
FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support DRM - mikegerwitz
http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-partnership-between-mozilla-and-adobe-to-support-digital-restrictions-management
======
jeswin
If we should train our guns somewhere it should be at the W3C; the guardians
of web standards. W3C shouldn't have legitimized this feature by bringing it
into standards discussions. The media companies would have had to comply
eventually. They had no future without distribution over the internet. Now of
course, they have hope.

Mozilla had no chance once Google, MS, Apple and everybody else decided to
support EME. Most users don't care if they fought for open standards. They are
probably just going to say that Firefox sucks.

If you ask me, Mozilla could be the most important software company in the
world. The stuff they are building today is fundamental to an open internet
for the future. It is important that they stay healthy for what lies ahead.

~~~
couchand
Everyone keeps repeating the claim that "most users don't care" but I think
the more accurate characterization is "most users don't understand". Teaching
people is much harder than blithely complaining about their motives, so I can
understand the appeal to HN commenters, but I would have expected Mozilla to
see above that.

~~~
danielweber
Without responding to your specific point, many people say "people who
disagree with me (just) don't understand," but in reality the people who
disagree often have just as good an understanding of the basic facts, yet
disagree anyway.

~~~
bunderbunder
Put me in that camp. I did care about DRM at one time, but that's tapered off
quite a bit over the years.

A lot of this probably correlates with my having become something of a cord
cutter. It's hard to get worked up over concerns that someone might be
threatening my "right" to disposable content that I've decided I don't need,
usually don't want, and tend to think of as having a net negative impact on my
quality of life. Perhaps it's my jaded brand of libertarianism showing: I'm
inclined to say that media companies have just as much a right to make it hard
for me to give them money as I have a right to continue not giving them money.
Ironically enough, we're actually working toward a common cause.

(edit: A response would be more edifying than a drive-by downvote, y'all.)

~~~
shkkmo
First they DRM'd the videos, and I did not speak out— Because I don't watch TV
and Movies.

Then they DRM'd the music, and I did not speak out— Because I have a nice
vinyl collection.

Then they DRM'd the ebooks, and I did not speak out— Because I still use
public libraries.

Then they DRM'd the news, and I did not speak out— Because I don't read the
news.

Then they DRM'd me.

~~~
mpyne
The reason the slippery slope is considered a fallacy is because if you're not
careful about the validity of your logic, it would apply equally well to _any_
ill.

That would therefore mean that _all bad things_ must be stopped with full
force, because "First they $VERBd the $GROUP[i], and I did not speak out"
would apply for the union of VERBs, GROUPs, and possible {i}s.

E.g. in this case you literally end with "Then they DRM'd me". Are you
seriously trying to claim that the end state of Mozilla supporting EME is that
DRM is used to physically hurt people?

~~~
shkkmo
>Are you seriously trying to claim that the end state of Mozilla supporting
EME is that DRM is used to physically hurt people?

Of course not. That last line is clearly meant to be absurd. I wanted break
the slippery slope argument.

What I was trying to do was poke fun at the idea that DRM is okay as long it
doesn't affect you directly. You should speak out against DRM, not because it
is a slippery slope, but because it is wrong and it hurts people. The reason I
think you should speak out against interning socialists is because it is
wrong, not because of the slippery slope that it entails.

~~~
mpyne
Fair enough. Poe's Law and all, it's hard to tell nowadays. :)

------
Pxtl
Honestly, I think the w3c should've just told Netflix et al to get the heck
out of the browser.

Really, that's what this is all about... but those companies are already
building fully native applications for every platform other than win32+Web.
Telling them to go make a native application (or keep dealing with
Silverlight/Flash) for that one last platform would be completely appropriate.

The world of software has changed - now we have major companies building
applications for multiple different platforms instead of "just windows" or
"just web". The web doesn't _need_ to do everything.

It doesn't need to do this.

~~~
Touche
But that's entirely the reason Netflix wants this. They don't want to create a
separate application for every platform. EME offloads the cross-platform
responsibility onto the browser vendor.

~~~
CmonDev
They want to have one lame web app instead of a set of nice native apps? I
mean it's very efficient for start-ups and a cost-saver, but they seem to be
past early stage...

~~~
blueskin_
Native apps have a huge set of their own problems. People don't want to have
to install junk just to look at what should be a website, especially not when
so many love grabbing all the personal data they can. If it had to be watched
through an app, I'd bet any sum of money you'd find many/most accessing things
like camera, mic, location, messaging, contacts, device ID, and other things
they have zero business intruding in.

~~~
dTal
Why should it be a website? The only connection between movies and hypertext
is both can be delivered over the internet. Why the HELL would you shoehorn a
branded DRM-enabled movie streaming application into a _document viewer_?

