From the new terms:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Before everyone freaks out over “terms of use = Firefox bad now” (I’m citing the actual Terms of Use and Privacy Notice)
I’ll add emphasis as needed.
This doesn’t mean you’re giving them a license to do whatever they want with your data, it means you’re giving them the ability to use that data explicitly as you choose to navigate the web. (e.g. you use Firefox to make a post, they have to process those keystrokes through Firefox to send it to the server, and thus could require permission to do that in the form of having a license)
They explicitly have the license only to use the information in line “with your use of Firefox,” and to “navigate, experience, and interact with online content.” not to do whatever they want. They should have worded this better, but this isn’t one of those “we own everything you ever put in your browser” kind of clauses.
This is standard on basically every site, and kind of obvious. You shouldn’t be able to say “you should do this thing,” have them do it, and then say “actually I own the license to this and you have to pay me”
Nothing requires you to stay in this contract after you stop using the services, and this is just reaffirming the fact that, yes, they can stop offering Firefox in the future if they simply can’t sustain it, without somehow breaking contract. More legalese just to protect them from frivolous lawsuits.
This basically just means “don’t do crimes using our browser.” Again, standard clause that basically everything has to make sure that nobody can claim in court that Firefox/Mozilla is liable for something a user did with their software.
Standard liability clause, basically everything also has this.
And that’s it. That’s the terms of use. Nothing here is out of the ordinary, uncalled for, or unreasonable for them to have.
Now let’s move on to the new Privacy Notice.
This just states that if you use the chatbots, you’re subject to their policies, and also Mozilla will collect very light amounts of data to understand how often and to what degree the feature is used. The first part is functionally no different from saying “If you go to OpenAI’s website and use ChatGPT, you’ll be bound by their ToS.” Yeah, of course you will, that’s obvious.
Another optional feature that, if you choose to turn on and use yourself, will obviously have to collect data that is required for such a thing to work. It can’t check reviews if it can’t see the reviews on the website. As for the product recommendations and sponsored content, that’s not desirable, but they do very clearly mention that you can just turn it off in settings.
If you search on their site for extensions, they have to process your search, and if you need to install addons, they’ll have to connect to Mozilla’s servers and collect the relevant data to make sure the extensions are available where you are. Shocking. /s
This has been around for a while already. If you choose to use beta features, then yeah, they’ll collect some diagnostics. That’s why it’s in beta: to get data on if it’s working properly.
Checking for updates and providing malicious site blocking requires connecting to servers to download the updates and having a list to block bad sites. Again, very shocking. /s
And that’s basically it for that.
I seriously don’t understand the reactionary attitude so many people have towards things like this. Read the policies yourself, and you’ll see that their explicit purpose is either:
None of this is abnormal.
Yes, it absolutely is. I do not say this lightly. While I’m not an attorney, I review FOSS licenses regularly for my personal projects and for work. Consider:
They all take user actions and user content. None of them have anything like this.
This is very worrying because each of these points can be refuted with the same quotes. I’ll add my own emphasis:
If Mozilla wants to limit their use of my input, why the do I need to give them a full, non-exclusive license? This is the very language that LinkedIn, et al have used to train their LLMs and said that we all gave them permission to do so. While the letter of the law that may be true, we know that if we had the option to opt out, we would have.
I’m sorry but the license does not say that is the only way they will use this data. It’s not explicit, like you claim. It’s implicit. The explicit part is “nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license”. They say that it will be used to “help you navigate the internet” but what the does that mean?!
“Navigating the internet” does not require me to grant a license. Much of this would fall under fair use and to this day, it’s fallen under fair use. And even if it did require a license, why have it be nonexclusive? Language that specifies the length of the license shall be limited to the amount of time necessary to make the connection to a website, provide the necessary services of a website, etc. would all that would be needed.
And this is even BEFORE we get into the whole reasoning of even needing a license. The only reason you need a license from anyone is if you plan on storing, transmitting, transferring, or otherwise utilizing a right protected under copyright law. The only reason why Mozilla could possibly need a license is if they plan on storing or processing your data outside of your device. Best case scenario: they are using your data to “speed up” connections by processing it through their servers. Worst case (and more likely scenario): they want the data to train AI.
