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> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information, Taken lite

> When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information, Taken literally it means that when I use Firefox to upload a file to a customer's web site Mozilla is getting that file too, which does not seem likely. They could get a copy of the text I'm typing right now in Firefox or it means that the browser could do some local processing on those data. But if the results of that processing would stay local why would they ask the permission? It's not that emacs, vim, grep, sed, awk etc have to ask me the permission to use the information I'm inputting into them. So they are definitely sending information back home or they plan to do it. The point becomes how to block any calls from Firefox to Mozilla. Note that don't have a Firefox account because I never trusted that the data in transit from them would stay private. I'm not logged in into Google as well. Maybe I have to finally install a Pi Hole and route all my traffic through it. Hopefully Blockada will take care of that for my Android devices.

Digit-Al 2y ago
I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file, therefore Mozilla have to establish that if you use them to upload a file that you are granting them the legal right to publish that file. It has to be worldwide because you may be uploading to anywhere in the world.
- Zak 2y ago
  Perhaps the legal situation is different somewhere, but I would think the browser isn't acting at all. It has no agency; it's just software running on my computer, following instructions I give it. Mozilla has no agency in that situation either; the software is running on my computer, not theirs. The new terms grant Mozilla, the corporation a license to do things with my data.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    The question isn't what you (who presumably understands technology) would think. The question is what every court in the world would think.
    - tgv 2y ago
      But the more important question then is: what else will the courts think this language allows? Probably Mozilla could argue they need to store those uploads and analyze them under those conditions.
  - Digit-Al 2y ago
    My comments above are based on precedence when sites like Facebook added these clauses and people got all panicked thinking the company was going to start selling their content (rather than selling their souls /s). The mundane truth was that they needed the wording to make sure they were legally given the right to publish the content onto the web in the way they did. So people were assuming nefarious reasons when they were just legally protecting themselves. Now, it does seem strange that Mozilla have suddenly added this when they haven't had it previously. Personally, I deem it highly unlikely that they are planning on monetizing our content in some way; whilst they have made some strange decisions sometimes I don't think they are completely stupid. Mozilla is in a precarious position right now, they are only managing to scape by on user trust and if that disappears they are finished. I'd like to think they are not foolish enough to do something that would catastrophically erode that trust, and selling user data to advertisers would kill them. Having thought about it a bit more now, I have to wonder if they have dreamt up some other mad scheme, like Mozilla Cloud Storage, or something that would require such wording in the terms. Hopefully, it's just a wording update to protect themselves. I guess we will find out in due course. [edit: fixed a typo.]
    - Zak 2y ago
      I think it's likely they're planning to more deeply integrate some sort of cloud services, perhaps with a paid tier. I don't want that either; stuff like that is fine as an optional extra, but problematic when joined at the hip to a browser.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago
  By such logic, operating systems would need a disclaimer like this, as would keyboards, screens, etc.
- imiric 2y ago
  > If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly. The "publisher" in this case would be the website the file is uploaded to. If the website doesn't make the file public, then they're not a "publisher". The browser is merely acting as a tool to do the uploading. Firefox shouldn't be held liable for the contents of the file any more than any other web client. If it did, tools like cURL should be liable in the same way. Somewhere along the way web browser authors forgot that they're merely building a web user _agent_. It's a tool that acts _on behalf of_ the user, in order to help them access the web in a friendly way. It should in no way be aware of the content the user sends and receives, have a say in matters regarding this content, and let alone share that information with 3rd parties. It's an outrageous invasion of privacy to do otherwise.
  - glenstein 2y ago
    >If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly. It's hard to tell from your comment who exactly is the target of your complaint. You're not wrong that this interpretation might be silly, but that's not out of the ordinary in carefully using terms of art to insulate from legal liability. And the issue of peculiar terms of art is leagues different from the issue that everyone else seems to be raising that it represents an intent to abuse private data. Those are two completely different conversations, but you're talking about them here like they're the same thing.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  They could restrict the language to that specific legal situation, couldn't they?
- Macha 2y ago