~~~
morganherlocker
> into a document viewer?

DRM discussion aside, the browser has not been a simple "document viewer" for
quite some time, despite its origins.

~~~
CmonDev
One can teach a dog how to dance, but we don't say that dogs make good
dancers.

------
valarauca1
The FSF refuses to compromise their principles. They refuse to negotiate. I
respect them for that, morally its nice to have a fixed point to hold the line
and refuse to change, it gives you a benchmark against where to judge
yourself. Even if sometimes you think the _old guard_ ate a bit to much paste.

~~~
chimeracoder
Exactly - every time I hear someone like ESR troll the FSF about why they
should support "open source" instead and embrace proprietary software, I have
to wonder what they're thinking. The sole purpose of the FSF is to promote
free software.

If the FSF had come out in support of this, I would have said that they're
shirking on their responsibility. The FSF has been known to make compromises
for the sake of pragmatism in the past, _if and only if_ such compromises
actually promote free software[1]. DRM in the browser is a very different
case, though.

It reminds me of the Republican party leader[0] in 2009 who said, on the topic
of healthcare, 'It's over. Democrats lost. The people spoke, and they don't
want healthcare. They want lower taxes. Democrats need to move on.'[2]

[0] It may have been Eric Cantor, but I can't remember

[1] e.g., using the LGPL instead of the GPL for glibc:
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-
lgpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html)

[2] It's actually even worse than that, because political parties change their
platforms over time, but since healthcare has been the crux of the Democratic
party platform for half a century, it's the closest thing to a fixed principle
as politics has.

~~~
icebraining
Another example regarding [1] (by rms, not exactly the FSF) is actually
supporting a non-copyleft/permissive license for libogg:
[http://lwn.net/Articles/299016/](http://lwn.net/Articles/299016/)

------
cs702
The key insight for me is this one: _" Popularity is not an end in itself.
This is especially true for the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit with an
ethical mission."_

Even though non-profit organizations like Mozilla do not seek to maximize
financial gain (by definition), they often seek to maximize their relevance in
the world. As a result, they ARE susceptible to corruption: most if not all
are willing to "compromise" \-- that is, sacrifice their mission and values --
in order to remain "important" in the eyes of society.

The folks running Mozilla are sacrificing the organization's mission and
values because they're afraid of losing market share. They do not want Firefox
to become a niche platform.

~~~
sanxiyn
It is not as simple as that, because I got the impression THE reason folks at
Mozilla do not want Firefox to become a niche platform is popularity is a
necessary resource to have leverage in the standard body, not popularity
itself. Frankly, I think they will accept Firefox becoming less popular as
long as the probability of maintaining necessary market share to have leverage
increases, although I don't think such situation is likely.

~~~
admax88q
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.

~~~
Rusky
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
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
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.

------
Rusky
Yes, it's disappointing that Mozilla is adding DRM to Firefox. No, that does
not mean they hold " _misguided_ fears about loss of browser marketshare".

People have the freedom to disagree with you, FSF. Just because they do
doesn't make them misguided, especially on a _future prediction_.

How is this any different from flash/silverlight plugins we already have?

~~~
blueskin_
Exactly.

If Joe Sixpack or Aunt Tilly uses firefox, wants to watch Netflix, and can't
because of this, they're going to switch to Chrome. They won't understand why,
and won't care even if they did. I'd have thought the FSF would be more
concerned about them potentially switching to Chrome in that use case...

~~~
kaoD
> If Joe Sixpack or Aunt Tilly uses firefox, wants to watch Netflix, and can't
> because of this, they're going to switch to Chrome.

They won't switch because they are already using Chrome.

Most Firefox users I know (perhaps I'm biased?) do so not because it's the
best browser (it is absolutely not!) but because of Mozilla Foundation's
values.

~~~
Curmudgel
You don't know anyone that uses Firefox for its wider selection of extensions,
more customizable UI, and better privacy (separate search bar and URL bar)
features?

~~~
kaoD
> wider selection of extensions, more customizable UI

Nope. Most people don't care about that or in fact prefer Chrome's non-
customizable UI.

> and better privacy (separate search bar and URL bar, keystrokes not sent to
> Google as "partial searches" by default)?

That's what I meant with "Mozilla Foundation's values".

~~~
Curmudgel
Usually when "supporting a company's values" is given as the primary
explanation for choosing one product over another it implies that the customer
does not gain or is in fact sacrificing some direct benefit because of a
factor that not related to the utility of a product relative to its
competition.

Increased privacy is very much a direct benefit for a user and it is a real
factor that contributes to the utility of FF.