While you are factually correct, Firefox is explicitly stating here that they have the right to terminate an individual’s use of their browser, a freedom that was protected under the MPL.
This part really made my brain itch so I had to dig deeper. This is worse than I initially thought: Mozilla is replacing the MPL as the governing license for their executable and replacing with their TOS.
I’m not sure how I can read their TOS as anything but “terms of use = Firefox bad now”. You are losing your freedom under the MPL to use Firefox however you see fit. What concern does Mozilla have if I decide to use their browser for crimes? They aren’t facilitating it and under the MPL, they were protected from it. Since the TOS is now replacing the MPL, introducing an “Acceptable Use Policy” no longer makes this FOSS. It makes it Source Available.
As an avid Firefox user for decades and a former supporter of the Mozilla Foundation, this is the last straw for me. I will not agree to use a browser where my data is going to be used by them without any exclusions.
I hope you are right and I’m wrong. But given the current landscape, Mozilla likely feels the pressure to “do something with AI” and we’re their products. You can continue to use it, but I’m spending the weekend figuring out alternatives.
Those are licenses for you to use the software. They aren’t licenses for the software maintainer to use your information.
There’s an important fact you may not know: Politicians often have no understanding of things they are regulating. Why is this important? A future privacy law could easily be written such that a browser doing browser things (like submitting a comment on an unrelated website) could be construed as the maintainer using user data. They are getting ahead of that possibility by requiring that you give them permission to do the things you want them to do.
For me the problem is the use of the phrase “to help you…” because I think that means something different, something more, than what you’re saying it means. That’s not a phrasing that evokes, to me, the deterministic nature of the way a web browser operates (or used to operate). Traditionally, I give a web browser a command and it executes it, such as “go to this web address” or “print this page” or “save this as a bookmark”. Helping me, on the other hand, would involve some processing of data to attempt to understand my desires. I don’t want Mozilla or Firefox to be doing that at all.
Maybe it’s just “readable” language that is read much more narrowly legally to mean just what you’re saying. But maybe it opens the door for Mozilla to use it to help me experience online content by learning my habits and demographics in order to lead me to places I indicated I would be interested in by my use of the browser.
Exactly. I’m concerned they’ll use it to train an AI or something to “help me” use the internet and “make the most” of their services. I don’t want that, I want the browser to… browse, and only what I tell it I want to browse.
I understand that, but I’ve seen that language commonly used in nearly identical clauses before, and as far as I’m aware, the courts seem to interpret that as “to do the thing that’s required, or to make it more possible than otherwise,” rather than “anything they deem to be ‘helpful’”
Personally, I’ve never seen a Terms of Service about granting any software a license to do things on my own device before.
Is this normal? Have I just not been looking in the right places?
I’m not an expert, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but here’s what I feel has been more and more the case… It’s interesting that the examples you set are all hardware communicating with other hardware. That is a key point because any company selling you those devices can easily defend themselves legally if you decide to sue them for using your data just by saying “how else would we get the device working? It is fundamental to read your data to make the device do what is advertised for” and the case would be dropped faster than my dog comes when I open his food. Now imagine the keyboard company is caught sending the key strokes to their servers… Without a good terms of use contract they would lose immediately against legal action. And even a terms of use contract might be considered null if it is proven to be abusive or something.
When it comes to a software company things get a lot blurrier. It’s harder to define the needs for some actions and how things could work vs how they work. So I think it’s not uncommon to have this kind of clauses in such cases, specially for getting user data for maintenance and so on. It was less common in the past but as there are more practical cases and experience of where the law draws lines and limits this kind of additions and edits of user contracts are becoming pretty normal.
You make a fair point, and I think I did stumble into a bit of an apples and oranges comparison here.
As far as I know, though, even software with expansive functionality – including other web browsers, and whole operating systems like Linux itself – don’t have these types of TOSes either. And if we look at Linux in particular, several flavors of it are maintained by some pretty big companies. Red Hat and Ubuntu are heavyweights in the server industry; they’re not as big as Microsoft, perhaps, but I imagine they have their own legal teams.
