
Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons - AndrewDucker
https://github.com/nextgens/anti-paywall/issues/109#issuecomment-441097828
======
nextgens
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 ?

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
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 not actively work against
their attempts to find a compromise.

And a "soft paywall" that allows you to read a dozen or so articles per month
without subscription seems to be jus that: a compromise, and a reasonable one
at that.

What do you expect to be the long-term outcome of bypassing such mechanisms? I
have trouble of thinking of anything but "soft paywalls" turning into "hard
paywalls". Then, we'll be left with the maybe one or two publications we
subscribe to. How can such an outcome be in anyone's interest?

I know you _can_ bypass these schemes. Yes, they are laughable. I know ads are
sometimes annoying. I know large swaths of the press have earned your scorn
because they, like, use the wrong JS framework. Or something.

But I still don't understand this attitude that appears to go even further
than just "I want it for free" to an almost gleeful appreciation of vandalism
destroying the foundations of democratic societies.

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
Chabge is hard. You can fight it or you can embrace it.

Sometimes embracing change requires letting go.

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

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
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.

------
giornogiovanna
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](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355)

~~~
Confusion
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.

~~~
justinph
A paywall is not a lock. It is code that someone else wants to ship to my
computer to run. It's up to me to decide what parts of it I run or not.

~~~
Confusion
No, it’s not. The jurisprudence is pretty clear.

~~~
fiatjaf
the jurisprudence of whom? In my own jurisprudence paywalls are viruses.

~~~
Confusion
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.

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

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

------
monocularvision
The publishers want it both ways. They need to publish their full article
content for search crawlers to read but don’t want humans to see it. The idea
that this is a form of DRM protected by the DMCA is laughable in my opinion,
but IANAL.

~~~
shaki-dora
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.

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

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

~~~
the8472
That's assuming that laws are the perfect arbiter of what is useful and what
is not. Some useful and moral activities are or used to be criminal acts.

~~~
Koshkin
The purpose of the law is not to determine what is useful and what isn’t.
People can decide that for themselves.

------
decasteve
This breaks the social contract of the web. If you publish on the web (over
HTTP) using HTML (with or without css+js) then you respect the concept of a
User-Agent that renders the content on behalf of the user. If you wish to get
around this then create another file format and protocol and
application/plugin to do so — one that enforces the DRM for the owner. Don’t
take agency away from User-Agent.

~~~
Angostura
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.

~~~
wpietri
It's obviously not a "request" if they're making legal threats. And it's not
payment they're demanding, it's the ability to track anybody who visits their
site, whether or not you agree to be tracked. And it's not part of any social
contract I agreed to; the (very short) history of the web is an ongoing
negotiation. Paywalls were invented this decade. This plugin is part of that
negotiation.

Browsers already have a mechanism for authorizing access to content. Many
mechanisms, really. If a company chooses to use an unreliable mechanism, I
don't think we are morally obligate to roll over and do what they want.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
This is mostly about "soft" paywalls, allowing you to read maybe a dozen
articles per month without paying.

There is currently no way I know of allowing this functionality that is
meaningfully "reliable". At least not without erecting new barriers such as
mandatory registration (and verification).

So you, and everyone else, seem to be demanding publishers just switch to
"absolute paywalls". You will then have strictly less access than before.

How is that supposed to be better?

~~~
DarthTetanus
Ideally, it would hasten society’s realization that the flow of information
should not be subjected to capitalism.

~~~
brokenmachine
I agree but unfortunately in reality information costs money to discover.

------
quickben
The real problem is Google indexing it.

Wasn't there even a rule from Google that you can't serve different content
from what the general public is seeing?

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
The problem is people having opinions but lacking the most basic facts...

This is about "soft paywalls" that allow you to read maybe a dozen articles
per months.

~~~
quickben
Google indexes the entire website, often with multiple visits to the same
individual page (to get comments, etc).

It definitely doesn't stop at "maybe a dozen" pages a month.

------
burtonator
This is why app stores are fundamentally a horrible idea for the web and I'm
surprised we aren't more enraged by them.

They put ALL the control of which apps can be used in the hands of 3-4
companies.

Sure, you can go out and write your own app and side load it but you're only
going to have 1-3k users.

Additionally, what if you live in a country that doesn't have these "laws" ?
why can't people run my app if they want?

