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Comment by coretx | Hacker News Reader

You are right, it's not a gun, it's Widevine they hold against your head. Of course everyone is free to use DRM if they want to, however, no one should be free to expose others to the risks/consequences of DRM.

It's basically Popper on tolerance all over again. Herefore it should not be a surprise to notice that Mozilla's strategic failures already are costing us freedom.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance for details.

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Yes, being a browser used by small minority surely gives them major bargaining powers to rid the web of DRM.

Or it would simply make Spotify, Netflix and other similar sites not function on Firefox and reduce their market share even more.

Who knows...

The article itself [0] asnwers to this argument.

> How did it get into the spec? Oh, it got into the spec because when the Content Mafia pressured W3C to include it, Mozilla caved. At the end of the day they said, "We approve of this and will implement it". Their mission -- their DUTY -- was to pound their shoe on the god damned table and say: "We do not approve, and will not implement if approved."

[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/

It is not an argument and it doesn't "answer" anything. It simply suggests that they should have said no, without going in to details what that would entail.

At the end of the day, does it really matter? DRM extension is external and disabled by default on fresh install, and it asks to be enabled only once you encounter the DRM content. You can always say no if you deeply care about it.

Its /not/ (only) external, as your "disabled" in the same sentence already implies. Fundamental changes have been made that transfer power from the end user to elsewhere without end user consent nor them understanding the scope and meaning of the problem at hand. This transfer was ( partially ) forced by third parties not acting in the end user or Mozillas interest; in fact the opposite is true. Not only damages technical in nature where dealt, but also in terms of good name & reputation since the adversary made Mozilla squander their responsibilities and by extension betray their relationship with the end users. This is a textbook example of howto drive any organization into the ground.

In my understanding, they could at least have fought for this not to get into the W3C spec, but they did not object, according to the blog. This is one the kind of stuff that endanger free internet, which mozilla is supposed to fight for.

The blog is wrong, I think they did object afaik, the blog (and others) just think they should have objected more strongly or not implemented it.

Ok, if that is the case I stand corrected.

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