Filed under: Utilities, Mozilla, P2P, Browsers
MediaFire pees on Skipscreen's boots, seeks to ban Firefox add-on
Fast forward to today, and that's exactly the case. MediaFire has decided that Mozilla needs to remove the add-on from its directory immediately, citing violations of the MediaFire TOS. Skipscreen hijacks bandwidth, they say. It acts like a robot/spider/retrieval app -- which we forbid, they say. It reformats our web pages without our consent, they say.
The last claim I find particularly weak. Why? By their logic, if you've designed a MediaFire CSS remix and posted it to Userstyles.org, that makes you a nasty little thug.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already penned a response on Skipscreen's behalf, spelling out in great detail how the add-on functions within MediaFire's rules. Technically, anyway. Whether or not the letter wins Mozilla's favor remains to be seen.
Both the takedown request and EFF response have been posted on Skipscreen's blog - have a look, and share your thoughts in the comments!
On a deliciously ironic note, Skipscreen supporters have decided to strike back by uploading copies of the Firefox addon to MediaFire servers. I see what you did there.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
acme said 2:55PM on 10-07-2009
mediafire needs to die...in a fire
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turu said 3:16PM on 10-07-2009
Medirefire offers better service among lot of free file host services. If you have working experience in service like this, I don't really think you can blame their decision.
*note: my opinion would be 180 degree different, if this action was made by another company such as Megaupload/ Rapidshare.
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Alex M said 3:51PM on 10-07-2009
I like mediafire as well. And I don't even see the point of using SkipScreen with it. With megaupload and rapidshare, sure, SkipScreen's awesome.
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Josh said 3:52PM on 10-07-2009
Mediafire is probably the best free upload site out there. I don't blame them for being upset about this but really, I don't think you can stop this. There are a few others out there that do the exact same thing, too. Are they going to ask Firefox to end those too? What about the ones that pop up a week later to replace the ones that were taken down? It'll turn into what happens on Youtube where the second a video is taken down, it is immediately put back up by another user. You just can't stop things like this.
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Shan said 8:04PM on 10-07-2009
What is there to even skip on a MediaFire download page? It is pretty instant. They dont even have the dreaded countdowns or anything. Of all the free file hosting sites - MediaFire definitely ranks one of the best where MegaUpload and Rapidshare would be the worst - because those sites truly deserve skipscreen.
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Jerry said 12:28AM on 10-12-2009
I love skipscreen, and I love mediafire. I'm siding with mediafire on this, as it manages to work with minimal aggravation. There is no wait, just an occasional pop-under. Is that the biggest crime in exchange for all that free file hosting? Would you rather mediafire not exist?
Even if EFF is technically correct, it kinda sucks that they would target a service that most users actually like.
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JayMonster said 9:38AM on 10-09-2009
Regardless of how "good" MediaFire is, this decision of theirs, unless it is for the purpose of publicity (which they are certainly getting) is foolhardy. That they can even try to use a takedown notice and claim this "illegal" is just plain dumb.
I understand that they are upset that their system is not as airtight as they thought it was against "ad-blockers" (which is all SkipScreen really is), but the solution would be do alter the page to break SkipScreen. But I guess they thought this was easier, and don't want to get into an arms race (ala Apple and Palm).
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Aamir said 3:22PM on 10-10-2009
I'd consider Skipscreen to be sort of a download manager:
http://support.mediafire.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=11&nav=0
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