> Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser.
They try their best to market themselves as a privacy-centric browser. To promote themselves as so they add some shiny things like making clearing browser history a two mouse clicks more accessible. But I'm still worried.
I'm really nitpicking but... That 3rd party cookie controversy that lasted for almost an year, the "oh, we're full of FLOSS ideals and are firmly against DRM but... hey, wait, users want Netflix, gotta support DRM" controversy, the recent "sponsored tiles" controversy, the update of over-engineered and undocumented proprietary Firefox Sync/Accounts that makes it even harder to not depend on their servers, the complete ignorance on TLS client certificates' UI and usability (which is why we're still stuck with passwords), the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party, and so on. I know, it's not good to complain in such rude manner, but the issues do exist. Personally, I wouldn't really trust Firefox. Not without lots of addons, at least.
Unfortunately, I guess this can't be helped. A large project like Firefox seems to be impossible without steady and fairly big money income, and since this money comes from advertisers whose interests are in complete opposite of users' privacy, Mozilla just have to make some sacrifices.
Still, among the mainstream browsers they're better than competitors.
Yes it sucks that Mozilla loses some battles, but you surely must understand that there are stronger players around the world and it is impossible to win every battle.
Firefox today is full of DRM features. They are called plug-ins. What theyre doing is cutting it down to one, secure plugin instead of a few insecure ones. Seems like a step up, though of course you can always wish for more. But again, stronger foes.
I still dont understand the controversy about the tiles. Everybody freaks out that a browser which take in more than 300 million dollars a year in advertisement is going to show an ad. I actually thought selling that space is a good idea. Why should Mozilla give away free traffic like that? They can still quality control the links.
Nope, that's a pretty common misconception though. You surely can own a server (I do) but you just can't own a domain. You're merely leasing one from a registrar.
You see, I strongly believe identity's an intrinsic property of a person, and if you need a provider for one there's something really wrong with the setup. I'm completely fine with asserting notaries, but not providers.
I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable worldwide.
This is true in practice, though. "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party, its lease terms can be changed to make it unaffordable - and generally there's nothing you can do to prevent this before this happen, since anything of this can happen without involving you at all. That is, because you never possessed this domain, it was merely provided to you. You may just seek the legal remedy after the fact.
On the contrary, identity is something you possess. It can't be revoked by anyone. Your passport (notary assertion) may be stolen, seized or revoked, but your friends won't stop recognizing you as a person. It's just that you won't be able to prove "I'm recognized as $legal_name by government" anymore.
You just won't wake up and see your password set is blocked so you can't login anywhere. Yeah, you can be forced to disclose your credentials, but it's a different story.
> I don't know about juridical sense and I'm not sure there's one applicable worldwide.
The statement is even less true then. I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term, it doesn't match your agreement with your registrar.
> "Your" domain can be seized, blocked or transferred to a third party,
That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any country. The police will take back a stolen bicycle and return it to a third party, for example.
But it is a system governed by rules. And so is the domain name. It is yours to use, and will remain yours unless you break the rules. In most countries you can challenge any stolen or revoked domain in court.
> I would certainly guess that in every country that leasing is a term
I'm not talking about how it's called legally. I'm talking how it's actually working. You pay money, you're allowed to control the resource. That looks exactly like leasing to me. You can't buy a domain, so you can't own it. It's that simple
> That is trivially true with pretty much anything, in pretty much any country.
Wrong. It's impossible to make you disclose your private key without your presence, ability and willingness to do so (although you can be forced to disclose, but that's completely another matter). And, obviously, your identity cannot be revoked or seized even if you'd wish for so.
> But it is a system governed by rules. And so is the domain name.
And the rules are made by others and others may change it at any time.
> In most countries you can challenge any stolen or revoked domain in court.
But why do I have to do so in a first place?
Seriously, can you explain me why do I need to entrust my identity to some registrar and ask government to handle that? Or why do I have to pay for a right to posses my identity? I've used to live without those, but now everyone's (Google, Facebook and - what's important and what's the basis of my complaint - Mozilla's continuing the trend) trying to tie me to this third-party-is-necessary approach.
Yes. Identity is an intrinsic property of a person. However, how would you design a system to check this property? It's a very difficult property to measure. Having someone vouching for it is a relatively safe and easy way to do this.
It's just that credential must be something you can handle by yourself and not require a third party to provide to you. A third party may assert some aspect of your identity by providing a statement that the person who's in possession of the certain credentials has been verified by this notary to indeed have certain properties. But if me and some website are starting to become acquainted why do we need any third party as a strong requirement? When I walk into some office I don't have to show my passport, I just introduce myself and we get to the business. And then, if there's a necessity (!), business owner may ask me to provide some assertions of my identity. I don't see any reason it shouldn't work in a same manner on the web. Like, for example, "Hey there, you may call me Aleksey and here's my, say, public key so you could authenticate me at a later time."
Remembering your face is what a cookie can do for you. You log-in via a trusted 3rd party (that may be owned by you) and you receive a cook for use next time.
If you change your face the next time you walk in, like say you visit from your iPhone instead of you PC, they cant recognize you and will of course need strong verification, after which you may receive a cooking.
I'm not really knowledgeable on the details but - if I got it right - from the overall image it seems good.
But it's not realistically useable for a time being. I'll be fine totally with Persona when the vast majority could type .bit (or whatever it would be called, I guess NameCoin will evolve somehow by that time) name I own (truly own, yay!) and it would resolve for them.
Thanks. Those look good. Less radical than I could wish for, but certainly good.
Hope the existence of those features will be well-marketed, so they'll be enabled by sufficiently large amount of people to be able to blend into this crowd.
They try their best to market themselves as a privacy-centric browser. To promote themselves as so they add some shiny things like making clearing browser history a two mouse clicks more accessible. But I'm still worried.
I'm really nitpicking but... That 3rd party cookie controversy that lasted for almost an year, the "oh, we're full of FLOSS ideals and are firmly against DRM but... hey, wait, users want Netflix, gotta support DRM" controversy, the recent "sponsored tiles" controversy, the update of over-engineered and undocumented proprietary Firefox Sync/Accounts that makes it even harder to not depend on their servers, the complete ignorance on TLS client certificates' UI and usability (which is why we're still stuck with passwords), the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party, and so on. I know, it's not good to complain in such rude manner, but the issues do exist. Personally, I wouldn't really trust Firefox. Not without lots of addons, at least.
Unfortunately, I guess this can't be helped. A large project like Firefox seems to be impossible without steady and fairly big money income, and since this money comes from advertisers whose interests are in complete opposite of users' privacy, Mozilla just have to make some sacrifices.
Still, among the mainstream browsers they're better than competitors.