Mozilla says its new Firefox terms don’t give it ownership of your data
Mozilla says its new Firefox terms don’t give it ownership of your data
“We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible.”
Misunderstanding of legalese may have lead a lot of us down the wrong road.
That's not going to keep them from selling it.
Their defense is the need to keep Firefox "financially viable", but if that keeps them from being able to broadly state that they won't sell our data, it's better to use a fork that prevents Mozilla from accessing that data in the first place.
Right? The license literally says they have a right to everything - everything we do in Firefox, and that we grant them full access to it. The shit is that? I don't need a law degree to read and understand that.
No, Mozilla, you don't have permission to see everything I write and type. You don't have permission to see the images I upload or even as far as I'm concerned you don't have the rights to see what webpages I visit. The most you get is when I (used to) submit a bug report.
The browser is the fundamental most basic access to the internet. I get that there's potential for data brokering profit, but it is a slap in the face to everyone who used firefox for privacy reasons.
They're trying to backpedal now:
Friday’s post additionally provides some context about why the company has “stepped away from making blanket claims that ‘We never sell your data.’” Mozilla says that “in some places, the LEGAL definition of ‘sale of data’ is broad and evolving,”and that “the competing interpretations of do-not-sell requirements does leave many businesses uncertain about their exact obligations and whether or not they’re considered to be ‘selling data.’”
See, you don't need to ever sell my data - like ever. There is zero reason for a browser to sell my data. I don't care about the backpedaling.
I spent 20 years on Firefox. Through the good years and the bad, when it was slow and clunky compared to the new shiny chrome through the bad PR. This is the straw that broke the camel's back. For now I'm on Librewolf - then who knows.
The technicality is likely that the application on your PC called Firefox is considered to be Mozilla, so of course the application needs to see everything you write
I learned a new term today that illustrates this move. Warrant canary. When a company disappears a promise it's like a canary in a coal mine.
Many sites have done this over the years. It's called a warrant canary because in the footer, they'd say "we don't comply with law-enforcement requests" ... then comes the warrant, and the wording is removed.
They do not get ownership, but a license to do what they want with it. Giving a license does not change ownership, yes they are correct with this.
Then the words need to say what they mean. At the moment they mean that Mozilla own everything.
May have, may not have.
I don't believe that anyone misunderstood the wording.
The problem lies within the broad meaning of the chosen words. If you are angry, you have absolutely every right to be.
Regardless of Mozilla's intent here they have made a rather large mistake in re-wording their Terms. Rather than engaging with a legal team in problematic regions; they took the lazy way out and used overbroad terms to cover their bottom.
Frequently when wording like this changes it causes companies to only be bound by weak verbal promises which oftentimes go out the door whenever an executive change takes place, or an executive feels threatened enough.
Do not be deceived; this is a downgrade of their promise. It is inevitable that the promises will be broken now that there is no fear of a lawsuit. There's nothing left to bind them to their promises.
The Mozilla foundation wasn't ever intended to remain "financially viable"; it was supposed to remain non-profit. They should be "rightsizing" and taking pay cuts instead of slipping a EULA roofie into their terms of use.