Mozilla Gives Way To DRM Pressure: Implementing EME Into Firefox

By Benjamin Young

Mozilla has given in to DRM video as a web standard. EME (Encrypted Media Extensions) is going to bring ‘native’ DRM video support to not only Firefox, but all the headlining browsers. In fact, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari have already implemented their own solutions. Firefox has held out thus far for a few understandable reasons:

  • EME requires closed source code to keep the encryption secure
  • EME has no official standard, and each browser ships with a different plugin, meaning more fragmentation and browser/plugin/version checks for websites in general
  • There’s easier and more open solutions to video DRM

Mozilla suggests media providers should instead implement digital watermarks into their formats to identify users responsible for reproduction. Despite their reasoning, DRM has pushed forward and Mozilla feels they need to implement a solution before end users start moving from Firefox in favor of other browsers that have EME support out of the box. Mozilla is looking to Adobe to provide the plugin.

Firelocks

While, ultimately this is good news for Linux users that have been holding out for Linux support, it’s something of a bittersweet win. It’s possible that we may even see Firefox get pulled from a large number of distributions with the defaulting use of a proprietary plugin. Though, it’s worth mentioning that the plugin is planned to only be downloaded when a user accesses a site that requests it and won’t exactly be included in installers or packages. Or maybe there’s really nothing to worry about, Mozilla had a similar scenario on their hands with their implementation of the H.264 codec and the internet didn’t fall apart. Regardless of the results, perhaps we should just be glad to slowly rid the net of Flash and Silverlight.