Is there a maintained bypass-paywalls Firefox extension out there? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 days ago by NotFrenchJack@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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?

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[-] Ilandar@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago

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?

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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/Magnolia1234B

Wikipedia: 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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210429215917/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/

It used to be on gitlab until DMCA takedown notices made them take it down.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220320090024/https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

It used to be on github until DMCA takedown notices made them take it down.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240611084455/https://github.com/bpc-clone/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

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).