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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

#351

Post by Angostura »

cabalamat wrote: post #81
Angostura wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, the add-ons break the social contract, whereby content creators request payment for their content. If you visit stuff on the web, you respect the concept of a social contract between you and the provide. Don’t try to circumvent their wishes.

> 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.

I walk into a shop, the shop keeper holds the door open for me. I place an article in my pocket and leave without paying.

Presumably, there's implied consent for me to to that? yes?

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

#352

Post by kapad »

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 ?

I'm not sure if this has already been suggested, but if it hasn't been, then maybe you could market/describe your add-on as one that prevents sneaky websites from tracking you.

And instead of calling it a anti-paywall add-on, instead call it a anti-tracking add-on.

If you do that though, you may be asked to explain the list of websites for which the add-on activates. I guess you'll need to have some sort of "valid" explanation for that.

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

#353

Post by CorpusCalcium »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #267
dao- wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a construct can be used to "prove" various known-false statements then it has no value in proving anything. Yes, if... But it can't. That criticism of my statement didn't make sense. > There is no proof of it there either. The most popular platforms [...] I meant this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18583257

> Yes, if... But it can't. That criticism of my statement didn't make sense. It applies directly. Anything that gives the user a choice can make the user experience worse for a user who makes the wrong one. But it also makes it better for a user who makes the right one in a way different from what the developer would have had to use as a default -- because sometimes something is right for 70% of the users, so it shou…

Nobody is "prohibited" from doing so. You want a Firefox that lets you do whatever you want, you can easily use an unbranded or pre-release build, or even roll your own or use someone else's lightly-tweaked fork. Nobody owes you an officially supported product that's for a wide audience and is also a complete free for all. Even Ubuntu and other Linux distros require you to opt into third-party software channels. You just don't like the specific choice that Mozilla is giving you, but it's still very easily there.

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

#354

Post by realthing »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #218
realthing wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you are missing my point. Link tax is not censorship in and of itself, but it does hinder the sharing of information, the cornerstone of the "information highway". Removing a plugin, or any tooling for that matter, is akin to censorship, in that it silences a computational action. Someones voice may not have been censored, but their tooling was removed by force by the powers that be.

> it silences a computational action HN generally does not like comedy accounts...

you sir, are a troglodyte.

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

#355

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #139
iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chabge is hard. You can fight it or you can embrace it. Sometimes embracing change requires letting go.

You do realize this argument is so vacuous, it would apply to someone torching your house, right?

Simply because the words could be applied to another situation doesn’t mean no thought was put into them. So no, I do not realize that the argument is vacuous.

I’ve simply stated that you can either fight change or embrace it.

In this context I mean that many web users do not want to view their content with advertisements or be tracked through advertising. Attempting to force them to is to push against user behavior (fighting change).

I don’t believe users will change their behavior if you try and force them to.

I believe that by embracing the users behaviour we can learn how to make it work.

I think that might require letting go of our predetermined notions of what “journalism” is and how it should be funded. I think we need to be more open to reviewing why people paid for journalism in the first place and how the need it fulfilled is met today.

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

#356

Post by iovrthoughtthis »

Veen wrote: post #142
iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chabge is hard. You can fight it or you can embrace it. Sometimes embracing change requires letting go.

Harmful changes can and should be fought. Journalism plays a vital role in democracies. Journalism is expensive. Someone needs to pay for it.

“Harmful changes should be fought” - Harmful is a pretty context dependent word in this situation.

“Journalism places a vital role in democracies” - what role is that? (I’m not disagreeing, I simply want to know your opinion).

“Journalism is expensive” - does it need to be? Why is that?

“Someone needs to pay for it” - This seems quite vacuous. If the thing is valuable then someone will likely pay for it (if they can be convinced of the value and it’s realized).

It’s not readers who pay for it now though is it? It’s advertising companies since they buy the ads. We’re not asking people to pay for it we’re asking them to be visually and audibly distracted into buying products and services in return for journalism.

Perhaps this is not a fair deal for many anymore?

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

#357

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dao- wrote: post #135
kgwxd wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raly all your users to bug Mozilla about unbreaking side-loading. If addons really isnt supposed be a walled garden as they claim, they should be willing to open a discussion with the community about how to open things up so we can avoid legal bullying like this.

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…

> because users wouldn't keep up with that for too long. They'd just use another browser.

Users will leave in droves if...Firefox allows you to install third-party extensions if you choose to do so? I don't get it.

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

#358

Post by GonzaloQuero »

happymellon wrote: post #313
Scarbutt wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Do you need completely separate profiles? If not, containers might be enough for your workflow: https://addons.mozilla.org/es/firefox/addon/multi-account-co...

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

#359

Post by kup0 »

_em6m wrote: post #348
thatfunkymunki wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty easily meets the definition of efficiency- it allows users to do more, in less time, and utilizing less resources.

How about paying? That will let you do more, in less time, and won't require an extra browser plugin, which means that it will use even less resources than using a plugin to bypass the paywall.

Money = resources

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

#360

Post by austincheney »

otterley wrote: post #322
austincheney wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTP is public by default and SMTP is private by default. The laws respecting this in the US are pretty solid, especially for email. In the US privacy generally trumps public access which allows email to retain its private by default status even if served over HTTP (web mail). That said anybody attempting to make parts of content non-pubic in HTTP without appropriate security restrictions are void the protections of…

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 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 r…

Quick question. If one group intends a grossly inadequate effort to be a layer of security and another party ignores that effort who is in error? It could be argued that if the supposed security measure is so poorly conceived the bypassing party presumed it to be an error and thus used their software knowledge to mitigate the defect. On one hand there is an intentional barrier to restrict access to content while on the other hand the intention is to serve content and so the bypassing party assists that service intention.

I am of the bias that a space of technology cannot be summarily redefined by a single group interest merely to compensate their financial insecurity.

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