~~~
sandov
I've used this same argument against package managers on Linux many times, but
apparently people want to keep doing things the centralized way, because all I
get when I do is people telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about,
and that package managers and centralized repos are easier to use.

~~~
baroffoos
Package managers allow you to very trivially add new repo sources which you
often have to do if you want packages newer than the packaged version for your
distro.

------
sombragris
What an utterly stupid trick. So, I didn't even know those extensions existed.
Such arrogant behavior made me search and install one of these. Serves them
right.

~~~
Rumudiez
I always appreciate a good example of the Streisand effect.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
Also known as "don-t-you-dare-complain-about-this-mob-or-an-even-bigger-mob"

(...effect)

------
kbumsik
> Yeah, it got pulled from both chrome's and mozilla's...

Maybe we need to change the title?

------
thefounder
Perhaps we should make copyright/censorship an issue on the next election
otherwise we end-up with the worst things from both worlds: DRM from US and
censorship from China.

------
dooglius
Does Mozilla need to actually host the extension? I'm guessing that that is
the problem here. Couldn't they just cryptographically sign it, and leave the
distribution to a P2P technology like BitTorrent?

~~~
betterunix2
I am not sure it would make a difference to the courts.

~~~
vbezhenar
Firefox is just a platform to run addons, like Windows is OS to run programs.
Do you think that Microsoft should curate software allowed for users to run?

~~~
betterunix2
IANAL but my perspective has been that the courts care more about your ability
to control what runs on a "platform" than about who hosts what. So if Firefox
in its default configuration will only run addons that Mozilla approves, then
the courts might not care about where the addon is hosted or how users
technically receive it, and could just order Mozilla not to sign the addon.

My personal opinion is that curation is fine if users can opt-out of it. There
is value in having someone certifying that the software you are installing is
not malware, or even that it meets some threshold for quality (e.g. does not
drain the battery), but users should have the ability to pick the curator or
to have no curation at all. That said, it is a totally separate argument from
whether or not the courts would care about how software is distributed, and
totally separate from how the courts will view the role of a software curator
(and whether or not courts will insist that curators refuse to certify
software that does certain things, like blocking paywalls).

~~~
Spivak
Wouldn't Mozilla just have to say that any add-on that isn't malware is
eligible to be signed and that it's a security feature, not a tool for
curation of content.

------
trollied
Just a tangent for you all - does anyone envisage a 2nd parallel internet
emerging? Not tor-like, an actual completely separate network?

~~~
DC-3
Possibly in the form of a very strict, very semantic, almost RSS-like subset
of HTML? Something that almost resembles the reader view many modern browsers
will convert articles into?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Gopher? Everything old is new again:)

------
ianwalter
I would rather have a browser plugin that just removed pay walled content from
search results anyway. Or one that redirected me to something I would use like
Blendle.

------
chiefalchemist
I'm not a lawyer. I don't know the particulars of the law. But I presume
"blocking", as in the ads are effectively removed, is key. Instead of blocking
them, would hiding them, via a div with a higher z-index? Mind you, that
doesn't prevent the tracking. But there are other tools for that.

I agree. Ads suck. Maybe there's a legal loophole to avoid them some other
way?

~~~
eletious
think you misunderstand what the extension does - it hid paywalls, not ads

------
jimnotgym
I'm a bit concerned about the communication here. Last week Mozilla were
saying this was an action by a community reviewer.

------
anonymousab
How is it different from other user agent extensions? Did it bake in a site
list?

~~~
baroffoos
Its marketed as a tool for bypassing paywalls and not just a generic user
agent changer

------
alexandernst
Oh my fscking god... the comments in this thread are just... It's like trying
to explain to a 5 years old why candys are not free...

If it's behind a paywall, it's because the creators want you to pay for the
content. It doesn't matter if you can bypass the paywall with a user agent
hack or if you must install daemon tools and use 54 different keygens and
cracks and patches and firewalls to block ping-home requests. It just doesn't
matter because you're tampering the paywall and getting for free what the
creators of the content are willing to charge for.

I mean... how damn brain dead do you have to be to not understand that?

