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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

#331

Post by gnicholas »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #298
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…

I haven't used Chrome in a while, but I was under the impression sideloading was completely blocked in Chrome nowadays. So the fact that Mozilla allows sideloading at all puts them ahead in that regard.

Nope — sideloading is still easy in Chrome.

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

#332

Post by mosselman »

How do these add-ons work? For sites with an x-number of free articles a month I have come across an add-on that would clear all local storage for a particular paywalled site. Using a private browsing window would also allow me to view the site paywall-less in those cases, so I didn't need the add-on in those cases.

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

#333

Post by fbender »

INTPenis wrote: post #21
totfz wrote: post #17

This would not be a problem if Mozilla had sided with users for once and allowed us to install xpi extensions from outside their app store.

Are you saying the extensions are signed? Becuase if they're not I can't imagine not being able to side-load them. And if they are, with the amount of Firefox forks we have, it should be trivial to create one that allows for side-loading unsigned or 3rd party signed extensions. Hopefully without too much source modification, just creating a distribution of Firefox would easiest to manage.

I‘m pretty sure there is an un-branded release version of Fx on the Mozilla website that allows side-loading and allows disabling the signature verification. I don‘t have a link ready and on mobile so I cannot easily check.

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

#334

Post by austincheney »

otterley wrote: post #320
austincheney wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

> Writing news is work of perhaps a different subject

Don't care because that is not the subject of this issue not matter how much you wish it were. The subject is whether or not a paywall is adequate for restricting access to content on a public medium. If that restriction is so easily bypassed it is clearly ineffective and inadequate. If you really cared about your business and revenue you would solve this problem instead of complaining about failed value assessments.

> control over their work

Journalists don't have control over their work. Publishers do. This is the same failed argument the music and movie industries peddled from around 1998-2008. Instead of wasting your energy on distribution control spend it on what you are good at and return superior value to your work.

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

#335

Post by TangoTrotFox »

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.

A little information is a dangerous thing.

---

Sufficiently flawed journalism is perhaps one of the most severe problems in our society. People are fed half truths, and at times simply false information, and then go on to repeat it and base their world views upon as if it were fact. And in the era of social media false and sensational views spread incredibly rapidly while any 'corrections' are basically dead on arrival.

To give a very recent example of this, you probably read about a shocking new study showing that the oceans are actually heating up 60% faster than we thought. Turns out the study was mathematically flawed and its actual numbers are not particularly different than what other studies have shown. [1][2][3]. And the error was detected just hours after publication - apparently not quickly enough to stop the shocking headlines. This is not an implied comment on climate change, but rather just a very recent example of this phenomena of how people are misled without having their views ultimately corrected that happens to involve climate change.

The sites that rely on 'teasing' and then paywalling are some of the worst offenders in the state of journalism today, and in my opinion the world, let alone society, would be in a much better place without them.

[1] - https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-...

[2] - https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-oceans-...

[3] - https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/06/a-major-problem-with-the-...

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

#336

Post by justinclift »

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 ?

Perhaps ask Mozilla if they could have it not be displayed in the legal jurisdiction it's accused of illegal, but have it keep on being displayed in all other jurisdictions?

The backwards laws of one jurisdiction shouldn't enable take downs across all of them.

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

#337

Post by tomp »

Koshkin wrote: post #158
tomp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Difference is, while we do want the publishers to survive as publishers , we do not want the criminals to survive as criminals .

Not using immoral methods (like advertising/tracking) to generate income.

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

#338

Post by rch »

tomp wrote: post #337
Koshkin wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference is, while we do want the publishers to survive as publishers , we do not want the criminals to survive as criminals .

Not using immoral methods (like advertising/tracking) to generate income.

This article is about paywalls, which tend to generate income from subscriptions.

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

#339

Post by chopin »

mindslight wrote: post #275
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Package managers are exactly the centralized "app store" model, and there have been plenty of periods where users have had to add third party repositories to get basic functionality (DeCSS, video codecs, ZFS, etc). And they still work precisely because the user can do that. > For decades we've been continually looking for better ways of isolating local apps, while also rejecting centralized control. The main issue…

> in general the authors can be trusted not to be doing anything nefarious to begin with It's a dream. Kept alive by a very diligent community, but let's not kid ourselves that it's a very strong assumption. > In which case you're still pretty screwed, because it inherently needs access to your documents Access to the specific document you presently want to edit (say through an OS-provided file select dialog or equiv…

> Access to the specific document you presently want to edit (say through an OS-provided file select dialog or equivalent cli) is much different than unfettered access to all of your files.

This is one thing I like about Android. You can avoid requesting file permissions for your app by using native intents for file access. I think its the same for other stuff, like email. As much as I loathe Googles control over Android, I think this is a good thing.

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

#340

Post by Confusion »

jobigoud wrote: post #307
Confusion wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US of course. Look at the list of sites the plugin works for: none of them cares if you ignore their paywall. The likelihood that you would subscribe is negligible. It’s American readers they are after. And for them the jurisprudence is clear. No deliberate subversion of access controls allowed.

If that's the case Mozilla has no business banning the addon for everyone...

Mozilla is subject to US law. Mozilla has no obligation to enable certain addons only for visitors from certain countries.
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