistics have nothing to do with not supporting NetFlix. For the last few years, every new version has removed stuff I liked, added stuff I didn't care about, and created various problems. That might be a better explanation for declining share. No one wants DRM. It is death to the open web.
I remain extremely skeptical of the idea that DRM does literally nothing. It'l like saying door locks don't work because they can be kicked down or picked, or somebody can go through the window. Imperfect security *can* be better than no security, depending on the circumstance.
I'm not coming out pro-DRM, just...this argument doesn't make sense. I know for a fact my parents could never be bothered to learn how to use bittorrent. They just went and bought it instead when I moved out. Which implies that it does work to at least some degree. Not necessarily that the benefit exceeds the cost, but I don't think it's fundamentally honest to say that DRM has no benefit for anybody.
When you have kids to feed you can be forced with money, as you can't just commit suicide when you're out of options and whatever will be will be with them, I mean you can but you're not supposed to. You're responsible for your kids more than you're responsible for your siblings or parents and cousins, because you choose to create them and bring them into being. The limit of what you're willing to do, how immoral you're willing to stoop to to feed them then goes very very far.
Apple had a near-monopoly on digital music sales. They had the clout to force the music industry to accept their terms. In fact, that clout was what got the music industry to give DRM-free music to Amazon. iTunes was so big, Apple was calling the shots and making demands - the music industry has long hated 99 cent songs (they wanted variable pricing) and Apple's grip on keeping things that way. And the music industry couldn't simply withdraw their music - the alternative to iTunes and its money was... piracy.
When Apple saw what Amazon was given, they made the same demands (in exchange for variable pricing - 79/99/129 cents). Hence Steve Jobs' essay on DRM and music.
But Apple had the music industry in its palm. And when Amazon was given DRM-free rights, Apple had the leverage they need to demand the same. In fact, the fact that iTunes music was locked to iPod made it all the sweeter - because it meant no OTHER music store could succeed, so the music industry was forced to allow DRM-free music so another music store could get their music loaded on the #1 player - the iPod,
It was a close call - because I suspect the music industry was hoping the DoJ would declare Apple a monopoly and thus be forced to open other DRM systems onto the iPod. Instead, they caved first.
The movie industry saw what happened to the music industry, which is why they're spreading their content around. Netflix is for DVD releases, a month later. Hulu gets up to date TV. Amazon, iTunes, etc., well, they get to rent and sell new releases. No one company will "have it all" so they won't be big enough to start making demands like Apple did. When you can get your TV from Amazon, iTunes or Hulu (with the first two offering it for sale, the latter for free streaming), movies from Amazon, Google Play and iTunes, then later on Netflix...
And Mozilla could be the also-ran, where the mainstream browsers are now just IE, Safari and Chrome.
All it would take is users wondering why their Netflix or Hulu doesn't work. They Google it, and see the solution would be to install Chrome, or use the browser built into their OS - IE on Windows, Safari on OS X.
Of course, Mozilla could have influenced the W3C to reject the proposal, thus rendering the web to be a app-distirbution mechanism where you'll need to Netflix app, the Hulu app, etc., to watch Netflix or Hulu on all platforms, including PC. Click "Watch" on Netflix, or YouTube and it lauches the app where you watch it, like how it works with iTunes or Steam.
Nonsense. All they needed was an HTML5 tag identifying DRM content that starts and external player that the user can decide to use or not use.
Um, how is that any different to the HTML5 tag identifying DRM content starting an external DRM plugin that the user can decide to use or not use, which is the exact system they are implementing.
They're even trying to completely sandbox the DRM plugin so it can't access anything on your computer other than the video stream, which is much better than having a proprietary binary application running at the user's access level.
Nice strawmen there. This new DRM plugin is just as option as Flash and Silverlight currently are, did anyone come round your house and hold a gun to your head to force you to install them? No? Well I guess you can choose to not install any DRM plugins then.
Most people don't know the risks of DRM, a lot of people don't even know what DRM is. YOU might have been overwarned, but most people have never heard of The Right to Read, and don't understand why DRM could be problematic.
The thing is...we don't have "the right to read". If I write something, you don't get the right to read it. I might give you my permission to read it, but I don't have to.
In his story, RMS was conflating "first sale rights" into "I should be able to do anything with any book, any time I want, regardless of the author's wishes". Basically, he took his free software opinions and twisted them to apply to books as well. I do agree that DRM can remove some of your first sale rights, and that's a real pain. You should be able to loan, sell, rent, etc., a book that you purchased. But, if you merely rent a book/movie/car/whatever, then you don't get all those same rights, and the story RMS wrote was about rental of books, not sale.
And, yes, I do think it's OK for a company that rents you a physical book/movie/car/whatever to put in a provision that you can't loan it to anybody else. If you don't like that provision, then do business with some other company.
Just so we're clear, it's perfectly possible to support a family of four on $1000/month (less than one full-time, minimum wage, income), even without government subsidies, provided you're not trying to do so in a major city where rent for a studio apartment will cost $2000+. When somebody says they're being "forced with money" it very rarely means that their survival is in jeopardy, it means they want the luxuries that extra money can buy badly enough that they're willing compromise on whatever principles are being called into question. Granted those luxuries are initially things like "live in a home with more than one room", "eat something other than beans and rice", and "have health insurance", but those are all things that most people in the world don't have.
More to the point, when you hear someone claiming to be "forced with money" it's usually over a very fat paycheck, so there's no possible dodge around the fact that what they really mean is "I was sufficiently bribed"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think this is key, people are conflating "Mozilla is allowing the option of running a separate, external, close sourced, plugin" (which as you point out is no different than Flash/Silverlight) as being "OMG Mozilla is closed source now and ever single webpage has DRM now!!11"
Let the default download of a new firefox randonly select either with- or without-DRM. Cound the number of times the same user goes back and selects a non-default browser from a list that explicitly says whether they have DRM or not.
Done well, no-one will even notice.
In this experiment, I expect the null hypothesis will be "no-one cares", and will win (:-))
davecb@spamcop.net