~~~
yarrel
Which adding DRM detracts from.

------
blueskin_
The FSF would have good points, but then they ruin them with things like "or
the issues that inevitably arise when proprietary software is installed on a
user's computer.". Yes, DRM is bad, but not everything has or needs to be open
source to treat its users ethically, and some people do need to make a living
from their software.

Not everything needs to be GPL to respect people's rights to do what they want
with something they bought, not everything needs to be open source just
because they like it that way, and above all, people should have a right to
_choose to_ install whatever they want, and distros should have the same right
to choose to tell the user about closed source software when it would be
helpful to them. If the end user didn't want to hear that, they can either
ignore it, or use a FSF-endorsed linux distro like Trisquel. The fact that so
few people do shows to me how most people are completely fine with having the
ability to install what they want.

Freedom may include giving others freedom to do things you personally don't
like, but the FSF tends to think a single, ironically restricted set of
freedoms to match their philosophy are all that everyone needs.

~~~
jordigh
The FSF doesn't fight for open source. They're not the "open source
foundation". That's someone else.

Proprietary software is obviously not a requirement to make a living off
software, unless you think Mozilla had been starving until now and that's why
they have to put proprietary software in Firefox.

~~~
blueskin_
So every random small developer or indie game studio can get a multibillion
dollar partnership with google?

As it is, Mozilla's relationship with Google is looking shakier every day, as
from Google's perspective it's undercutting their own business with Chrome,
while from Mozilla's perspective, they promote firefox as being a browser that
respects privacy, and partnering with an organisation as fundamentally anti-
privacy as Google undermines that.

Yes, Mozilla needs funding, but I'd rather pay a one off fee to purchase
firefox if it really became necessary. Firefox could then come with no bundled
search engines[1], and by default direct the user to the mozilla addons page
to select which they would like to add, perhaps with a predefined list of
popular choices given prominence similarly to the microsoft browser choice
screen that gave prominence to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE and Safari, then had
others listed if you cared to look further. I guess that whole argument is
getting into the question of whether firefox is for power users or the
drooling masses who wouldn't want to configure their search engines though.

[1] I'd like to see it bundled with duckduckgo included, but I know that even
if it came without any, many users would want to add google themselves. I
respect their choice to in that case.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Yes, Mozilla needs funding, but I'd rather pay a one off fee to purchase
> firefox if it really became necessary.

Wonderful! So you don't even have to wait - you can do almost exactly what
you're describing right now! Just do the following:

1\. Donate to the Mozilla Foundation[0]

2\. Download IceWeasel, a version of Firefox that comes with no non-free
software by default (but which allows you to install non-free plugins later on
if you desire)[1]

[0] [https://mozilla.com/donate](https://mozilla.com/donate)

[1] [http://www.geticeweasel.org/](http://www.geticeweasel.org/)

~~~
gcp
_a version of Firefox that comes with no non-free software by default_

So is the Mozilla version, and that will even still be true after EME gets
added.

------
couchand
Does anybody know what Brendan Eich's stance on DRM is? I can't help but
wonder if this would have turned out differently had he still been in charge.

Eich helped found Mozilla back when it was just contributions to Netscape, and
then helped break off as a fully-fledged project. My guess is that he
understood the loss here. On the other hand, Gal wrote PDF.js which replaced
the proprietary PDF reader, so you'd expect him to get it, too.

~~~
chimeracoder
Eich strongly opposed DRM and patent-encumbered formats like H.264, but he
also understood the realities of the situation[0].

The writing has been on the wall for a while - as soon as Mozilla realized
that Google was going to renege on their promise to remove H.264, Firefox was
bound to include it (since H.264 wasn't going anywhere). As soon as the W3C
enshrined DRM in the HTML standard, it was a matter of when, not if, Firefox
would be forced to, assuming the media industry adopted it (which they will).

The only alternative would be for Firefox to hold out and refuse to adopt it,
watching their userbase shift away to all the other browsers that did support
it.

