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Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons

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

#171

Post by [deleted] »

Confusion wrote: post #155
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

You are not allowed to circumvent paywalls, just like you are not allowed to circumvent locks, no matter how easy they are to circumvent. As far as I have always understood, you may publish a locksmithing guide, even an “entering your home when locked out” guide, but not a “how to commit burglary” guide.

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by m52go »

_em6m wrote: post #169
dreamdu5t wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okey. So how about respecting the right of those who use paywalls to get money for the content they create? Just because something is on the internet doesn't give you the holly right of getting it for free.

> Just because something is on the internet doesn't give you the holly right of getting it for free.

Correct. Others have the holy right to charge, and I have the holy right to try getting around it.

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

#174

Post by pessimizer »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #128
hobs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You're willing to wage an awful lot on the proposition that there is another business model,

No, for a business model not to work doesn't mean that there has to be another business model that will allow you to run exactly the same business. If I need to fish with dynamite to make fishing in a particular area profitable, and dynamite becomes illegal, it's no one's responsibility to come up with another way I can fish.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #66
matt4077 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s also a social contract about respect for the law. It’s arguably much older. It involves aspects like “following the spirit of the law”. Also “technical ability is not the same as permission”. It’s why the old shopkeeper’s waning ability to see is no license for you from the produce displayed outside. (This is mostly to show that I, too, can argue with invented “contracts”).

There's also a social contract with government, such that laws are supposed to be thoughtfully written to achieve societal optimums, and rebalanced when that's not the case. In practice, American legislators have to raise large amounts of money just to say in office. So it's unsurprising that they listen mainly to the concerns of people with money: https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-... We ar…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by dao- »

pessimizer wrote: post #167
dao- wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'm also saying this threatened the very survival of Mozilla You are saying it, but not making any argument or offering any evidence for what you're saying.

We have telemetry data on performance, user retention, installed addons and how these things correlate.

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

#177

Post by pessimizer »

Veen wrote: post #145
tomp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminals also just want to survive. That doesn't make their immoral business model legitimate.

Criminals don't perform a useful service for society. Journalists do. Journalism is flawed, but flawed journalism is better than no journalism.

You make a good case for state-supported journalism, not for individual respect of paywalls.

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

#178

Post by throwaway2048 »

dao- wrote: post #176
pessimizer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also saying this threatened the very survival of Mozilla You are saying it, but not making any argument or offering any evidence for what you're saying.

We have telemetry data on performance, user retention, installed addons and how these things correlate.

Dredging telemetry data has a nasty effect of letting you find precisely what you are looking for. There is no way to prove from passive monitoring of telemetry that rouge addons were causing people to abandon Firefox, nor that this measure stops people from abandoning Firefox (Or even stops rouge addons, after all its trivial to recompile firefox and replace a binary, if this becomes a problem is firefox going closed source next, for the users of course). But if you can show two numbers that seem to have a correlation (Like Pirates and Global Warming), you can advance any agenda you care to.

Not to mention this "telemetry" process is entirely opaque, and used to justify decisions like this in a very Ex Cathedra sorta way, where you either accept the conclusions they have made from data you can't see, or be treated like your opinion is irrelevant.

Its a very hostile way to run a supposedly "Open Source" project.

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

#179

Post by pessimizer »

shaki-dora wrote: post #63
monochromatic wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their business model has been broken for years. It’s not incumbent on me to help them survive.

Yes, but considering you seem to be keen on reading their content: have you considered that their survival may, just possibly, be in your interest ?

I've read stormfront threads, too. Additionally, it just seems incoherent to me to pay for things that I read; I pay for things that I want other people to read.

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

#180

Post by mike22223333 »

giornogiovanna wrote: post #54
shaki-dora wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then implement technological measures to make sure that this is the case. At the very least, don't just make data freely available to the user and expect them not to read it, just because you visually hid it! And if you're serving non-paywall pages to Google bots, that's kind of against Google's policy, isn't it?

Not any more. There were changes.
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