Yeah, absolutely, I think these changes done for Firefox are not “that” common, but they are not unheard of either. I have been trying to remember what was it the news that made me think of this kind of terms of use before, some other service doing very similar changes with similar intent. But I just can’t remember it…
With all of this I dont intend to imply that we have nothing to worry and we can trust in Mozilla without second thought. Each of their actions need to be consider as their own and it wouldn’t be the first time they have some misstep. With that out of the way, this particular situation is not the red flag or big issue that many might immediately think it is.
As for the reasons as to why this is happening right now, I have a couple of guesses. One is AI, and the usage of user data for their training and so on, Mozilla is just trying to clarify in legalese what they are allowed to do with our data when we use their software, likely looking towards the future to protect themselves in case it’s needed. The other guess I have for this kind of change is the current situation with IP owners and intermediaries. In essence I am talking of how ISPs and VPNs are under attack for the use of their services by their users.
But anyway, like I said I’m no expert in legalese, this whole topic seems “OK” to me, but we’ll need to keep our eyes open for any future misconduct or overreach by Mozilla with these new terms.
You’re correct that this isn’t exactly common practice, but it does generally make sense from the stance of legal protectionism. Mozilla just wants to make sure that no maliciously inclined user can try and argue that Mozilla didn’t have a right to use the content they put in the browser, when the browser could only do what that user wanted by putting that data in.
It’s not exactly necessary based on existing precedent, but to me at least, it seems like they’re preparing for situations where cases are brought and try to argue based on things that don’t have existing precedent. For instance, if you look at how new a lot of the arguments and defenses of AI are in court, if a user tried to argue that Mozilla didn’t have permission to send their data to an AI company if they highlighted some text and sent it to the AI sidebar, there’s a chance the court wouldn’t go based on existing precedent, and instead try to argue based on if Mozilla had a right to send that data, which this clause would then clearly, very objectively cover.
TLDR; I personally don’t think they really needed to do it, but it doesn’t functionally change anything about what they’re capable of doing compared to before.
Hey, I will be sharing your comment in another post with the source, hope you don’t mind.
If Mozilla wants to limit their use of my input, why the do I need to give them a full, non-exclusive license?
If its all normal shit that is totally needed to operate then why didn’t they need an agreement before now?
Most of what I put in my comment was there beforehand. (most of it was the Privacy Notice, not the brand-new Terms of Use)
I simply wanted to cover as much as possible since I figured most people hadn’t read the whole document. Apologies if it seemed like everything I was covering was brand new.
To be fair though, not all of it is necessary, but it does provide a benefit such that most companies will use it because it keeps things from getting too ambiguous, legally speaking. Most of the changes Mozilla made seem to just be clarifying existing things that should generally be obvious, to ensure that any frivolous legal argument against them is very clearly able to be dismissed.
People aren’t reading the actual EULA, just a headline and maybe, if you’re extra lucky, the article where a third party tells them what to think about it.
Great analysis you did there of the terms of use and the privacy notice! Just as soon as I read the title of the post I knew people would have a knee-jerk reaction to it. We can blame them for not actually going to read exactly what it is about, but I can’t blame them for the pessimistic point of view, although it seems to be very prevalent around Lemmy where you are supposed to hate everything and everyone that does something against their opinion. I wish people would try to put more attention into not being manipulated on their opinions by every sentence they read, specially when it aligns with their beliefs.
Again, thank you for putting the effort of sharing your opinion and checking the ToU.
I feel like everyone would have the knee jerk reaction. It’s how you think about it and actually respond that’s important.
But that initial stomach drop feeling is pretty natural. On its own without context, that’s scary af
Oh yeah, absolutely, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have that reaction. And especially related to Mozilla, for two reasons, how important I think it is in the future of the internet and how much at risk it is from any entity that would like to have control over that and break the progress of Mozilla.
Thank you, this is a great take and exactly how I’m reading all this as well. People need to stop reacting to headlines and actually read what they’re arguing about.
Yeah this is a crazy amount of backlash for what the policy actually is.