Re: Mozilla blog: DRM and the Challenge of Serving Users

On 2014-05-15 18:21 Gervase Markham wrote:
> On 15/05/14 14:09, cobaco wrote:
> > we've been over the answer time and again on this list...
> > 
> > There's a major difference between:
> > - supporting a legacy api that has been abused to provide drm and that's
> > on
> > the way out anyway, and
> > - supporting a brand new api that is going to be used for nothing but DRM
> 
> There's even a question in our soon-I-hope-to-be-published Technical FAQ
> entitled "Why doesn't Mozilla let DRM die with NPAPI plugins?". :-)
> 
> The answer, of course, is that our competitors aren't, and that we are
> at an increasing competitive disadvantage. Firefox with just a handful
> of users, which is where that road ends, means the open web loses
> entirely (not just one battle).

right, so...

on the one hand mozilla is claiming "we don't like DRM we're against it"

on the other hand mozilla is now clearly and openly taking actions that 
clearly serve no purpose except supporting DRM
(i.e. the adding of an entire API infrastructure specifically to support drm 
plugins, be it with one level of indirection) 

As to not supporting DRM putting Mozilla 'at an increasing competitive 
disadvantage',  I don't believe that at all:

To those of us that are against DRM the absence of DRM support is a positive 
bullet point, a competitive advantage, a feature, not the opposite. 

Not getting that shows either a shift in viewpoint at Mozilla or lack of 
awareness to the broader view

Actions will speak louder then words, and right now:
- Mozilla's actions are obviously switching to supporting DRM , though
- Mozilla's public rhetoric still says the opposite
- By not matching actions to words (or the reverse) Mozilla is just coming 
across as a big honking hypocrite, and statements like the above just 
reinforce that
-- 
Cheers

Received on Friday, 16 May 2014 08:25:10 UTC