During the weeks since Mozilla’s DRM-embracing decision to include EME there were quite a few voices defending Mozilla’s decision. Most of the serious defence basically boils down to: we had to; without EME/DRM support Mozilla would be the browser that can’t play video, and users would turn to other browsers which would jeopardize our work for freedom and open Internet in other areas.

As I have written before users already have little reason to stay with Firefox, and the strongest selling point for many of users still on Firefox has for a longest time been: that’s the freedom preserving browser. With EME/DRM in Firefox, this reason is moot.

What’s tragic is that even with EME/DRM inside, which already cost Firefox some users from the freedom crowd (and inspired at least one fork, of course), Firefox is bound to also lose in the less freedom-centred crowd.

Think about it for just a short while. The whole basic idea of DRM is flawed beyond repair – software that has to make some content available to a user (to be viewed, for example), and simultaneously make the same content not available to the same user (so that it’s not possible to copy it).

This scheme has serious problems working even in closed-source, black-box software (sometimes even fails hilariously). How is it supposed to work in an open-source browser?

Let’s ponder a scenario, shall we?

1. Mozilla implements EME in Firefox¶

…and has DRM solution suppliers (like Adobe) write DRM plugins for Firefox. That’s where we’re at today.

2. Firefox now has to have some sort of protection of the decoded media stream¶

…so that it’s only available to the browser itself (to display to the user), but not the extensions – otherwise get ready for an extension that grabs the decoded media stream and saves it to disk (completely side-stepping any DRM) in 3… 2… 1…

3. May the forks be with you!¶

Say, how about a fork that removes this very protection of the decoded media stream, but leaves in-place the rest of the EME/DRM infrastructure? Somebody is bound to do it. At this point DRM/EME is completely side-stepped in this Firefox fork.

One of the defenders of Mozilla’s EME/DRM decision, Ben Moskovitz, remarks:

enabling users to do more is a feature.

Being able to save the media stream to disk sounds to me like enabling users to do more. Let us guess, then, which Firefox version will now become more and more popular, eh?

4. Hollywood and DRM providers get wind of the fork¶

Is there anything Mozilla can do to plug this hole? Not as long as the code is open and free-as-in-freedom! Ah, well, Hollywood won’t have any of that hippie bullshit, so they push DRM providers to remove support for Firefox (and its forks).

5. Game over¶

Mozilla lands with EME infrastructure and no DRM providers willing to write a plugin using it (as it would jeopardize their relationship with Hollywood), freesofties have already long moved to some more freedom-preserving browser, and regular users move to any browser that has DRM plugins for its EME infrastructure. You know, the closed-source ones.

After all, why would they stay on “a browser that can’t”?