Mozilla removed the Bypass Paywalls Clean add-on from its addons.mozilla.org (AMO) catalog, which had 145 users, without prior notice or disclosure of reasons. According to the author of the add-on, the reason for the removal was a complaint that the add-on violated the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In the future, the add-on cannot be restored to the Mozilla directory, so users are encouraged to install the XPI file bypassing the Mozilla directory using the about:addons interface.
The remote add-on was intended to organize access to materials distributed under a paid subscription (Paywall). In most cases, to bypass the Paywall, it is enough to replace the browser identifier (User Agent) with "Googlebot", which can also be done in any add-on that allows the user to change 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 open the full text of fresh articles only by paid subscribers. Links to such articles are actively promoted in social networks and search engines, but after clicking on the published links, instead of opening the full text, the user is prompted to purchase a paid subscription if he wants to see the details.
For such a scheme to work, they usually provide full access to search engines and social networks, since publications are interested in indexing texts and attracting visitors who are interested in this material. Therefore, to bypass the access restriction, as a rule, it is enough just to change the browser ID and pretend to be a search bot (on some sites it may also be necessary to clear the session cookie and block some scripts).
Source: opennet.ru