~~~
brokenmachine
_> If it's behind a paywall, it's because the creators want you to pay for the
content._

Their lack of a viable business model is not my problem.

It reminds me of those windscreen washers at traffic lights. Start washing my
car windows without my permission then expect to get paid? GTFO.

If you send data to my browser then I am entitled to read it.

------
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?

------
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.

------
bovermyer
Paywalls exist as a solution to the problem of "how do journalists and other
content producers get paid for their work?"

Anti-paywall addons are an attempt to get something that isn't intended to be
free for free.

Ignoring the legality of this for a moment, let's consider: is this moral?

~~~
sparkie
Is it moral for content producers to sell users web browsing habits to
advertisers without their explicit consent?

~~~
bovermyer
My position on this very specific question is: "no."

But let's not conflate content producers selling user data with content
producers selling access to content.

------
hnaccy
Another impacted extension: [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/issues...](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/issues/82)

~~~
zcid
Further down the comments is a dl link: [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-
paywalls-firefox/issues...](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/issues/82#issuecomment-443179176)

Even if these extensions can still be installed, without being published on
Mozilla's addons site, the average user will be unable to find them. It seems
like a really bad precedent for Mozilla to accept this without a fight.

------
stock_toaster
Create a new extension called "block paywall" that prevents users from
accidentally visiting paywalled sites.

------
totfz
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.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You can if you use the Developer Edition.

It's permanently disabled in the normal version because malware would
piggyback on the browser to steal passwords and so on. Obviously Mozilla have
no problem with people wanting to make their own extensions and so on.

~~~
Krasnol
Weird, I have 63.0.3 as far as I see the normal version and had no problem
downloading and with that updating the November version of "bypass-paywalls"
which was also affected from the releases page here:
[https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/releas...](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
firefox/releases)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
That means it's signed with Mozilla's signature. Actually, I think extensions
can maybe be signed by Mozilla even if they're not on addons.mozilla.org.

~~~
totfz
Yes, but Mozilla will refuse to sign extensions that are not hosted in their
app store.

~~~
falien
No they wont (and don't) but it's possible they will choose to not sign
_these_ extensions, probably depending on their lawyers.

------
realthing
here we go -- gearing up to the decade of censorship 2020 and beyond . . .
between this and the EU link sharing tax, I am beginning to wonder if the
internet really is the last bastion to freedom of speech

~~~
JohnStrangeII
This is not a free speech issue at all, nor are the EU regulations free speech
issues.

The problem with these laws and their interpretation is that they target the
wrong organizations and technologies. If a website is illegal, it needs to be
taken down by police. Instead, idiot judges rule that certain DNS entries
should be blocked. If you shouldn't be allowed to read some pay-walled
journal, then the publisher has to implement proper DRM. Instead, they take
down arbitrary plugins from the directories of arbitrary browser makers.

It's the publishers' right to ask for money for their products, but it's also
their obligation to protect it and ensure that their business model is viable
and technically feasible.

It's the end of 2018 and lawmakers and executive still don't understand how
the Internet works. _That 's the problem._

~~~
IAmEveryone
“Just take down the website” is disingenuous. You, and I, and those idiot
judges all know it’s often much harder, and sometimes impossible, to get to
the website owners.

“Abolish all copyright” is a legitimate opinion. It’s wrong,of course. But
it’s possible to discuss it. Don’t demean yourself and others by starting
discussions with disingenuous arguments.

~~~
betterunix2
I am not sure abolishing copyright is "wrong," given that copyright developed
as a response to a major shift in how written material was disseminated (the
invention of the printing press), and that we are now seeing another major
shift. A lot of the problems being argued about today, including the issue of
paywall circumvention add-ons, have parallels to the historical arguments over
printing. Given that copyright replaced a previous system of regulation in
response to a new technology, why would we not want to replace copyright with
something totally different that is better suited to a technology that has
largely replaced printing?

