In these cynical times you need to consider who benefits from a moral panic. Brendan Eich resigned from Mozilla apparently because of a campaign because he supported Proposition 8. This led to a campaign to uninstall mozilla. But the campaign has led to mozilla doing something equally bad: letting DRM in. Which benefits the Hollywood corporations. Encouraging their gay activists has led to a “win”.

The Romans had a saying: ‘cui bono’. Who benefits. Here it is those who have copyright over content and want to keep it. It is the same issue that is a big barrier to getting international trade agreements with the USA: most of us do not accept copyright for life. However, there are substitutes.

Eich stood firmly in the way of Mozilla incorporating DRM into Firefox. Now that he’s gone, and his technological authority with him, Mozilla immediately caved to Hollywood interests. It’s also interesting to note that the justification for Mozilla making this change is given as fear that users will abandon them. That demonstrates that the campaign to #uninstallfirefox was based on a sound principle, even if it was not quite as successful as I would have liked it to be.

As of yesterday, Firefox still represents 21 percent of the traffic here at VP, although it is down from 34 percent historically. But at least 8 percent of the overall traffic, (and nearly a quarter of the former Mozilla traffic), now uses Pale Moon. If you haven’t switched yet, I encourage you to try it out. Perhaps Mozilla’s embrace of DRM will convince you to do so.

The ability of corporate boards to wage war via proxy of an easily manipulated mass isn’t reassuring. It’d be nicer to think it *was* ideologically pure, rather than a mere assumption of the ideology’s status quo and effectiveness. Either way, the point is illustrated that those who make themselves easy targets will be targeted; the ousting of Eich only eggs on the blood lust of the mob. Not being able to hold a job without proper political affiliation should make one afraid. That #uninstallfirefox had less effect than some rightists predict is only more worrying.

There are a couple of worries about this. Winding up a mob — albeit a politically connected one with pretensions of education — increases the chance the mob will turn on you, particularly when they take your ideas, your memes and make them tame, feeble… and copyrighted. This is the position the progressive elite find themselves in — and all branches of that elite: those in the church and out of it: those within the rainbow movement and without, and those within the democratic party and without it.

And if you want to know who benefits, then do as the Romans did. Follow the money: find out who donated, and what regulations were changed, in this managed economy, as a consequence.