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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

#311

Post by Mirioron »

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.

>but flawed journalism is better than no journalism.

I would disagree. Flawed journalism means things like mixing in lies in their news stories, mixing in opinion pieces into news etc. That kind of stuff can do more harm than good.

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

#312

Post by Mirioron »

kjsthree wrote: post #123
cabalamat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you visit stuff on the web, you respect the concept of a social contract between you and the provide. If I send a site an http GET request, and that site responds by giving me some data, then that site has given me implied consent to look at the data. If they don't want me to look at it, they shouldn't have given me it.

^ THIS! I don’t see how the situation is in any way more complicated. Real-world analogies can get pretty squirrelly but it would be quite literally like the following. Man standing on the sidewalk outside a store yells into the store at the shopkeeper “hey there, can I have some free fish?” Shopkeeper yells back “sure!” and tosses a fish to the man on the sidewalk. Add more yelling back and forth for TLS handshake.…

Off topic: isn't this how user privacy works too though? People complain about companies like Google and Facebook "stealing their data," but it's their browsers sending out the data. If users don't want Google to have the data then they shouldn't send it to Google.

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

#313

Post by happymellon »

Scarbutt wrote: post #295
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their market share is lower because at its peak, Chrome didn't exist. The rise of Chrome is responsible for all of Mozilla's lost share. But major factors causing Chrome to gain share are being the default on the most popular mobile platform (Android) and being heavily promoted on google.com for many years. Making it harder to install addons (and breaking all the old ones) is one of the things contributing to Mozilla…

The rise of Chrome is responsible for all of Mozilla's lost share. But major factors causing Chrome to gain share are being the default on the most popular mobile platform (Android) and being heavily promoted on google.com for many years. Not giving any technical and ux credit to chrome for also being a major factor for firefox's loss of market share is disingenuous IMO.

Indeed. The lack of Chrome-like profiles keeps me off Firefox.

I want to have a profile for my work, and a personal profile. Chrome provides that, and Firefox, last time I checked, required multiple hoops to enable and also blocked me from having more than one open.

I would even contribute funding to that if Firefox had a "Fund this feature".

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

#314

Post by austincheney »

eridius wrote: post #281
austincheney wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you can break the paywall (easily) doesn't give you the right to do it. I would argue, from both legal and technology perspectives, the ability to easily break a paywall provides you the right to do so.

Why? "The ability to do X gives you the right to do so" is not a moral argument in the slightest. In fact, it is inherently anti-moral, because the entire point of moral codes is "just because you can do X doesn't mean you should do X". I mean, if you can't do something, there's no point in prohibiting it, because it can't be done.

This isn't really about morality, because if were there would be a harm. Nobody is being harmed here. This is about technology, specifically content on the web. In technology the ability to do something absolutely is the right to so do unless you have already agreed otherwise.

If you really REALLY want to make this about morality then I would argue restricting access to available content is the greater moral offense, because it is an inherent violation of liberty.

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

#315

Post by c2h5oh »

nextgens wrote: post #114

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 ?

Both DMCA and EU directive 2001/29/EC prohibit circumventing technological measures that "effectively control access".

Checking user agent doesn't meet the requirement to be considered an effective access control technological measure.

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

#316

Post by flukus »

ubernostrum wrote: post #302
tomp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What thing, that was objectively and indisputably your property, has the Wall Street Journal robbed you of at gunpoint?

Not all criminals steal others property, they're more like drug dealers that try to get you hooked from a couple of free hits^.

^ Not something actual drug dealers ever do.

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

#318

Post by jpangs88 »

I'm wondering how this is different than add blockers which are allowed in the app stores. In concept it does something very similar: allows the user to circumvent how people get paid for content.

I understand that ads can be more dangerous than paywalls but the end result is the same. Is it just that some lawmakers saw one as okay and the other as not?

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

#319

Post by otterley »

c2h5oh wrote: post #315
nextgens wrote: post #114

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 ?

Both DMCA and EU directive 2001/29/EC prohibit circumventing technological measures that "effectively control access". Checking user agent doesn't meet the requirement to be considered an effective access control technological measure.

Attorney here! (Not providing legal counsel, though.)

It’s a common misconception that the word “effective,” as used in the respective legislation, was intended to mean “successful” or “always cause.” Rather, it’s always been interpreted to mean, “is designed or intended to have the effect of.”

The fact that the measure is not always successful or is breakable does not make the law no longer applicable; that would be an absurd result. The law isn’t interpreted literally when the result would be absurd; this is doctrine that goes back to at least 1892 and even further back to English common law. See, e.g., Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U.S. 457 (1892).

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

#320

Post by otterley »

austincheney wrote: post #314
eridius wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? "The ability to do X gives you the right to do so" is not a moral argument in the slightest. In fact, it is inherently anti-moral, because the entire point of moral codes is "just because you can do X doesn't mean you should do X". I mean, if you can't do something, there's no point in prohibiting it, because it can't be done.

This isn't really about morality, because if were there would be a harm. Nobody is being harmed here. This is about technology, specifically content on the web. In technology the ability to do something absolutely is the right to so do unless you have already agreed otherwise. If you really REALLY want to make this about morality then I would argue restricting access to available content is the greater moral offense,…

If you make software for a living, you’re likely earning income in large part due to the fact that not just anyone can copy your software for free.

Writing news is work of perhaps a different subject, but it can’t be denied that like software development, a significant amount of real work goes into that. How can you justify that the authors shouldn’t be able to reasonably expect to have control over their work and expect to be paid for it, if their consumers deem it valuable?

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