~~~
scarface74
So with copyright being removed, are you okay with companies using GPL code in
their proprietary closed sourced software? The GPL is only protected by
copyright laws.

~~~
betterunix2
Yes, I am fine with that tradeoff, because on net society would come out
ahead.

~~~
scarface74
So if you are concerned with copyright being removed because you think it will
increase the freedom of information, how will that not do just the opposite
when companies can take open source code and lock it down?

So in this hypothetical future world, not only will their not be a financial
motive for people to create works since anything they create can be freely
copied, there will also not be an altruistic motive for people to give back to
the community through open source knowing that a for profit company can build
on top of the work they did and not give back to the community.

This seems like a lose lose.

~~~
betterunix2
I did not say it would increase freedom of information. I just do not believe
copyright is a good fit for the modern world, because it does not really work
when copying is not restricted to industrial operations. Today everyone has a
copying machine in their pocket or on their desk, and there is no way that
applying an industrial regulation to people sitting in their homes using a
commonly available tool is going to work.

Keep in mind that copyrights have only existed for about three hundred years.
Prior to that there was no notion that authors had a fundamental right to
control the distribution of their work, yet people have been writing books
(scrolls etc.) for thousands of years. Copyright was a response to what at the
time was a relatively new technology, printing. It was not created for the
benefit of authors, it was created for the benefit of publishers, who lobbied
for the restoration of a monopoly they enjoyed under an earlier censorship
law. It is almost a textbook example of regulatory capture.

Instead of allowing new technologies to flourish and new business models for
publishers to develop, we are currently trying to emulate the old rules,
stifling new ideas (e.g. peer-to-peer systems) and entrenching old business
models. It is hard to imagine the sort of technologies we missed out on for
the sake of keeping copyrights relevant, or what sort of business models those
technologies might have supported. I see a lose-lose in resisting change just
because it is inconvenient for some big incumbent industry.

~~~
scarface74
Are you willing to work for free? What “business models” do you suggest that
will allow authors to get paid?

------
AdrianB1
So I am allowed to use Developer Tools in any browser and look directly at the
HTML, but not use an extension to do the work for me? What is preventing me to
View Source for a "paywalled" page?

~~~
kibwen
DMCA takedown for developer tools coming in 3, 2...

------
JoshuaAshton
In case the repo gets pulled, I'm hosting a mirror here:
[https://git.nonagon.games/joshua/anti-paywall-
mirror](https://git.nonagon.games/joshua/anti-paywall-mirror)

(edit, by pulled, a pun was not intended. I mean in case it gets removed)

------
vbezhenar
How is blocking paywalls different from blocking ads? I hope that someone will
fork Firefox and remove that code which prevents users from installing any
addons.

~~~
Sylos
They were told to not anymore host the extension on AMO, but it's still signed
by Mozilla (and I doubt they would stop signing future versions), so you can
still download and install the extension from elsewhere.

Also, Mozilla themselves provide a "fork", i.e. builds compiled with the
corresponding flag, that allow unsigned extensions to be installed, after you
set "xpinstall.signatures.required" in about:config to false. These builds are
Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox Nightly, as well as Unbranded Builds [0]
for Beta and Stable.

I believe most Linux distributions also compile with this flag, as disallowing
unsigned extensions mostly helped against malware on Windows.

[0]: [https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-
ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-
ons/Extension_Signing#Unbranded_Builds)

~~~
vbezhenar
Thanks for clarification. Not a big deal, then.

------
jtr_47
Maybe it is time we stop relying on a central company to provide our browser
software.

Maybe it is time for people to build or configure their own personal browser,
so that the authority to install add-ons is a personal choice and not dictated
by a company.

If a website has some shitty paywall on their site or article and that can be
bypassed, then that site needs to implement something better. Instead what
these companies do is make laws that is a cover for their shitty service or
lack of good security.

