Looking for help here. I created a new Firefox profile and wanted to load the Bypass Paywalls Clean Add-on/Extension from the XPI file. So I did what I’ve always done and got the message displayed above.
Then I went into about:config and changed both xpinstall.whitelist.required and xpinstall.signatures.required to false. Fully exited and restarted the browser but still, no dice.
Anyone know how to fix this?
SOLUTION: go to extensions.blocklist.enabled and turn it to false
Oh they’re actively deciding what you can do with the software now. Cool. Love that.
If they didn’t have safeguarding in place, I’d be more worried. As with all things Firefox, it can be overridden.
“This isn’t safe” is very different from “I’ve arbitrarily decided you shouldn’t be able to use that”
A blocklist for malware would be safeguarding. But you can’t claim this is “safeguarding” against… completely safe software?
And it’s not exactly easily overridden, otherwise this post wouldn’t exist.
Sadly, there a few annoying things in Firefox which absolutely are not overridable at all. Firefox is heckin’ awesome, but this just ain’t true.
It’s an unverified extension and an about:config variable
Sure is
It is a safequard against getting sued.
The addon is in their store after all.
I don’t understand why Mozilla is so smitten with this extension. They already removed it from AMO, why are policing it now. A tiny minority of folks use Firefox(as a percentage of market share) worldwide and only some part of it use this extension. Why go after it so hard?
They are policing it today, tomorrow they may say uBlock Origin violates our policies as well. Sure, technically one might be able to install via changing about:config toggle but that’s a bridge too far for most users.
It might seem I am making a huge mental jump for equating a paywall bypass extension to an adblocker extension, but in the eyes of corporations, both kind of users are equally loathed by them.
The purpose of this add-on is solely to circumvent access restrictions to copyrighted works. It is clearly a circumvention tool under the DMCA and therefore illegal to distribute in the USA.
The policy violation is that it breaks US law.
Guessing here, but Mozilla likely blacklisted it to disable it for all those who had it installed and cover their ass legally. Nobody can accuse them of aiding in the distribution of this illegal tool anymore.
While uBlock could be used for the same thing, it has a different primary use (blocking ads, which is still legal), so a similar charge against it might be successfully fought.
The DMCA is a fuck.
But even then, they’re only liable if they distribute it themselves. Why go the extra mile of blocking the addon being sideloaded, as it’s solely done by the user?
My guess: The blocklist is the only way they have of removing it for all those who download it from them when they previously distributed it. And they do that so they can not be held liable for those copies.
A company like News Corp might go “This was downloaded 50 000 times from you and can be used to bypass access control on 10 000 000 of our articles which would otherwise cost $20 each. So we are suing you for 10 trillion dollars in losses. See you in court.”
This isnt news tho, its been banned for years.