Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 20:01 UTC (Wed) by krake (guest, #55996)
In reply to: Firefox gets closed-source DRM by gerv
Parent article: Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Sure.
I am just saying that the official statement is using a rather awkward phrasing since the alliance does not achieve the alledged goal at all.

Firefox users will have to also use other browsers due to the flawed design of EME.

It would have been better to not inclulde this at all, right now it looks like an attempt to fool the uninformed.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 22:15 UTC (Wed) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] (3 responses)

You can rest assured that Mozilla and/or Adobe have been in talks for a while behind closed doors to ensure that a critical mass of those content providers that rely on DRM will work with that system, but unfortunately all those agreements are probably even harder to talk about in public due to the involved parties. I don't think either Mozilla or Adobe would put the efforts into this if they wouldn't know that the important players would be in the boat there.

Not that anyone at Mozilla would be really happy with implementing any form of DRM support, from all I can tell.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 2:25 UTC (Thu) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link] (1 responses)

Which simply proves that Mozilla is addicted to cash from Google and the proprietary compromises follow naturally from the interests of Google and other content providers.

The Apache license and "open source" (as opposed to Free/Libre) culture surrounding Mozilla continues to make apologetics for this sort of backhanded support. So long as the major funding for browser development is intrinsically tied to profit interests, it cannot easily be otherwise. The enemy, as always, is the capitalist organization of software development. But it doesn't mean that one has to allow Mozilla to do this without explaining the dangers to the user community. Mozilla, like Android, have each closed their eyes and ears and wailed "lalalala" while promoting their own "app stores" (Firefox extensions) in which little or no consideration is given to the free/libre nature of the code: licenses are not mandatory parts of search results and in fact are hardly ever to be found.

Here we see another historic line in the sand breached -- not by Microsoft, Opera, and Safari, where it is to be expected -- but by Mozilla. Having breached this line, they deserve no deference or respect in participating in future standardization processes, and that is a real shame.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 8:42 UTC (Thu) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link]

What do you mean by "Mozilla breached the line in the sand"? IE, Safari and Chrome all implemented this technology first.

Mozilla mostly uses the MPL (a weak copyleft license), not the Apache license.

You can continue to claim that Google makes all Mozilla's decisions, but it will continue to be a claim without a shred of evidence to back it up. If Google were making these decisions for us, we'd be using their CDM, not Adobe's.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 15, 2014 7:32 UTC (Thu) by krake (guest, #55996) [Link]

Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely certain that Adobe has long standing contracts currently served client side via Flash that they were able to extend through that.

I am also confident that they can leverage Mozillas standing to even further their uptake at the publishers' side.

As I said before I am merely critizing the phrasing, since it looks like an attempt to fool the uninformed into believing that this will allow them to continue to use Firefox as their only browser.

The very core principle of EME is compartmentalization, the goal is to make content exclusive to certain parties.

Sure, Mozilla Corp. is a for-profit organisation, but their marketing is usually way above the "fool the sheeple" level.