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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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

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).

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

January 2025 rule change regarding Twitter links

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for the polite heads up, I had missed this rule update. The link has been removed.

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 3 days ago

Thank you

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 days ago

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