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Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

harknesslabs.com

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Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#41

Post by ultramancool »

soyiuz wrote: post #28

First, it is not clear if a web "surfer" is in a contractual relationship with a random site s/he visits in a way that a Blizzard gamer is (by the virtue of buying the game and clicking through the TOS). Second, Blizzard game bots use a part of the company's codebase, where the ad blocker works solely in my own browser. They do not rely on proprietary code that belongs to someone else. Finally, where the Blizzard bot…

> By this token, could we not go after Oracle or Mozilla for facilitating the breach of contract in maintaining JavaScript (a language then used to break the contract)?

Excellent point, I think what we may see is that adblocker are perfectly legal, but those lists of ad sites to block, not so much.

Ad blockers with tor, bittorrent and rss capabilities coming soon may be headed our way soon.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#42

Post by SamReidHughes »

baddox wrote: post #7

If it's illegal for me to choose which network requests my computer makes and/or accepts, or illegal for someone to create software to help me do that, I think that law is ludicrous and I want it to be changed.

If you want to control your network requests, then don't agree to a contract that gives up such rights.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#43

Post by DannyBee »

adrusi wrote: post #37
Zikes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that knowingly circumventing a TOS agreement doesn't make you immune to it.

If your bank sends you a credit card contract and you don't sign it but their broken system lets you use their service anyway, are you liable for the terms of that contract?

Generally, yes, if you knew it existed.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#46

Post by bad_user »

soyiuz wrote: post #28

First, it is not clear if a web "surfer" is in a contractual relationship with a random site s/he visits in a way that a Blizzard gamer is (by the virtue of buying the game and clicking through the TOS). Second, Blizzard game bots use a part of the company's codebase, where the ad blocker works solely in my own browser. They do not rely on proprietary code that belongs to someone else. Finally, where the Blizzard bot…

Without a license, there's nothing giving you the right to visit a website, because the copyright law says so. Legally speaking, you either agree to whatever license the website has in place, or you've got no right to view its content. Of course, such a license cannot have provisions that conflict with copyright or contract law and so doctrines like the fair use applies, etc.

Of course, you could say that you can't read any license, or any privacy policy and you can't observe any unwanted behavior without first loading that website. But then again, people could build and use an extension that blocks websites and warns people of unwanted characteristics. But that's not what people are doing.

> Second, Blizzard game bots use a part of the company's codebase, where the ad blocker works solely in my own browser. They do not rely on proprietary code that belongs to someone else.

That's a weak argument. Blizzard games do not run directly over hardware, but on top of an operating system that exposes high level APIs, such as DirectX or OpenGL, being in many ways just as high-level as the browser is.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#47

Post by DanBlake »

zombees wrote: post #6

There is one important difference with comparing MDY to adblock though. MDY made software specifically for WoW. Adblock does not make software specifically to target Business Insider or anyone else. Further, if this precedent was set, you could possibly go after people using out of date browsers that can't display your ad content perfectly or viewing text only or a million other ways in which ads wouldn't be left in…

Adblockers have specific rules for specific websites. In fact, adblock plus even has a special rule set to bypass blocks set up by websites to stop adblock users.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#48

Post by vox_mollis »

All this absurd hand-wringing about adblockers would be very easily addressed if content providers would, collectively just offer paid subscription options. Say, a Spotify Premium for the written word.

I don't like ads, and I'm willing to pay to not see them. But nobody seems to want to take my money.

Re: Are Adblock companies breaking the law?

#49

Post by eveningcoffee »

soyiuz wrote: post #28

First, it is not clear if a web "surfer" is in a contractual relationship with a random site s/he visits in a way that a Blizzard gamer is (by the virtue of buying the game and clicking through the TOS). Second, Blizzard game bots use a part of the company's codebase, where the ad blocker works solely in my own browser. They do not rely on proprietary code that belongs to someone else. Finally, where the Blizzard bot…

I think that many people on both sides of the game have become a bit too too cocky.
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