4 ms·

I wrote an extension to "unamp" the website of a popular Italian newspaper and as soon it reached a thousand users Google banned it and forced Firefox to do the

by asjw 6y ago

I wrote an extension to "unamp" the website of a popular Italian newspaper and as soon it reached a thousand users Google banned it and forced Firefox to do the same (shame on you Firefox) So I guess worse is better we are supposed to accept it or else they'll police us into accepting it.

searchableguy 6y ago
Can you share more details?
- asjw 6y ago
  The extension was very simple, it just displayed the content for pages protected by a paywall by changing the display attribute. To be clear, they use amp to serve pages in the protected area, but the protected content is served in the body of the page, inside an AMP-APP tag, but simply hidden. The code is few lines long, it could have been one line, but it has to unwrap the shadow dom. I made it for myself, but then friends started asking for it so I published it on Firefox's extension store and later on on the Chrome's one. It's been there for a couple of years, nobody complained, I even emailed the newspaper several times to warn them about the "bug" but they never replied back. It has never been very popular, especially outside Italy, it had around a thousand of installations and about 900 daily users, but on March this year I received a copyright infringement notice from Google, even though Google has no rights on the newspaper's content. They removed the extension right away and banned me from re-uploading it. I tried to reach their support many times, never heard back from them. A few days later Firefox removed the extension as well saying Google contacted them about the copyright infringement. As of today after at least a dozen emails I haven't been able to speak to a human being. I don't mind much, I still use it on my systems and it still works even on Firefox mobile (for now) I tried to upload it under a different name, but apparently I'm forbidden from publishing it again. Weird detail: the day after Firefox removed it I've been contacted on the email I used to register on Firefox dev website asking me if I wanted to sell the extension. The newspaper website is https://www.repubblica.it https://www.repubblica.it
fomine3 6y ago
I'd like to know details.

by asjw 6y ago

searchableguy 6y ago

Can you share more details?

asjw 6y ago
The extension was very simple, it just displayed the content for pages protected by a paywall by changing the display attribute. To be clear, they use amp to serve pages in the protected area, but the protected content is served in the body of the page, inside an AMP-APP tag, but simply hidden. The code is few lines long, it could have been one line, but it has to unwrap the shadow dom. I made it for myself, but then friends started asking for it so I published it on Firefox's extension store and later on on the Chrome's one. It's been there for a couple of years, nobody complained, I even emailed the newspaper several times to warn them about the "bug" but they never replied back. It has never been very popular, especially outside Italy, it had around a thousand of installations and about 900 daily users, but on March this year I received a copyright infringement notice from Google, even though Google has no rights on the newspaper's content. They removed the extension right away and banned me from re-uploading it. I tried to reach their support many times, never heard back from them. A few days later Firefox removed the extension as well saying Google contacted them about the copyright infringement. As of today after at least a dozen emails I haven't been able to speak to a human being. I don't mind much, I still use it on my systems and it still works even on Firefox mobile (for now) I tried to upload it under a different name, but apparently I'm forbidden from publishing it again. Weird detail: the day after Firefox removed it I've been contacted on the email I used to register on Firefox dev website asking me if I wanted to sell the extension. The newspaper website is https://www.repubblica.it https://www.repubblica.it

fomine3 6y ago

I'd like to know details.