  So why doesn't my backpack come with a mandatory TOS that I won't e.g. put illegal drugs in it and bring it across the border? Why is Firefox any more liable if I used it to publish illegal content on the web than the backpack manufacturer would be if I used it to smuggle illegal content across a border?
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Because the legal system around backpacks are better understood. The more common something is the less legal paperwork there is. Judges understand backpacks and have for hundreds of years. Many judges don't understand technology. As a result when selling a backpack you can rely on the court's understanding and thus not have to account for every possibility. Meanwhile because the court might not understand technology you have to account for every possible trivial thing.
    - catsma21 2y ago
      for example - app that downloaded entered urls, something even simpler than a browser, hit with copyright takedown in 2023: https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-app-tv-outfits-claim-browser-violates-injunction-230523/ https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-app-tv-outfi...
      - Macha 2y ago
        I don't think a TOS would have helped you with Google's shoot first, ask questions later takedown policy.
      - odo1242 2y ago
        Pretty sure this isn’t a legal thing, this is Google going “we got a takedown notice from this company and aren’t about to read it or hear your opinion, in order to protect ourselves legally”
- pmontra 2y ago
  > the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file If that's all is required to be a publisher then ftp, scp, rsync and hundreds of similar tools are also publishers of the files they transfer. However they don't have Terms of Service like the one Mozilla is giving to Firefox.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  That’s interesting, do you know of any cases that were decided on that basis? It seems downright ridiculous but then the legal system is pretty dumb, so…
thorw93040494 2y ago
[flagged]
- amiga386 2y ago
  > is easy to block network access (never plug ethernet) Some TVs secretly include a modem and SIM card, to make sure they get your personal data back to their masters. Every company in the world is coming after your privacy. How far are you willing to defend it?
  - YcYc10 2y ago
    Really? Which ones?
  - thorw93040494 2y ago
    To test my privacy I us a decoy! I play porn from Hunters laptop in a loop overnight. There are so many reasons it should be reported! So far no problems.
  - einsteinx2 2y ago
    > Some TVs secretly include a modem and SIM card, to make sure they get your personal data back to their masters. That’s a pretty wild accusation to make without naming even a single brand or model… > Every company in the world is coming after your privacy. This is clearly true though.
    - amiga386 2y ago
      I was sure I had seen an example of someone revealing this several years ago, but I can't find the article again, so it's probably misinformation. I'm sorry for repeating it. There are definitely "spy" TVs modified by state security groups that do this, but that's not what I was claiming.
  - jtbayly 2y ago
    I believed this for a time, but now I believe it is an urban legend. Granted a plausible one, and one that might be true in the future... but not true as of yet.
alt227 2y ago
As the browser runs locally on our machine, surely its possible to just block firefox phoning home by DNS black holes or even hosts file or something?
- vntok 2y ago
  That's exactly what Firefox originally claimed was a stark difference compared to Chrome: "use us and you can finally be safe and not need to play cat and mouse anymore"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- odo1242 2y ago
  If you’re planning this, just use a fork of Firefox that does those things. Less setup and you don’t need to update that file whenever they change the domains used for telemetry.
lupusreal 2y ago
At this point my trust in Mozilla is so low that I could almost believe they intent to run the text I download and upload through an LLM nanny that can scold or ban me if anything offends its Californian sensibilities. > Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. > You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/
- Timwi 2y ago
  “Californian”??...
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Call it what you like, "San Francisco techy", ""woke"" if you like trendy pejoratives, whatever. I don't care what you want to call it but I won't play along if you intend to say that regional value system is actually uniformly embraced across this country, let alone across the same globe Firefox users are spread across. In the social sphere Mozilla resides in, voting for a socially conservative political party makes you a fascist which puts you at odds with Mozilla's acceptable use policy if you talk about your politics using Firefox. If Firefox users are supposed to be bound by that document, as judged by Mozilla, that's a problem.
    - grayhatter 2y ago
      Not everything in the world is about political party your circle disagrees with. Given trends I'm sure Firefox will do something stupid like you're afraid of in short order. But this isnt that, so until then you should save your manufactured culture war fear mongering. sigh, I feel bad for you... and us Californian techys... this us vs them toxicity is so demoralizing
      - homebrewer 2y ago
        Not everything is, but Mozilla specifically has been more loud in its support of various political causes most of the world has no interest in than in developing a good web browser for about a decade now, so GP's reaction seems quite appropriate in this case.

