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The Courts

Adobe Uses DMCA To Nuke Project That Keeps Flash Alive, Secure and Adware Free (torrentfreak.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In January 2021, development and support for Adobe Flash was discontinued. That marked the end of an era but in reality, Flash wasn't quite dead. Flash Player is still available in China, something that was exploited by the Clean Flash project to continue making the software more widely and safely available. The Chinese version of Flash receives one security update per month and can be freely downloaded from Flash.cn but also has significant strings attached. It comes preinstalled with an adware program called Flash Helper which, according to security sources, exhibits malicious behavior. Developed by 'darktohka' and previously located on Github, Clean Flash Installer solves these problems and more. "Clean Flash Installer installs this up-to-date freely available version of Flash, but it comes WITHOUT the adware program," darktohka informs TorrentFreak. "As such Clean Flash Installer can be used by anyone to use a relatively secure version of Flash Player after the support for Flash ended."

The developer says that he was inspired to create his tool to keep Flash content alive, something which he says was a huge part of his childhood. Adobe appears to be less enthusiastic about his work and following a DMCA notice filed with Github, the developer platform has nuked the project. In a DMCA complaint filed with Github on October 4, 2021, a legal representative acting for Adobe explains that the Clean Flash Installer project breaches copyright law. "Adobe Inc. is the copyright owner and I am authorized to act on its behalf. Our Adobe Flash Player software has been infringed. The files in question contain our proprietary Adobe Inc. owned copyrighted materials (software code)," it reads, adding that the project must be removed. "As this is my passion project, I am deeply disappointed with Adobe's action. The repository in question only hosts the installer code for the project, which was written by myself and does not contain any infringing code," explains darktohka. "Adobe Flash was a huge part of our childhood, and it's gut-wrecking that Adobe would rather have everyone use super out-of-date versions of the software when versions with security updates are freely available. It makes no sense for them to DMCA an installer that was written independently and makes use of the freely available and downloadable version of the project."
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Adobe Uses DMCA To Nuke Project That Keeps Flash Alive, Secure and Adware Free More

Adobe Uses DMCA To Nuke Project That Keeps Flash Alive, Secure and Adware Free

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  • Not this time. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Major_Disorder ( 5019363 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @06:07PM (#61885749)
    Normally I would side with the Developer over the evil that is Adobe.
    Nope, can't do it.
    Die flash, die. Kill it with fire. Kill all of its family, and friends. Burn the corpses for at least a week, then bury the ashes in an unmarked grave. Finally take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Curtman ( 556920 ) *
      I don't know if fire can even kill it. Some sort of exorcism maybe.

    • Re:Not this time. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @06:22PM (#61885789) Journal

      There is a very good argument to be made that Flash needs to continue existing, at least in some form, for the sake of historical preservation.

      Homestar Runner isn't even remotely the same as a series of YouTube videos.
      =Smidge=

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
        That's very pretty, but it's still terribly insecure, more holes will be found in it over time and they're not being properly patched. I don't use 1800s style locks on my front door out of nostalgia for more classic looking keys.

        • Re:Not this time. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bhcompy ( 1877290 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @07:09PM (#61885921)
          That's what sandboxing is for

        • That's very pretty, but it's still terribly insecure, more holes will be found in it over time and they're not being properly patched.

          Same as any other piece of software, and the problem will only continue to get worse. There's ways to deal with that, but it's easier to hate on old stuff and try to forcibly erase history than to redesign operating systems to properly contain/quarantine unpatched software.

          As far as I'm concerned, Flash was a warning of what's to come and what kind of architectural changes we need to make to our infrastructure to improve security. The whole industry has failed the test. Hail the almighty walled gardens a

        • You can't stop people from downloading and manually running some random executable they found on the internet.

          At least flash is no longer auto-launched in the browser.

        • I don't use 1800s style locks on my front door out of nostalgia for more classic looking keys.

          Way to prove their point. People still make them because people still want them. You can still buy new antique style locks, if you want [townsends.us]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There is an open source implementation of Flash called Ruffle. It works very well.

        • There is an open source implementation of Flash called Ruffle. It works very well.

