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What's the point in having leverage if you're not going to use it? This was their moment. They have the second largest audience of desktop users. They have t

What's the point in having leverage if you're not going to use it? This was their moment. They have the second largest audience of desktop users. They have their leverage, and chose not to use it.

jasonlotito 12y ago
> What's the point in having leverage if you're not going to use it? You act as if the audience is tied for Firefox. It's not. As soon as a user opens up another browser instead of Firefox to get access to the content, they are no longer leverage. And when you look at the audience as those with just Firefox alone, and those with a second browser, that audience dwindles to very few indeed. You could make the argument that they then don't need to support the DRM because users can easily get around that. But then the problem there is that suddenly users are being punished. The content producers aren't suffering, just the users who are forced to switch browsers.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  If you have leverage and don't use it because you're afraid you'll lose leverage... you don't really have any leverage.
  - atopal 12y ago
    That is exactly the point! In this case, Mozilla does not have leverage. Users have leverage. Chrome and IE users could have decided to abandon those browsers when they implemented the DRM measures. They did not.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    Mozilla is using leverage, just not to fight the battle you want them to fight. Mozilla has decided to use their leverage to make DRM more private and secure.
Cederfjard 12y ago
I don't necessarily agree with their decision, but sometimes you've got to choose your battles, as they say. Maybe they weighed the importance of this issue against the decrease of influence in future (perhaps more important) matters that the alternative stance would have brought in terms of userbase, and concluded that it would have been detrimental to their overall mission? What is your theory as to why they chose to not use their leverage, as you put it? Greed, vanity?
- admax88q 12y ago
  My theory is that they are more concerned about market share and being relevant, then they are about protecting the rights of their users and standing up for what's right. This is a move from the Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation. Losing users would be a threat to their bottom line. However putting the bottom line above their supposed principles certainly reduces their credibility.`
Rusky 12y ago
This was one of many possible moments. How well did it work when they didn't support H.264? They're picking their battles.
- serge2k 12y ago
  and if they choose to battle for privacy and proper DNT it makes a lot more sense than a losing battle against DRM. The most annoying part of this is that Abobe is providing the plugin. Much rather Mozilla do their own thing.
  - admax88q 12y ago
    DNT is a non-starter. It's asking companies to play nice and please please please don't track users. That's never going to be a reliable option. Blocking third-party cookies by default on the other hand is a good start.
  - bzbarsky 12y ago
    Mozilla can't really do their own thing unless they start writing some closed-source code. And then negotiating directly with various content providers about what the code will do. Probably a few other things I haven't thought of as well. It's all possible, but it'd be a pretty big difference from what Mozilla does normally and I'm not sure they'd be very good at it. So outsourcing that stuff makes a good bit of sense.
- makomk 12y ago
  This was the last possible moment. Once the web is full of DRMed content, they're entirely beholden to any demands that their DRM partners and content providers might make, like removing the privacy safeguards and giving the binary DRM module full access to the system so it can make sure code outside the sandbox isn't siphoning off the decoded video, extending the DRM to images or even HTML, etc...
- Daiz 12y ago
  I'd just like to point out that the H.264 issue is way smaller than this. H.264 is a public standard that anyone is free to implement. This is why FOSS encoders and decoders for it can freely exist without any issues (and the FOSS x264 encoder also happens to be pretty much the best H.264 encoder in the world too). The complications arise from the fact that a lot of tech used in H.264 is patented (software) and licensing of said patents is required in many cases to make use of it. But all in all, H.264 is still quite compatible with FOSS (and would be perfectly compatible if software patents didn't exist), whereas DRM is completely incompatible due to its secret nature. This is a far bigger issue for Mozilla to compromise on.

What's the point in having leverage if you're not going to use it? This was their moment. They have the second largest audience of desktop users. They have their leverage, and chose not to use it.

jasonlotito 12y ago

> What's the point in having leverage if you're not going to use it? You act as if the audience is tied for Firefox. It's not. As soon as a user opens up another browser instead of Firefox to get access to the content, they are no longer leverage. And when you look at the audience as those with just Firefox alone, and those with a second browser, that audience dwindles to very few indeed. You could make the argument that they then don't need to support the DRM because users can easily get around that. But then the problem there is that suddenly users are being punished. The content producers aren't suffering, just the users who are forced to switch browsers.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
If you have leverage and don't use it because you're afraid you'll lose leverage... you don't really have any leverage.
- atopal 12y ago
  That is exactly the point! In this case, Mozilla does not have leverage. Users have leverage. Chrome and IE users could have decided to abandon those browsers when they implemented the DRM measures. They did not.
- shkkmo 12y ago
  Mozilla is using leverage, just not to fight the battle you want them to fight. Mozilla has decided to use their leverage to make DRM more private and secure.

Cederfjard 12y ago

I don't necessarily agree with their decision, but sometimes you've got to choose your battles, as they say. Maybe they weighed the importance of this issue against the decrease of influence in future (perhaps more important) matters that the alternative stance would have brought in terms of userbase, and concluded that it would have been detrimental to their overall mission? What is your theory as to why they chose to not use their leverage, as you put it? Greed, vanity?

admax88q 12y ago
My theory is that they are more concerned about market share and being relevant, then they are about protecting the rights of their users and standing up for what's right. This is a move from the Mozilla Corporation, not the Mozilla Foundation. Losing users would be a threat to their bottom line. However putting the bottom line above their supposed principles certainly reduces their credibility.`

Rusky 12y ago

This was one of many possible moments. How well did it work when they didn't support H.264? They're picking their battles.

serge2k 12y ago
and if they choose to battle for privacy and proper DNT it makes a lot more sense than a losing battle against DRM. The most annoying part of this is that Abobe is providing the plugin. Much rather Mozilla do their own thing.
- admax88q 12y ago
  DNT is a non-starter. It's asking companies to play nice and please please please don't track users. That's never going to be a reliable option. Blocking third-party cookies by default on the other hand is a good start.
- bzbarsky 12y ago
  Mozilla can't really do their own thing unless they start writing some closed-source code. And then negotiating directly with various content providers about what the code will do. Probably a few other things I haven't thought of as well. It's all possible, but it'd be a pretty big difference from what Mozilla does normally and I'm not sure they'd be very good at it. So outsourcing that stuff makes a good bit of sense.
makomk 12y ago
This was the last possible moment. Once the web is full of DRMed content, they're entirely beholden to any demands that their DRM partners and content providers might make, like removing the privacy safeguards and giving the binary DRM module full access to the system so it can make sure code outside the sandbox isn't siphoning off the decoded video, extending the DRM to images or even HTML, etc...
Daiz 12y ago
I'd just like to point out that the H.264 issue is way smaller than this. H.264 is a public standard that anyone is free to implement. This is why FOSS encoders and decoders for it can freely exist without any issues (and the FOSS x264 encoder also happens to be pretty much the best H.264 encoder in the world too). The complications arise from the fact that a lot of tech used in H.264 is patented (software) and licensing of said patents is required in many cases to make use of it. But all in all, H.264 is still quite compatible with FOSS (and would be perfectly compatible if software patents didn't exist), whereas DRM is completely incompatible due to its secret nature. This is a far bigger issue for Mozilla to compromise on.