If FF had declined to put EME in the build (as many believed they should) then perhaps some pressure could have been brought to bear. At this stage, I don't think it matters who you email, it's done.
If programmers actually used firefox and advocated it to the point where it had a majority market share then maybe their refusal would carry some weight.
But as it stands the web dev community has said loud and clear what their priorities are, and this is just a natural consequence of that.
The final straw was when they had a big update. Instead of fixing any of these issues, they gave me the ability to call people with service I don't use by clicking a link :/
I did spend a brief period swapping back to Firefox for the sake of perceived privacy, but then they started bundling all sorts of third party bloatware and it was just too much. I'm not a superfan of the information I imagine Google collects from my using Chrome, but the browser itself is just too good to give up. Firefox now only gets opened to verify cross-browser functionality of frontend UIs I work on, and on rare occasions when I want to use a proxy in a browser without it being used system-wide.
But then, I'm not a web developer
If you don't want to send information back to Google, don't use Chrome.
Use Chromium instead. It's Chrome, but without the spyware, and only has the open-source components.
It won't work for Netflix though, but for all your other browsing, it should work exactly the same as Chrome. Keep Chrome around for Netflix.
Browser can be either better technically, or you might have valency for certain design decisions.
If there is a browser vendors that claims certain social values, but is constantly failing to execute them in the design, you might as well just use the technically better one that does not pretend to protect the values you consider worth protecting. You will be spared of the constant disappointment.
Chrome was unbelievably quick: the moment you clicked on the launcher and browser 'chrome' (heh) appeared instantaneously, Firefox was comparatively sluggish, and notoriously memory hungry (though that might have been the fault of sloppily written plugins)
I wish browsers were more like uzbl, where the default were a simple browser and add-ons were like linux distros. You could have a firefox browser distro with a firefox branding and plugins to get great features but be able to remove them easily or strip it to its bare core.
We have the power, but sadly not the will.
1. Go to https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
2. Click on the largest version number (46.0.1 right now)
3. Select "EME-free" under your OS
4. Select your language of choice
For the lazy:
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/46.0.1/mac-EME-...
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/46.0.1/win64-EM...
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/46.0.1/linux-x8...
This makes a difference. You won't be able to watch EME-locked content, but every time you try, a content publisher will have to come up with the resources to send you the page with the locked content, all to no avail.
Of course, you'll probably either cancel your Netflix or find a workaround. But you won't be casually supporting EME on sites you never knew were using it. Your every day browsing will automatically block EME.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore
Opt out of CDM playback, uninstall CDMs and stop all CDM downloads
You have the choice to globally opt out of HTML5 DRM playback. Once you opt out, Firefox will delete any downloaded CDMs from your hard drive, cease all future CDM downloads and disable DRM playback. This affects only DRM-controlled HTML5 audio and video. To opt out of HTML5 DRM playback completely, follow these steps:
Click the menu button and choose Options.
Click the Content panel.
Remove the check mark next to Play DRM content.In order to enable it, you must go to about:config and enable browser.eme.ui.enabled. While you are there, you can just disable media.eme.enabled and media.eme.apiVisible.
On Windows, it is shown indeed (45.1.1 ESR).
A perhaps easier approach that should work based on the name (but have not confirmed) is to lock via the user.js method user_pref/lockPref("media.eme.enabled", false). If this works as intended, then simply make this config file part of the deployment should be enough.
We don't like EME for technical reasons that the average consumer does not understand. Consumers will embrace EME because it connects them to content providers and not doing so would be like the linux users from over a decade ago who couldn't run flash.