Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#111

Post by AdrianB1 » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:05 PM UTC

shaki-dora wrote: post #58

AdrianB1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One country cannot police Internet, otherwise China will shut it down tomorrow. If a site is legal in the country where it is hosted, then it is legal and that's it, connecting to Internet assumes you obey this simple rule.

Well, seems like some people don't actually "obey" this rule you just invented. And, for now, they have that other invented rule on their side, the rule of law .

The law applied in the country that established it, not worldwide. This is what I said.

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#112

Post by burtonator » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

This is why app stores are fundamentally a horrible idea for the web and I'm surprised we aren't more enraged by them.

They put ALL the control of which apps can be used in the hands of 3-4 companies.

Sure, you can go out and write your own app and side load it but you're only going to have 1-3k users.

Additionally, what if you live in a country that doesn't have these "laws" ? why can't people run my app if they want?

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#113

Post by mathnmusic » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #106

nothis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're sending data to your computer but you mustn't look! Promise!" I'm not sure how the addon worked, if there's some trickery going on, but I'm long waiting for a lawsuit against ad blockers that could get heated.

This has nothing to do with ad blockers, or indeed advertising at all. The way it works is they set the user-agent to one used by search engines. The website thinks you are Google, so they give you the content for free because they want Google to index their proprietary content.

How long before Google switches to digitally signed crawling requests?

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#114

Post by nextgens » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

I am the author of that add-on ... what would you do in my shoes ?

  - provide an XPI (that will only benefit the few since the side-loading process is made awkwarder at every point release) ?
  - fight it ? If so, on what grounds and how ?
  - something else ?

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#115

Post by eletious » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #95

I'm not a lawyer. I don't know the particulars of the law. But I presume "blocking", as in the ads are effectively removed, is key. Instead of blocking them, would hiding them, via a div with a higher z-index? Mind you, that doesn't prevent the tracking. But there are other tools for that. I agree. Ads suck. Maybe there's a legal loophole to avoid them some other way?

think you misunderstand what the extension does - it hid paywalls, not ads

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#116

Post by blakesterz » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

giornogiovanna wrote: post #62

This extension just seems to strip tracking data and pretend to be a Google bot. It baffles me that this is somehow concerning enough to be taken down. And anyway, isn't making exemptions for Google's robots sort-of against their policy? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355

That's exactly what I thought too, not even " sort-of " it seems "without a doubt" against that policy. It seems really tricky for Google to enforce though. Wouldn't they need to send out bots crawling without the GoogleBot agent? That also seems wrong, somehow.

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#117

Post by abc-xyz » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:24 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #109

abc-xyz wrote: post #84

[flagged]

Do you think the cost of hosting is relevant at all to the bottom line of an internet publisher? What is costly is creating and buying the content .

I would surely hope that salaries are their greatest cost by a large margin, but not sure how it's relevant to my point of it being difficult to emphatize with these publishers who engage in evil practices. Heck, they could just build a static site and host it for free on GitLab.

So we have publishers whose articles can be hosted for free, said articles are likely seen by thousands, sometimes millions, of people, most of which are articles that are mostly copied from other publishers/blogs with little to no research put into it. And we are to believe that this cannot be profitable without pulling this kind of bullshit?

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#118

Post by sombragris » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:25 PM UTC

What an utterly stupid trick. So, I didn't even know those extensions existed. Such arrogant behavior made me search and install one of these. Serves them right.

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#119

Post by ianwalter » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

I would rather have a browser plugin that just removed pay walled content from search results anyway. Or one that redirected me to something I would use like Blendle.

Re: Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

#120

Post by Rumudiez » Sun, Dec 02, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

sombragris wrote: post #118

What an utterly stupid trick. So, I didn't even know those extensions existed. Such arrogant behavior made me search and install one of these. Serves them right.

I always appreciate a good example of the Streisand effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect