EME supporters: Mozilla and the EFF

It is noteworthy that Mozilla and the EFF chose not to reply to the EME Heartbeat CfC.

The terms of this CfC made it clear that not responding would be taken as support.  Both Mozilla and the EFF are W3C members and maintain confidence in the HTML WG Chairs who published the CfC with these terms, so it seems fair to take it as a fact that they agreed with the terms and supported this CfC.

I have personally appealed to Mozilla to help advance alternatives, such as the IEME, that are arguable better for user security and privacy, with no success.  I appealed to Mozilla to respond to the CfC.  Mozilla chose not to response, and thus to support the EME, and they have made no public attempt to build support for viable alternatives.  Their token comments of objection in mailing lists could well do more damage than good if they are held to be real objections or if they suggest that a real attempt was made to achieve a better outcome.

See the following article and comments: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2013/11/brendan-eich-mozillas-cto-on-eme-and-drm/index.htm   Note the exchange between Daira and Brendan.  Mozilla did not respond to the recent CfC and thus supported it.   If Mozilla really believed that watermarking was a viable alternative 
then there would be no need to fear a loss of market shared from 
refusing to deploy the EME API - it's a token gesture.

The EFF filed a formal objection to the change in the charter, but it has been dealt with, and the charter changed.  The EFF works with the Director of the W3C in various campaigns, for example The-Web-We-Want[sic].  The Chair of this Community Group, Wendy, has former relationships with the EFF (staff attorney) and is currently working for the W3C.  The members of this group have a dispute with Tim and the W3C.

For all we know, Mozilla and/or the EFF could have a wink-wink, or just an implicit, agreement with the Director of the W3C to put up token resistance and objections to the EME API to give it credibility as having been a product of the participation[sic] of Mozilla and the EFF.  Please do not assume they support your security or privacy on the Internet just because they have made representations about user security and privacy, or about keeping the web open and accessible, etc.

cheers
Fred

 		 	   		  

Received on Wednesday, 12 February 2014 23:39:18 UTC