[uylug-varios] Fwd: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management

Cristian Menghi cristian at menghi.biz
Thu May 15 04:40:37 PDT 2014 

---
Cristian Menghi @movil
---------- Mensaje reenviado ----------
De: "Free Software Foundation" <info at fsf.org>
Fecha: 15/05/2014 02:06
Asunto: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support
Digital Restrictions Management
Para: "Cristian Menghi" <cristian at menghi.biz>
Cc:

 *You can read this post online at https://u.fsf.org/xk
<https://u.fsf.org/xk>.*
FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital
Restrictions Management

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Wednesday, May 14th, 2014 — In response to
Mozilla's announcement that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox
Web browser, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made
the following statement:

"Only a week after the International Day Against
DRM<https://defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm/>,
Mozilla has announced that it will partner with proprietary software
company Adobe to implement support for Web-based Digital Restrictions
Management<https://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management>(DRM)
in its Firefox browser, using Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).

The Free Software Foundation is deeply disappointed in Mozilla's
announcement. The decision compromises important principles in order to
alleviate misguided fears about loss of browser marketshare. It allies
Mozilla with a company hostile to the free software movement and to
Mozilla's own fundamental ideals.

Although Mozilla will not directly ship Adobe's proprietary DRM plugin, it
will, as an official feature, encourage Firefox users to install the plugin
from Adobe when presented with media that requests DRM. We agree with Cory
Doctorow that there is no meaningful distinction between 'installing DRM'
and 'installing code that installs DRM.'

We recognize that Mozilla is doing this reluctantly, and we trust these
words coming from Mozilla much more than we do when they come from
Microsoft or Amazon. At the same time, nearly everyone who implements DRM
says they are forced to do it, and this lack of accountability is how the
practice sustains itself. Mozilla's announcement today unfortunately puts
it -- in this regard -- in the same category as its proprietary competitors.

Unlike those proprietary competitors, Mozilla is going to great lengths to
reduce some of the specific harms of DRM by attempting to 'sandbox' the
plugin. But this approach cannot solve the fundamental ethical problems
with proprietary software, or the issues that inevitably arise when
proprietary software is
installed<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/proprietary.html>on a user's
computer.

In the announcement<https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/>,
Mitchell Baker asserts that Mozilla's hands were tied. But she then goes on
to actively praise Adobe's "value" and suggests that there is some kind of
necessary balance between DRM and user freedom.

There is nothing necessary about DRM, and to hear Mozilla praising Adobe --
the company who has been and continues to be a vicious opponent of the free
software movement and the free Web -- is shocking. With this partnership in
place, we worry about Mozilla's ability and willingness to criticize
Adobe's practices going forward.

We understand that Mozilla is afraid of losing users. Cory Doctorow points
out<http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow>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. In the past, Mozilla has distinguished itself and
achieved success by protecting the freedom of its users and explaining the
importance of that freedom: including publishing Firefox's source code,
allowing others to make modifications to it, and sticking to Web standards
in the face of attempts to impose proprietary extensions.

Today's decision turns that calculus on its head, devoting Mozilla
resources to delivering users to Adobe and hostile media distributors. In
the process, Firefox is losing the identity which set it apart from its
proprietary competitors -- Internet Explorer and Chrome -- both of which
are implementing EME in an even worse fashion.

Undoubtedly, some number of users just want restricted media like Netflix
to work in Firefox, and they will be upset if it doesn't. This is
unsurprising, since the majority of the world is not yet familiar with the
ethical issues surrounding proprietary software. This debate was, and is, a
high-profile opportunity to introduce these concepts to users and ask them
to stand together in some tough decisions.

To see Mozilla compromise without making any public effort to rally users
against this supposed "forced choice" is doubly disappointing. They should
reverse this decision. But whether they do or do not, we call on them to
join us by devoting as many of their extensive resources to permanently
eliminating DRM as they are now devoting to supporting it. The FSF will
have more to say and do on this in the coming days. For now, users who are
concerned about this issue should:

   -

   *Write to Mozilla CTO Andreas Gal and let him know that you oppose DRM
   <agal at mozilla.com>*. Mozilla made this decision in a misguided appeal to
   its userbase; it needs to hear in clear and reasoned terms from the users
   who feel this as a betrayal. Ask Mozilla what it is going to do to actually
   solve the DRM problem that has created this false forced choice.
   -

   *Join our effort to stop EME approval
   <https://defectivebydesign.org/no-drm-in-html5> at the W3C*. While
   today's announcement makes it even more obvious that W3C rejection of EME
   will not stop its implementation, it also makes it clear that W3C can
   fearlessly reject EME to send a message that DRM is *not* a part of the
   vision of a free Web.
   -

   *Use a version of Firefox without the EME code*: Since its source code
   is available under a license allowing anyone to modify and redistribute it
   under a different name, we expect versions without EME to be made
   available, and you should use those instead. We will list them in the Free
   Software Directory <https://directory.fsf.org>.
   -

   *Donate to support the work of the Free Software Foundation
   <https://u.fsf.org/xi> and our Defective by Design <https://u.fsf.org/xh>
   campaign to actually end DRM.* Until it's completely gone, Mozilla and
   others will be constantly tempted to capitulate, and users will be
   pressured to continue using some proprietary software. If not us, give to
   another group fighting against digital restrictions."

References

   - What is DRM?<https://defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm_digital_restrictions_management>
   -
   https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challenge-of-serving-users/
   -
   https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-mission-and-w3c-eme/
   - https://defectivebydesign.org/dbd-condemns-drm-in-html
   - https://fsf.org/news/coalition-against-drm-in-html
   - https://defectivebydesign.org/oscar-awarded-w3c-in-the-hollyweb

Media Contact

John Sullivan
Executive Director
Free Software Foundation
+1 (617) 542 5942
campaigns at fsf.org
About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in
freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and
gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations
to support the FSF's work can be made at https://donate.fsf.org. Its
headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.
-- 

Follow us on GNU social <https://status.fsf.org/fsf> | Subscribe to our
blogs via RSS <https://fsf.org/blogs/RSS> | Join us as an associate
member<https://www.fsf.org/jf>

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