Mozilla removed the Bypass Paywalls Clean extension from the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) directory without prior notice and without disclosing the reasons, with 145,000 users affected. According to the extension's author, the removal was due to a complaint regarding a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States. The extension cannot be restored in Mozilla's directory, so users are advised to install the XPI file directly bypassing the Mozilla catalog using the about:addons interface.
The removed extension was intended to provide access to content distributed via paid subscriptions (Paywall). In most cases, bypassing a Paywall simply requires changing the browser's identifier (User Agent) to 'Googlebot', which can also be done with any extension that allows the user to modify the User Agent value.
The Paywall method is used by many major English-language publications (forbes.com, independent.co.uk, newsweek.com, newyorker.com, nytimes.com, wsj.com, etc.) to allow full text access to recent articles only for paying subscribers. Links to such articles are actively promoted on social media and search engines, but after navigating to the published links, instead of accessing the full text, users are prompted to purchase a subscription if they wish to see the details.
To implement such a scheme, it's common to open full access to search engines and social networks, as publications are interested in indexing content and attracting visitors who are interested in that material. Therefore, to bypass access restrictions, it is usually sufficient to simply change the browser identifier and pretend to be a search bot (some sites may also require clearing session cookies and blocking certain scripts).
Source: opennet.ru