Digit-Al 2y ago

I have seen discussions of this sort of wording so many times over the years. My understanding is as follows (and I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of why that wording is used). If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. Because of Draconian laws in many countries, to publish a file you have to have a legal right to the file, therefore Mozilla have to establish that if you use them to upload a file that you are granting them the legal right to publish that file. It has to be worldwide because you may be uploading to anywhere in the world.

Zak 2y ago
Perhaps the legal situation is different somewhere, but I would think the browser isn't acting at all. It has no agency; it's just software running on my computer, following instructions I give it. Mozilla has no agency in that situation either; the software is running on my computer, not theirs. The new terms grant Mozilla, the corporation a license to do things with my data.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The question isn't what you (who presumably understands technology) would think. The question is what every court in the world would think.
  - tgv 2y ago
    But the more important question then is: what else will the courts think this language allows? Probably Mozilla could argue they need to store those uploads and analyze them under those conditions.
- Digit-Al 2y ago
  My comments above are based on precedence when sites like Facebook added these clauses and people got all panicked thinking the company was going to start selling their content (rather than selling their souls /s). The mundane truth was that they needed the wording to make sure they were legally given the right to publish the content onto the web in the way they did. So people were assuming nefarious reasons when they were just legally protecting themselves. Now, it does seem strange that Mozilla have suddenly added this when they haven't had it previously. Personally, I deem it highly unlikely that they are planning on monetizing our content in some way; whilst they have made some strange decisions sometimes I don't think they are completely stupid. Mozilla is in a precarious position right now, they are only managing to scape by on user trust and if that disappears they are finished. I'd like to think they are not foolish enough to do something that would catastrophically erode that trust, and selling user data to advertisers would kill them. Having thought about it a bit more now, I have to wonder if they have dreamt up some other mad scheme, like Mozilla Cloud Storage, or something that would require such wording in the terms. Hopefully, it's just a wording update to protect themselves. I guess we will find out in due course. [edit: fixed a typo.]
  - Zak 2y ago
    I think it's likely they're planning to more deeply integrate some sort of cloud services, perhaps with a paid tier. I don't want that either; stuff like that is fine as an optional extra, but problematic when joined at the hip to a browser.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AshamedCaptain 2y ago
By such logic, operating systems would need a disclaimer like this, as would keyboards, screens, etc.
imiric 2y ago
> If you use Firefox to upload a file to a website then, legally speaking,the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file. If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly. The "publisher" in this case would be the website the file is uploaded to. If the website doesn't make the file public, then they're not a "publisher". The browser is merely acting as a tool to do the uploading. Firefox shouldn't be held liable for the contents of the file any more than any other web client. If it did, tools like cURL should be liable in the same way. Somewhere along the way web browser authors forgot that they're merely building a web user _agent_. It's a tool that acts _on behalf of_ the user, in order to help them access the web in a friendly way. It should in no way be aware of the content the user sends and receives, have a say in matters regarding this content, and let alone share that information with 3rd parties. It's an outrageous invasion of privacy to do otherwise.
- glenstein 2y ago
  >If that's the way the law is interpreted, it's silly. It's hard to tell from your comment who exactly is the target of your complaint. You're not wrong that this interpretation might be silly, but that's not out of the ordinary in carefully using terms of art to insulate from legal liability. And the issue of peculiar terms of art is leagues different from the issue that everyone else seems to be raising that it represents an intent to abuse private data. Those are two completely different conversations, but you're talking about them here like they're the same thing.
Dylan16807 2y ago
They could restrict the language to that specific legal situation, couldn't they?
Macha 2y ago
So why doesn't my backpack come with a mandatory TOS that I won't e.g. put illegal drugs in it and bring it across the border? Why is Firefox any more liable if I used it to publish illegal content on the web than the backpack manufacturer would be if I used it to smuggle illegal content across a border?
- bluGill 2y ago
  Because the legal system around backpacks are better understood. The more common something is the less legal paperwork there is. Judges understand backpacks and have for hundreds of years. Many judges don't understand technology. As a result when selling a backpack you can rely on the court's understanding and thus not have to account for every possibility. Meanwhile because the court might not understand technology you have to account for every possible trivial thing.
  - catsma21 2y ago
    for example - app that downloaded entered urls, something even simpler than a browser, hit with copyright takedown in 2023: https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-app-tv-outfits-claim-browser-violates-injunction-230523/ https://torrentfreak.com/google-bans-downloader-app-tv-outfi...
    - Macha 2y ago
      I don't think a TOS would have helped you with Google's shoot first, ask questions later takedown policy.
    - odo1242 2y ago
      Pretty sure this isn’t a legal thing, this is Google going “we got a takedown notice from this company and aren’t about to read it or hear your opinion, in order to protect ourselves legally”
pmontra 2y ago
> the browser is acting as a "publisher"of that file If that's all is required to be a publisher then ftp, scp, rsync and hundreds of similar tools are also publishers of the files they transfer. However they don't have Terms of Service like the one Mozilla is giving to Firefox.
bee_rider 2y ago
That’s interesting, do you know of any cases that were decided on that basis? It seems downright ridiculous but then the legal system is pretty dumb, so…

