161–170 of 405 posts
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Criminals don't perform a useful service for society. Journalists do. Journalism is flawed, but flawed journalism is better than no journalism.
That's assuming that laws are the perfect arbiter of what is useful and what is not. Some useful and moral activities are or used to be criminal acts.
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This is a really bad argument that can be used to justify any anti user feature whatsoever.
No? First of all, I'm saying that allowing sideloading is actually hostile to the majority of users, and I'm also saying this threatened the very survival of Mozilla, so this needs to be part of the consideration.
"It's not gonna happen. Firefox would be dead by now if it still allowed users to customize their webbrowser and make Firefox unusable (as in slow, unstable, and btw insecure), because users wouldn't keep up with that for too long. They'd just use another browser. This may be okay with you for now because you know how to protect yourself against misconfiguration, but in the long run Mozilla needs market share to stay relevant and be able to compete with the richest companies on this planet."
Substitute in any positive feature that puts the user in control of their web browsing experience, power over something means the power to break it too, using that as a reason to remove functionality is stupid.
Doubly so when you pile on the "omg if they do this mozilla is doomed" hysterics.
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It's not gonna happen. Firefox would be dead by now if it still allowed bad or incompetent actors to make Firefox unusable (as in slow, unstable, and btw insecure), because users wouldn't keep up with that for too long. They'd just use another browser. This may be okay with you for now because you know how to protect yourself against malware, but in the long run Mozilla needs market share to stay relevant and be able…
Significant part of FF's userbase decided in its favor exactly because of choice of third-party addons.
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 ?
How about stop the development? The fact that you can break the paywall (easily) doesn't give you the right to do it. Current laws (in that country) state that it's ilegal, so why do you insist in doing it?
the web is public, despite SV’s best attempts to subvert and exploit that. If you don’t want someone accessing information don’t publish it as a website that anyone can access.
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They mostly just want to survive... But in this case, they specifically want to allow you read maybe a dozen articles per month for free, but also (see above) to eat.
Criminals also just want to survive. That doesn't make their immoral business model legitimate.
(c.f. the bishop of Cologne, Germany, regarding the theft of basic foodstuffs during the famine immediately after WW2)
A wish to survive is also an accepted excuse in many other cases of behaviour that would otherwise be considered criminal. You can even kill someone and get out of it with a credible claim of self-defence.
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I have a few responses to this, but the most basic is: Please dont tell people what to do on their computers. If your business model is not supportable except by other people willfully hiding information on the client computer, your business model is not good. "Avoiding a paywall that's only half implemented" is not "the destruction of journalism."
You're willing to wage an awful lot on the proposition that there is another business model, even though both you as well as thousands of now-bancrupt publishers have failed to find it. Also: your own business model of "living" is just held up by the completely artificial rule of others not taking everything you own. Just because "it's on the internet" doesn't make "might is right" a true proposition.
And no, that's not a fair analogy, its me saying that if you tell me something, I am not beholden on your instructions to forget it.
You simply have to use something as simple as a lock and key and I will be forever stopped from knowing the thing (in reality).
All news orgs have this option, they simply want the cake and eat it too of working with popular search engines and also charge users for information that they effectively already have.
If you want to operate a private service go for it, nobody is going to complain about it, and any unauthorized access will be met with scorn (at the least.)
edit: also I am not just willing to wage failed business models all day - clinging to things that dont work isnt a way towards success.
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This is a really bad argument that can be used to justify any anti user feature whatsoever.
No? First of all, I'm saying that allowing sideloading is actually hostile to the majority of users, and I'm also saying this threatened the very survival of Mozilla, so this needs to be part of the consideration.
You are saying it, but not making any argument or offering any evidence for what you're saying.
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No? First of all, I'm saying that allowing sideloading is actually hostile to the majority of users, and I'm also saying this threatened the very survival of Mozilla, so this needs to be part of the consideration.
It absolutely can, for example: "It's not gonna happen. Firefox would be dead by now if it still allowed users to customize their webbrowser and make Firefox unusable (as in slow, unstable, and btw insecure), because users wouldn't keep up with that for too long. They'd just use another browser. This may be okay with you for now because you know how to protect yourself against misconfiguration, but in the long run Mo…
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How about stop the development? The fact that you can break the paywall (easily) doesn't give you the right to do it. Current laws (in that country) state that it's ilegal, so why do you insist in doing it?
Paywalls aren’t enshrined by any law. You’re misinformed. the web is public, despite SV’s best attempts to subvert and exploit that. If you don’t want someone accessing information don’t publish it as a website that anyone can access.
Just because something is on the internet doesn't give you the holly right of getting it for free.
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That's like saying windows is dead in the water because it gives the user the ability to install applications not approved by microsoft.
Well, it's actually a been big problem for Windows, and installing unsigned software on Windows is harder than it used to be. Also, luckily for Microsoft, installing another OS is harder than using another browser. (I say using, not installing, because there's always another browser already installed on most OSes.)