391–400 of 405 posts
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> I think you are aware but irrationally refusing to accept that HTTP is public and anonymous by default. That has literally no bearing whatsoever on the morality of pretending to be someone else in order to get access to IP that you don't have the right to access. This is the second time you're calling me irrational, and it's not acceptable.
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> I think you are aware but irrationally refusing to accept that HTTP is public and anonymous by default. That has literally no bearing whatsoever on the morality of pretending to be someone else in order to get access to IP that you don't have the right to access. This is the second time you're calling me irrational, and it's not acceptable.
I am not pretending to be anybody. I am anonymous. This is how HTTP works. That is why you should either be asking your users who they are or stop pretending to care that it is important. Rationality - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationality I used the word irrational in the context (both times) of commitment. This is an accepted description in behavioral health literature and does not address you as a person. It i…
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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…
And no Mozilla should not be thinking in terms of "market share". There is no market! Mozilla is a non-profit. They should not be sharing the same paradigm as Google. And it is this vanity-driven pursuit of "brand prestige" and "market share" that has ruined things.
It makes business sense for Google's platform for them to do things the way they do. It makes absolutely no sense for Mozilla to emulate Google. The very fact that Mozilla can just afford to make unique software without the constraints of the market, supported by donors, is a strength, not a weakness. They should be leveraging it instead of trying to "stay relevant" and compete with Google on Google's terms.
And this whole incident is a disgrace. If it wasn't for Mozilla getting between users and their software, then this takedown would be nearly irrelevant, as it would be that much easier for users to install it. It would probably even disincentivize take-downs like this, because they would be so futile.
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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 must see that your ideas are not working. Have you been able to attract new users, or even prevent existing users from leaving? No? So then how can you be so convinced that you are right?
Firefox is software, not an experience. Winning over people that don't care is not an accomplishment, even if you could do it. Trying to be better than Google at nannying your lower functioning users from hurting themselves is futile, and punishes everyone else.
You're feverishly stripping away everything that made Firefox superior. Driving away developers who have made unique extensions that cannot be replicated elsewhere.
And for what? What is your end game? Have you seen the Chrome store? It's awful! The majority of extensions are very low quality and often misleading. And they are unresponsive and have to employ strange hacks to do things that Firefox extensions did very simply (like taking a screenshot, or interacting with other extensions).
And what is your ideal outcome? To have Firefox be considered a good browser by Google's standards? How about what the users standards?
You are trying to slowly turn emacs into an cheaper Microsoft Word. And patting yourself on the backs for doing it.
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My argument isn't based on liberating content, but that it's simply not one's responsibility to implement someone else's business rules. The problem is that the publishers are still supplying their content for free, while then trying to attach arbitrary post-facto terms. It would be straightforward to just not send the article to someone they don't want to view it, but yet this is not what they have chosen to do.
The terms aren't post-facto, they're a priori. You can access the content if you paid for an account or if you're Googlebot. Impersonating Googlebot doesn't change the terms of the access. Note the description from the add-on page "This extension will mangle your browser's requests to maximize the chances of bypassing paywalls". This is where there's a meaningful difference from the Weev situation. You can also choos…
But I wouldn't be "impersonating" the Google bot, I would just be using it's user-agent string. That does not make me the Google bot. If a foolish publisher chooses to interpret my usage of that string as me being Google, that is not my responsibility.
Just like with the Weev situation, this is another case of someone trying to shift blame for their crummy security.
A user-agent string is NOT authentication. It is merely supposed to provide a hint to the webserver.
I once saw a website that didn't have ads and let you view their content for free if the width was less than 700px. I guess they figured they were driving away more mobile users or something that it was worth. So, was I being criminally minded when I resized my browser to view their content instead of jumping through their hoops and giving them my email address? At a certain point, it is not my responsibility to hold their hand and play along with their pretend restrictions.
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Stop enabling the destruction of journalism? That's an entirely serious suggestion. I'm not arguing that what you're doing is illegal. I have all sorts of qualms with copyright and its enforcement myself. If I were "copyright czar", movies would get three years, and newspapers maybe a week. But if we wish for copyright-holders to respect the rights of internet users, it would seem to be a winning proposition to maybe…
> Stop enabling the destruction of journalism? My two cents is that advertisement is what is killing journalism. YouTube, for example, can show advertisements for well known companies in videos about Anti-vaccination, far-right conspiracies, etc. without consequences. Why is that? Because all that happens in the privacy of your own computer. Usually any newspaper that publicly have printed such bullshit in their page…
It is a myth that there is any problem with ads being shown on controversial videos. YouTube demonetizing select videos is nothing more than a way to strangle independent media and help gentrify their platform.
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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…
> a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
17 U.S. Code § 1201 (a) (3) (B)
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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.
> Checking user agent doesn't meet the requirement to be considered an effective access control technological measure. I highly doubt that. Keep in mind that age restrictions which make you hit a single button to circumvent them are much worse in keeping the wrong users out, and afaik legally they're perfectly fine. "Effective access control" means they have to do something which may work to some degree and doesn't h…
17 U.S. Code § 1201 (a) (3) (B)
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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…
Ah, but in this case we're provided a definition: > a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. 17 U.S. Code § 1201 (a) (3) (B)
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Ah, but in this case we're provided a definition: > a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. 17 U.S. Code § 1201 (a) (3) (B)
Correct; thanks for providing the definition.