Starting with the "land of opportunity and freedom" Insert picture of eagle...
wow,
such irony.
And then people are up in arms about moving backbone internet functionality out of US, claiming that the internet is in its most free form when situated in America. With this FCC ruling, it's more or less confirmed that this statement is a joke. American freedom seems to be restricted to the freedom to wield a firearm.
By agreeing to incorporate DRM in the browser Mozilla is, according to that comment, agreeing to let the problem get worse.
One of the characteristics of cable TV is, precisely, that you don't get access to the content if you don't pay. DRM is one way of achieving this, and Mozilla in this case is accepting that without even a struggle.
If I understood the parent comment correctly, that is.
Mozilla fought the DRM implementation more than any other browser. They were at the point where they unfortunately had to implement it, otherwise their user base wouldn't be able to access services like netflix etc. At that point it's better to keep your user base instead of them switching to another browser and having no voice.
You raise a good point. I'm not smart enough to give a good reply to the issue on my own, so instead I'm going to quote the relevant part of the FSFs statement[1] from a different discussion[2]:
> We understand that Mozilla is afraid of losing users. Cory Doctorow points out[3] that they have produced no evidence to substantiate this fear or made any effort to study the situation. More importantly, popularity is not an end in itself. This is especially true for the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit with an ethical mission.
I'd argue you are smart enough to give a good reply. You've given your reference material as well (which I should have done previously). You are reading and engaging in Hacker News topics, this means you are way above the "average" person. You are smart enough to give a good reply :)
I think it's a reference to the DRM thing from yesterday. Honestly it was more of Mozilla capitulating to the DRM gods, it's not like they're out there pounding the pavement for DRM.
Most people just want the damn thing to work. Studios, whether the EFF and others like it or not, are not going to be changing their stance on DRM any time soon. It seems that more and more media is being consumed on a subscription basis than is being downloaded (see Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu)... People are caring less about owning the content than having access to it.
Currently with DRM there are a variety of plugins to support it in the browser. You have to download Widevine's plugin, or PlayReady's plugin, or whatever. It's just a better user experience if we really do need DRM to have some standardized DRM that the browsers can implement to make it seamless for the user.
Note that I don't support DRM, I think it's a total waste of time because the movies aren't released to the wild by your average Joe who is downloading movies from Amazon. It just serves to hurt the average user. However I think that if we must have DRM, it should at least be something that is easier and works better for the average user.
To answer your question: the difference is that Mozilla is not going out and promoting DRM. They are being pragmatic and reasonable in the less than ideal situation.
