Popular file hosting service, MediaFire, has asked Mozilla to take down the SkipScreen Firefox extension.
Like other file sharing systems, MediaFire will allow you to download a file only after waiting 45 seconds during which you are presented a few ads so you are most likely to click on them and get the revenue, or, even better, you get annoyed enough to pay for its premium services.
SkipScreen circumvents MediaFire delay making it work like any other download: you click the link and you immediately start receiving the file: so there’s no more exposure to ads, and there’s no annoyance to push you to paid services.
It remains to be seen what Mozilla will do with the request: SkipScreen definitely harms MediaFire’s business but it’s also about the user experience and how she interacts with a public resource like MediaFire’s hosted content.
In the meantime, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sided with Worcester, LLC, the maker of SkipScreen, and has taken them as clients and sent a letter to Mozilla making the case for the continued hosting of the extension:
MediaFire probably would prefer that we all sit, transfixed, while they display ads for us, just like certain Hollywood executives wish we would never leave the couch or hit FFWD when commercials run during our favorite TV shows, and certain websites wish they could ban Firefox ad-blockers. Fortunately, there’s nothing in the law that says that by simply visiting a website, I give up the right to control my desktop.
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