[0] [http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-
enterprise/2013/11/bre...](http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-
enterprise/2013/11/brendan-eich-mozillas-cto-on-eme-and-drm/index.htm)

~~~
magicalist
EME is not in the HTML standard yet, and is in fact not even out of Working
Draft state yet.

Meanwhile users abandoning Firefox for not supporting DRM in the browser is
not at all a foregone conclusion. More likely is _years_ of content providers
forced to support other browsers, giving more leverage to those seeking other
solutions.

------
sanxiyn
Mozilla is Serving Users. A great Orwellian phrasing.

[http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/05/14/to-serve-
users.html](http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2014/05/14/to-serve-users.html)

------
jasonlotito
I don't see why the FSF is up in arms about this. Mozilla is essentially doing
the same thing that the FSF does with the GNU C library by releasing it under
the LGPL.

They even spell out the case when they should adopt the lesser License[0],
despite the fact that it goes against the FSF's core values and they advise
not using it[1].

At the end of the day, I see this as Mozilla's LGPL.

[http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-
lgpl.html](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html) 0\. The most common
case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary
software through other alternative libraries. 1\. But we should not listen to
these temptations, because we can achieve much more if we stand together.

------
jpadkins
Has Mozilla really changed its policy? At a certain abstraction level, they
already had a plugin in system that allowed for DRM binaries embedded in the
browser. So what if the plugin system is a bit different?

You could already watch DRM netflix in firefox. If they were going from no-DRM
plugin policy to allowing DRM in plugins, that would be cause for uproar. But
Mozilla has always allowed DRM via plugins.

~~~
wmf
Arguably a DRM-specific plugin API is worse than a general-purpose plugin API
(NPAPI) that was used for DRM.

~~~
bzbarsky
Even if that DRM-specific API offers sandboxing of the plugin in ways that a
general-purpose API could never hope to do?

------
frik

      Write to Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal and let him know that you oppose DRM.
    

mailto:agal@mozilla.com

~~~
rplnt
To help Google to essentially kill yet another browser.

------
general_failure
Mozilla is very much trying to be a technology company these days with profit
in mind (realize that there are 2 Mozilla's - one which is a nonprofit org and
another a for-profit inc).

They are not like the fsf. They care about user share, market and all that.
Idealists cannot afford to think that way.

------
stcredzero
If there was some way we could verify DRM was "what it says on the tin," it
could be a tremendous tool for ensuring our privacy and freedom online. When
big companies DRM content, it limits our freedom, but if we could DRM our own
data, it limits big company and government abuses.

However, there is admittedly a big caveat here. I don't know of a workable way
to know that DRM is "what it says on the tin." Big business and governments
could place back doors into such mechanisms, which would put us in an even
worse position than where we are now.

~~~
wmf
Audited open source DRM could work if it ran on trusted computing hardware,
but that's a double-edged sword.

Also, the imbalance of power between companies and individuals is so great
that I don't think any amount of DRM can overcome it. Companies can afford to
not negotiate with individuals.

~~~
stcredzero
That's exactly the verifiability problem I'm talking about.

------
mikhailt
I can't find the information to answer my question, so don't downvote me
because it's a stupid question. I admit it is, I just want to know for
curiosity.

I don't understand why Adobe has to be used here? Why didn't Mozilla partner
with Apple, Google, and Opera on a standard implementation code for this?
After that's done, then Mozilla can try to sneak in one last question for all
partners, can we do it better than this?

~~~
wmf
Here's some speculation based on industry politics: Apple doesn't cooperate
with anyone. Opera is irrelevant. Google, MS, and Adobe are probably willing
to license their DRM plugins to Mozilla. We can imagine that some kind of
three-way bidding process went on and the outcome was that Mozilla chose Adobe
DRM. As others have pointed out, Adobe is kind of desperate because they don't
have their own browser, so perhaps Adobe was willing to make their DRM plugin
slightly less evil than Google or MS.

~~~
cpeterso
If Mozilla licensed DRM from a competing browser vendor, they would
effectively be crowning a de facto DRM "standard" based on combined browser
market share. Mozilla's support for Adobe's "less evil" CDM means there may be
more competition around DRM, though I have no theories how that might play
out.

------
lazyjones
Can we please ignore the W3C and start all over with a new "HTML" definition
without all the vendor-specific and compatibility clutter, without loose
parsing and redundant "featuritis" tags and attributes?

Build a (much simpler) GPL browser for this new "HTML" syntax and implement
compatibility plugins for legacy browsers (perhaps server-side fallback
solutions to simple HTML). Put the FSF and EFF in a strong position for future
development to ensure we can keep this technology isolated from the corporate
interests and patent trolls.

Any takers?

------
edwintorok
"Use a version of Firefox without the EME code". Well I already use a fork of
Firefox called Iceweasel, so I'm curious what Debian will decide to do with
Iceweasel.

~~~
gcp
Too bad Iceweasel contains NPAPI which is almost exclusively used to insert
much more severe DRM into it (of course that is only offered from the non-free
repo).

