On 2015-07-06 1:00 AM, tssw...@gmail.com wrote:
Point 1: How does Mozilla justify push-installing an uninvited
program. The usual term for doing that is "distributing a virus", and
is frowned on polite company; unethical if not illegal.
There is, as always, a distinction here between "freedom to" and
"freedom from".
Updating our software automatically protects Firefox users from a
growing and rapidly-evolving set of real threats, and the freedom from
the Web's many malicious actors that provides gives our users more real
freedom to explore and participate in the Web than they'd otherwise have.
It's a tradeoff, that's true, but all software is tradeoffs. Software is
just a bunch of decisions about your computer's state that you've
delegated to whoever wrote it. But we feel strongly that it's the right
tradeoff for the overwhelming majority of our users, and we have
excellent data that supports that position. If it doesn't work for you,
though, one of the many ways Firefox distribution is markedly different
from typical viruses is that if you like, you can turn that off.
Point 2: The new DRM module - yes, you do get to disable it, (perhaps
because anything from Adobe is bound to be leak private information
and be buggy). But "Once you opt out, Firefox will delete any
downloaded CDMs from your hard drive, cease all future CDM downloads"
(https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm). Neither Mozilla nor
Adobe own anything on my computer. So what give them right to rummage
through my computer, deleting files and blocking downloads?
I think you're misunderstanding what gets deleted, though that document
is somewhat unclear; the thing getting deleted here is the Content
Decryption Module - the widget within Firefox the handles decrypting
rights-restricted content. None of your downloads, and certainly not
anything else on your hard drive, is getting rummaged-through and deleted.
But if you'd like to preemptively prevent that question from even coming
up, though, you're not alone; people who share your concerns can
download an EME-free version of Firefox:
http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/firefox/releases/39.0/win32-EME-free/
Point 3: I expect today or tomorrow at the latest, that the "pocket"
will be hack by the NSA, China, an MIT computer science student, the
bored teenager next door.
That seems unlikely, though compromised services are always a risk.
Having said that, if you decline to use Pocket, then your computer never
connects to their services, no credentials change hands, and that code
never runs.
- mhoye
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