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Rename the plugin and change the description. The message from Mozilla states that the problem is the intent of the plugin. The technological measures it actual

Rename the plugin and change the description. The message from Mozilla states that the problem is the intent of the plugin. The technological measures it actually takes are not illegal per sé, but are illegal when used to circumvent paywalls (of course IANAL). If you present this as a plug-in that allows you to view websites as the Google bot views them, for educational and debugging purposes, there is no problem. You can give the fact that it won’t see the paywall as an example. It’s actually useful for that purpose: you are not lying. It’s just that most people will install the plugin for its ‘side effects’. Their use of it will still be illegal, but the intent will not be illegal. Cf. Firearms, crypto, drugs, ... (I say this as someone that pays for various journalistic sources and I encourage everyone to pay for at least their three favorite sources)

dao- 8y ago
Your first paragraph reads a bit crazy and I imagine that's why you're being downvoted, but as you're expanding your idea in the second paragraph I think you might have a point.
- Confusion 8y ago
  Thanks, reread and adjusted it a bit. Better like this?
shiado 8y ago
This is the best idea here. What's funny is that the news sites in their typical technical incompetence are actually way far behind in this battle. Spoofing user agent does not work anymore on most 'techy' sites who have quality software engineering. Analyzing user agent is preschool tier blocking these days. If the news sites want to get serious they need to use browser fingerprinting to detect human behavior and only accept Googlebot user agents from Google IPs. They are basically complaining about something that they are too technically incompetent to solve themselves.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
mindslight 8y ago
The intent of the plugin should not be illegal - that is what this battle is ultimately about, and this takedown action is essentially baseless bullying via the legal system. Each party to a transaction has their own desires, and what these companies are ultimately trying to do make you conform to their internal business desires post facto. In any transaction there is a demarcation point where interests meet and then part. Businesses have gotten used to this idea of decommodifying [0] their products rather than competing - spamming restrictive clickwrap "licenses" etc. So much so that we view common sense rights like "first sale doctrine" as a friendly exception rather than the bedrock norm. A website telling you how you must/mustn't display the page you've retrieved is equivalent to a retail store demanding a share of your business's profits if you use their products commercially. We can envision such a scheme being cooked up with "terms of sale" and blah blah, but people would rightfully not stand for it - markets and society simply cannot function with such top-down control. The only difference here is that civilization needs to re-figure these things out for the digital world, especially as frivolous overenforcement appears to be much easier. [0] Adding unnecessary complexity/restrictions to make their market less efficient. See also: net neutrality.
- lazulicurio 8y ago
  You know, I consider myself fairly liberal on technical issues, and I agree with you in the general sense, but I don't agree in this specific instance. This isn't a situation like Aaron Swartz, where the companies in question are restricting access to publicly-funded research. The newspapers are privately-funded entities that conduct their own investigative journalism. This isn't a situation like Weev, where there was no access control to the data and he was just probing exposed endpoints. This isn't a "right of first sale" issue. It could be if the publishers were trying to restrict access to page content after you paid for an account, but that's not what's happening here. I agree with the GP that the issue is the framing. It's the difference between selling a mask, and selling a mask that's advertised to let you rob a bank without being caught.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    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.

dao- 8y ago

Your first paragraph reads a bit crazy and I imagine that's why you're being downvoted, but as you're expanding your idea in the second paragraph I think you might have a point.

Confusion 8y ago
Thanks, reread and adjusted it a bit. Better like this?

shiado 8y ago

This is the best idea here. What's funny is that the news sites in their typical technical incompetence are actually way far behind in this battle. Spoofing user agent does not work anymore on most 'techy' sites who have quality software engineering. Analyzing user agent is preschool tier blocking these days. If the news sites want to get serious they need to use browser fingerprinting to detect human behavior and only accept Googlebot user agents from Google IPs. They are basically complaining about something that they are too technically incompetent to solve themselves.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

mindslight 8y ago

The intent of the plugin should not be illegal - that is what this battle is ultimately about, and this takedown action is essentially baseless bullying via the legal system. Each party to a transaction has their own desires, and what these companies are ultimately trying to do make you conform to their internal business desires post facto. In any transaction there is a demarcation point where interests meet and then part. Businesses have gotten used to this idea of decommodifying [0] their products rather than competing - spamming restrictive clickwrap "licenses" etc. So much so that we view common sense rights like "first sale doctrine" as a friendly exception rather than the bedrock norm. A website telling you how you must/mustn't display the page you've retrieved is equivalent to a retail store demanding a share of your business's profits if you use their products commercially. We can envision such a scheme being cooked up with "terms of sale" and blah blah, but people would rightfully not stand for it - markets and society simply cannot function with such top-down control. The only difference here is that civilization needs to re-figure these things out for the digital world, especially as frivolous overenforcement appears to be much easier. [0] Adding unnecessary complexity/restrictions to make their market less efficient. See also: net neutrality.

lazulicurio 8y ago
You know, I consider myself fairly liberal on technical issues, and I agree with you in the general sense, but I don't agree in this specific instance. This isn't a situation like Aaron Swartz, where the companies in question are restricting access to publicly-funded research. The newspapers are privately-funded entities that conduct their own investigative journalism. This isn't a situation like Weev, where there was no access control to the data and he was just probing exposed endpoints. This isn't a "right of first sale" issue. It could be if the publishers were trying to restrict access to page content after you paid for an account, but that's not what's happening here. I agree with the GP that the issue is the framing. It's the difference between selling a mask, and selling a mask that's advertised to let you rob a bank without being caught.
- mindslight 8y ago
  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.