~~~
edwintorok
I thought NPAPI is something used by all browser plugins, for example Java.
Having said that I like to keep my browser free of plugins (no Java then), the
less plugins, the less security vulnerabilities ;)

------
thefreeman
I really don't know much about e specifics of this DRM proposition. So I
accept that my assumptions may be invalid. But just based on the history of
DRM and e internet... does anyone really doubt that someone will be able to
defeat this DRM?

~~~
sanxiyn
No one is doubting DRM will be defeated. No one technical, anyway. The purpose
of DRM is not to prevent copyright violation. This seems to be widely
misunderstood point.

[https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2](https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2)

~~~
thefreeman
Thanks, that was an interesting read.

------
sutro
Here's hoping that a viable non-Mozilla group emerges that will offer a DRM-
disabled version of Firefox, one that is addon-compatible and which pulls in
all non-DRM-related upstream changes. Mozilla has lost my support over this
decision.

~~~
atopal
It seems like you are describing an oxymoron. It's not possible to create a
browser that both supports plugins, but disables DRM. Plug-ins (assuming you
are referring to the NPAPI) by definition can do anything they want, and in
fact are used today to implement DRM in the form of Silverlight and Flash
(RTMPE). Think of this as an alternative <object> tag, that doesn't allow
arbitrary plugins, but one very specific to encode and decode audio/video.

Fun fact, if you have used Youtube, you have probably consumed DRMed content
via Flash's RTMPE support.

~~~
sutro
I meant addons and extensions, not native code plugins. I have all plugins
including flash disabled, so no, I don't consume DRM content via Youtube or
any other site.

------
ZenoArrow
Why are people attacking Mozilla? Go after the real culprits in this fiasco
(you know who they are), not the reluctant consenter. Kick up a fuss with
users of the competing browsers. It's still possible to salvage something from
this.

------
belorn
Mozilla could and in my opinion should do much more in order to live up to
their fundamental principles and stated goals. They could inform the user
about each website that uses DRM without prevent the user from viewing the
content.

Its not even a revolutionary concept, as they are already requiring a click-
to-accept with self-signed certificates. It puts the responsibility to the
website if the black box called DRM causes problems, locks up, or cause some
general havoc on the user. It highlights that the website is demanding to take
control over the users device, and gives the user an option to say no.

It is easy to speak about fundamental principles in PR announcements, but code
speak louder. The only bright spot is if Mozilla don't do more for the users,
add-ons and forks will try to carry the principles for them.

------
kumar303
"The decision compromises important principles in order to alleviate misguided
fears about loss of browser marketshare"

misguided, as in, Firefox wants people to actually use its browser? I'm
seriously surprised at some of these idealists failing to understand that
normal people _just want to watch House of Cards_ (or whatever) and that's
pretty much it. Mozilla can't turn their back on those users.

~~~
sanxiyn
Mozilla can. Mozilla decided not to. It is an important difference.

------
budu3
A very sad day for the Open Web. What can we as users do?

~~~
maxerickson
Continue to factor DRM into your payment decisions. Given reasonable
opportunities, encourage other people to do the same thing. That is, if you
catch them listening, point out how DRM makes media less valuable for end
users.

I think being overly reasonable and keeping it simple is probably the right
approach, so pointing out that a video is tied to a specific system and will
likely stop working is preferable to stuff that heads in the direction of $15
purchases harming freedom.

~~~
acdha
I think this is the key avenue for progress: work to keep the perceived value
of DRMed content low.

People don't mind DRM on things like Netflix because the cost is so low and
the model is clearly communicated in all of Netflix'x marketing.

In contrast, DRM inspires significant outrage when people are told that they
“own” something but are restricted from using it normally. Even people who
don't normally care about technical issues know it's not right when they're
told e.g. they have to pay a second time to watch a movie on their iPad after
paying $50 for a Blu-Ray copy.

If anything is going to change the DRM trend, it'll be increased unwillingness
to pay high prices for restricted content.

------
CmonDev
"Open" web.

------
bttf
A victory for the giants.

------
judk
I await the resignation of Mozilla's CEO, who clearly has shown an inability
to represent the community on this issue of human freedoms that form the
cornerstone of the Mozilla Foundation.

------
camus2
Dont worry,Mozilla already betrayed Adobe once with this whole Tamarin/ES4
fiasco,with a little luck they'll change their mind for the best this time
too.

------
judah
Between this and forcing Eich out of a job over a political issue, I've lost a
lot of love for Mozilla in the last month.

