Hello.
I just noticed in one of my Firefox profiles that Mozilla auto-disabled the “Bypass Paywalls” extension after removing it from their end, which apparently happened a while ago.
I don’t think I ever even used this extension, which is why I didn’t catch this earlier. But now that it’s banned, I definitely want it around 😉
The upstream repository also got DMCA’d. The repository of a presumably alternative (or cleaned) extension is also gone, although I found some GitHub mirrors of it (how ironic).
So, is there a maintained extension upstream I should know about?
Tangent, but why are people scared of the .ru repository? This was also an issue last time Bypass Paywalls was mentioned, and I thought it was quite strange to see in a piracy community. Are people unaware that a significant amount of the world’s piracy originates from Russia?
Incase anyone finds it useful.
Using a redirect to this website can be quite nice as well.
https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
And for anyone concerned about it being hosted in Russia I will quote my own research from several months ago. Original comment follows:
Magnolia’s Twitter Account: [ Removed in Accordance with Instance Rules ]
Nitter Link: https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/Magnolia1234BWikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean
It used to be on the official Firefox Extensions repository until DMCA takedown notices made them take it down.
It used to be on gitlab until DMCA takedown notices made them take it down.
It used to be on github until DMCA takedown notices made them take it down.
It moved to gitflic.ru not because it’s sketchy, but because of copyright enforcement.
It’s kind of like sci-hub, in a way, it can only actually survive in a country that doesn’t respect the US copyright cabal.
That being said, I’ve never audited the code, but it’s open source (MIT-license) and signed by Mozilla as noted on its gitflic page:
PS although the add-on was removed from Mozilla’s add-on store (AMO) (because of DMCA Takedown Notice) it’s still signed and manually checked for security by Mozilla (hence the delay in signing).
Links to Twitter are not allowed on lemmy.dbzer0.com, please edit your comment accordingly
The Nitter link is allowed, as there’s an exception for those
Thank you for the polite heads up, I had missed this rule update. The link has been removed.
Thank you
Yeah, if you want software that’s being banned everywhere you’ve got to get it from someplace that’s willing to host it…
Thanks for the research
https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
I am still getting updates nearly every day, so it must be maintained.
The maintainer moved it to a Russian site lol:
https://gitflic.ru/project/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean
Ignore the Ru. This really is the best solution. They got removed from all legit places, so they’ve been forced to repo in Russia.
I mean, isn’t there Codeberg? I assume they could at least mirror their repository to there.
Codeberg is just as vulnerable to takedown requests as any other such hoster are.
Yes, but a temporary mirror would still be great.