thorw93040494 2y ago

[flagged]

amiga386 2y ago
> is easy to block network access (never plug ethernet) Some TVs secretly include a modem and SIM card, to make sure they get your personal data back to their masters. Every company in the world is coming after your privacy. How far are you willing to defend it?
- YcYc10 2y ago
  Really? Which ones?
- thorw93040494 2y ago
  To test my privacy I us a decoy! I play porn from Hunters laptop in a loop overnight. There are so many reasons it should be reported! So far no problems.
- einsteinx2 2y ago
  > Some TVs secretly include a modem and SIM card, to make sure they get your personal data back to their masters. That’s a pretty wild accusation to make without naming even a single brand or model… > Every company in the world is coming after your privacy. This is clearly true though.
  - amiga386 2y ago
    I was sure I had seen an example of someone revealing this several years ago, but I can't find the article again, so it's probably misinformation. I'm sorry for repeating it. There are definitely "spy" TVs modified by state security groups that do this, but that's not what I was claiming.
- jtbayly 2y ago
  I believed this for a time, but now I believe it is an urban legend. Granted a plausible one, and one that might be true in the future... but not true as of yet.

alt227 2y ago

As the browser runs locally on our machine, surely its possible to just block firefox phoning home by DNS black holes or even hosts file or something?

vntok 2y ago
That's exactly what Firefox originally claimed was a stark difference compared to Chrome: "use us and you can finally be safe and not need to play cat and mouse anymore"
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
odo1242 2y ago
If you’re planning this, just use a fork of Firefox that does those things. Less setup and you don’t need to update that file whenever they change the domains used for telemetry.

lupusreal 2y ago

At this point my trust in Mozilla is so low that I could almost believe they intent to run the text I download and upload through an LLM nanny that can scold or ban me if anything offends its Californian sensibilities. > Your use of Firefox must follow Mozilla’s Acceptable Use Policy, and you agree that you will not use Firefox to infringe anyone’s rights or violate any applicable laws or regulations. > You may not use any of Mozilla’s services to [...] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/acceptable-use/

Timwi 2y ago
“Californian”??...
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Call it what you like, "San Francisco techy", ""woke"" if you like trendy pejoratives, whatever. I don't care what you want to call it but I won't play along if you intend to say that regional value system is actually uniformly embraced across this country, let alone across the same globe Firefox users are spread across. In the social sphere Mozilla resides in, voting for a socially conservative political party makes you a fascist which puts you at odds with Mozilla's acceptable use policy if you talk about your politics using Firefox. If Firefox users are supposed to be bound by that document, as judged by Mozilla, that's a problem.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    Not everything in the world is about political party your circle disagrees with. Given trends I'm sure Firefox will do something stupid like you're afraid of in short order. But this isnt that, so until then you should save your manufactured culture war fear mongering. sigh, I feel bad for you... and us Californian techys... this us vs them toxicity is so demoralizing
    - homebrewer 2y ago
      Not everything is, but Mozilla specifically has been more loud in its support of various political causes most of the world has no interest in than in developing a good web browser for about a decade now, so GP's reaction seems quite appropriate in this case.