          That's good to see. And being that it's an open source project, it shouldn't ruffle Adobe's feathers leading to a DMCA

          • That's good to see. And being that it's an open source project, it shouldn't ruffle Adobe's feathers leading to a DMCA

            Never underestimate the asinine nature of Adobe. Remember that this is the company who criminally prosecuted Dmitri Sklyarov under the DMCA for unravelling their ROT-13 implementation.

            They don't let silly things like "facts" get in their way.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        There is a very good argument to be made that Flash needs to continue existing, at least in some form, for the sake of historical preservation.

        You do have a point. For the next 10x10 Thousand years Flash can be held up as an example of how NOT to do something.

    • Re:Not this time. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Waccoon ( 1186667 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @07:07PM (#61885919)

      Something that is truly obsolete does not need to be killed by force. All the hate against Flash is purely political and emotional, and that simply is not right.

      • So no one hates it because of the security issues or the power hungriness issues? Or the lack of open standard issue that held back the web?

        • So no one hates it because of the security issues or the power hungriness issues?

          Like I said, political and emotional issues.

          Software is insecure only if vulnerabilities are found. I'm sure it has plenty, but I seriously doubt Flash has more vulnerabilities than any other piece of software out there. I'm pretty certain you don't know any off the top of your head and would have to look up a list to find out what they are, but that won't stop you or anyone else from parroting the same trash talk as all the other geeks. Rather than blindly bashing Flash because it's cool, we should be a

        • It would be a lot easier to agree with you if web tech stacks had feature parity with flash. Here we are, 10 years after the death of flash, and the web still hasn't managed to achieve feature parity. Use web tech to make flash style content and see how power hungry the web can be. Plus, open web standards are a joke: features are added to the standard after they are widely adopted via inclusion in chromium. If Adobe was a 1.8 trillion dollar search monopoly, everyone on /. would be celebrating the de

          • Who said feature parity with flash is a good thing? Websites do not need every shit under the sun. What we have right now is already enough.

            Furthermore, if the Flash file doesn't download, you don't even have a website. Websites can at least get buy if not everything gets loaded.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The hate against Adobe Flash is because every single month for the last 20 years we have had to read the headline "Adobe patches critical Flash vulnerability, update now".

        Worse still when you did try to update the installer tried to install a trial version of McAfee too.

        • The hate against Adobe Flash is because every single month for the last 20 years we have had to read the headline "Adobe patches critical Flash vulnerability, update now".

          And? So what? Just about every piece of software we use, OS choices included, have frequent critical vulnerability patches necessary. Linux included. It's the cost of doing business, so to speak.

          Flash was about as reliable and worked about as well as anything else of its day. It really wasn't that bad. A good deal of of the hate for flash isn't because of some experience that users had, but because Steve Jobs got on stage and ranted about Flash, and the Cult spread his gospel faithfully.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        All the hate against Flash is purely political and emotional, and that simply is not right.

        No, I think I can say for most of us here that we don't hate Flash for any political reasons. Emotional, well you may have something there. But its only because of the emotions this buggy, resource hog of a security risk that this POS was. As anyone that has spent a night or two digging that pile of shit out of their browser because of something fucked up with it, causing your entire project to miss a dead line.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @07:39PM (#61885997)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy turn off auto play. For firefox just go right into Privacy & Security settings and turn that off.

        Why would you need an extension to do what can be done natively?

        • Firefox: "Default for all websites: Block Audio and Video"

          Yet youtube still plays videos with sound automatically.

          So... you tell me:

          Why would you need an extension to do what can be done natively?

          Because the native solution does not work as advertised.

          • Works fine for me. I have no extensions installed to solve this, yet no video's autoplay. Must be my version of firefox is special.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Flash didn't die. It became the web browser. That's why you it's hard to find a browser add-on that reliably kills autoplaying video - because now the threat is coming from inside the browser.

        Privacy badger + Ublock Origin + Firefox' built in defences seem to do it for me. Its a very rare day when autoplay gets past that.

        Available on Windows, Linux and Android, so that's all my devices covered.

    • So, how do I play the old flash games and videos?

      People can play 30 year old games on original hardware, clone hardware or emulators. How can I play a 10 year old flash game?

  • I didn't think it was possible, but this has to be an example of DMCA being used for good, The cancer that is Flash needs to be stamped out for good.

