
Ask HN: Should Mozilla Follow the EFF Out of the W3C? - prometheus6
In order to more fully understand the situation I would like everyone&#x27;s opinion on why this should or shouldn&#x27;t happen, and what the potential consequences might be. Thank you.
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jackfraser
On the one hand, standing for the "right to general purpose computation", or
however you'd like to phrase the idea, has a strong moral case behind it. Like
it or not, the philosophies and ideas of RMS and his successors who believe in
Free Software and liberated computing have been prescient time and time again.
The kind of lock-in that was predicted in the 90s came to pass on smartphone
platforms and requires a continual and ultimately wasteful effort on the part
of hackers and developers just to enable us to use our privately-owned devices
to do what we want to with the bits flowing through them.

DRM is one of the biggest challenges to that, and as such has been in the
public consciousness for nearly 20 years, with the EFF standing strong against
it all that time. Their fight should really be thought of as being as a
digital adjunct of the fight for free speech and others that are
constitutionally protected in free nations.

Walking out of the W3C is a powerful signal, but one that will ultimately not
bring about the EFF's victory. In order to maintain the moral high ground, it
was a necessary act; they could not stay true to their mission otherwise.
However, it remains to be seen what the next concrete step they can actually
take on said mission will be.

Now, if Mozilla were to join them, what would it mean? Would it mean that
Firefox and other Mozilla projects will not support playing video from sites
that go ahead with DRM video? If so, the loss will be on Firefox's part if
video sites do go ahead with the change. Obviously not all sites will do it,
but those that intend to monetize highly popular content will, as they
continue to believe that it's worthwhile to spend their efforts valiantly
fighting the losing piracy battle.

This may be enough to cost Firefox even more share of the browser market,
which is going to be a hard sell for Mozilla even as they try to succeed in
their own mission for a free Web.

I'm not sure walking out is the right idea. Rather, I like the techniques that
have shown to work ever since I posted my first comment railing against DRM in
the 90s.

1\. Separate the non-free from the free, without preventing it from working
entirely. Mozilla shouldn't stop DRM from working in Firefox, but they should
ship it DRM-free and never make it a compulsory component.

2\. Make alternatives that "the rest of us" can use. Friendly tools to encode
and share video using free, decentralized tools can undercut the effective
monopoly of Youtube and other sharing sites.

3\. Personally avoid DRM'd content, and focus on content from producers that
understand the freely-distributed, value-for-value model. Support content
creators directly rather than forcing them to rely on advertising-based
models. This helps make artists more free to produce without worrying about
corporate approval, and cuts out a host of parasitic middlemen.