  • doesn't seem quite right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davecotter ( 1297617 ) <me@NOSPaM.davecotter.com> on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @06:30PM (#61885813)

    first: i don't think the point is to use this updated, more secure, less adwarey version to create new flash sites, or even extend the life of existing sites that any modern user would use on a regular basis. i think the point is to preserve historical sites, to allow us to view old sites that are no longer maintained, to allow the use of critical sites that just *can't* be updated but *need* to keep functioning (like those in china)

    second: this guy needs a good attorney, because it kinda smells that it was taken down because "The files in question contain our proprietary ... copyrighted materials", which, from the guy's description, no, it doesn't.

    • Re:doesn't seem quite right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mysidia ( 191772 ) on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @06:39PM (#61885843)

      Yeah... I suspect the cleanflash project's crime is Interfering with Adobe's likely new profit model for flash - that is to rent through their partner Harman a working version of Flash for exhorbitant amounts on a subscription basis to enterprises who still are 100% dependent on Flash for some critical internal functions such as line of business apps, and legacy IT systems think like the vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 management web client, older relases of Cisco UCS, and some enterprise storage arrays that require Flash to access the web interfaces required to perform system management functions and maintenance on equipment.

      • The license for Harman's Flash "supported" browser for our customers that wouldn't get off the legacy platform was something like $25k/yr. I think we may have had a handful of customers out of thousands opt for that rather than opt for our Flashless platform. I know some of our more savvy customers switched to Pale Moon instead, but there are obvious security risks with that that I have to assume they're attempting to mitigate by other means
    • I think he needs to instigate a RICO action.
  • because it had an impact on your life when you were young. Some things are just too dangerous to play with. If one of you freaks accidentally pulls the stake out of Flash and it comes back to life, I'm going to hunt you down.
  • Preservation of flash content should be left to the experts, like archive.org. Why is this dude even doing this?

  • Flash sucks. Why would you keep that pox around?

  • it's gut-wrecking that Adobe would rather have everyone use super out-of-date versions of the software...

    Actually that's entirely wrong. Adobe would rather that nobody run flash, at all, ever again.

    So this guy needs to get his facts straight before he can expect anyone to feel sorry for him.

    • Adobe would rather that nobody run flash, at all, ever again.

      [citation needed] What gives you this unique (supposed) insight into Adobe's motivations?

      As others here have mentioned, Adobe is still making money hand over fist for flash licences from companies who have legacy software that requires it. I'm much more inclined to believe that Adobe is quite happy making money from software they're no longer maintaining.

  • flash games (Score:3)

    by slothman32 ( 629113 ) * <pjohnjackson&gmail,com> on Tuesday October 12, 2021 @09:25PM (#61886211) Homepage Journal

    So how does someone play a flash game?
    They still exist.
    Most of /.'s opinions seem to be that Flash should be gone and hence all .swf files on the internet since they can't played anymore.

    • If you REALLY want to run Flash, you can do that in a VM with an old OS, old browser, and old Flash.

      You do NOT want to run Flash in your main OS, because that's handing control of your OS over to the bad guys.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tokul ( 682258 )

      > So how does someone play a flash game?

      Standalone flash player is still there.

  • I think that dmca exemptions cover this?

  • I'm old enough to remember the last time Adobe had somebody arrested on DMCA theories to protect their revenue stream.

    I don't care much about Flash, but Adobe is a rabid dog that shouldn't be given a moment's comfort.

    I feel for the archivists but anybody who built IT systems on Flash just got into bed with Adobe to avoid paying for reliable development work. I'm sorry if you got screwed by a vendor in league with Adobe but next time do some upfront research. Hard lessons sting.

    Never support the company that

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Still so many flaws and security risks in it ?

    And this is given out and a healthy argument ?

    unbelievable. Be done with its suffering.

  • We should kill its copyright protections then. I hope somebody mirrored the installer before it was taken down. The internet should be indelible. We need more anonymous development to keep the lawman away

  • Adobe was totally within their rights (Score:3)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @09:51AM (#61887365)
    They make a product that is supported by ads and this developer is stripping out the ads. Adobe's version may suck, it might be insecure and the developers version maybe better in everyway for the end user but it is not the developer's product. It is Adobe's.

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