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German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

arstechnica.com

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Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#131

Post by anonymousab »

pmontra wrote: post #2

Some interesting facts from the article > As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet. > About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the large…

It's a curation method where the cost of curation is paid for by the advertisers, as opposed to an independent group, an industry group or end users.

It seeks to solve the issue of people blocking ads for safety/security reasons or for crossing some threshold of reasonable annoyance.

I don't use ABP so I can't speak to whether they are good owners of that role, or whether they are corrupt.

I think the idea of curation is good, but it is a brutish hack around (perceived or real) poor self policing by the advertising industry.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#132

Post by saint_fiasco »

rahrahrah wrote: post #41
allendoerfer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English) There were studies about this on HN. Has something to do with foreign words being stored/associated at different points inside the brain and therefor being less offensive to foreign language speakers.

Yeah, that's why I swear in Nepali /s That's obviously bullshit, the actual reason is the omnipresence of the word fuck in the english language, and the omnipresence of the english language everywhere in the world. You just adopt it.

The omnipresence of English explains why in Germany they swear in English instead of French, but it does not explain why they swear in English instead of German. Why swear in a different language at all?

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#133

Post by user5994461 »

morgante wrote: post #84
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #15

Since this submission relates to blocking ads and trackers, I think it's worth bringing up that uBlock Origin [0] is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details). I migrated to it a few years ago and overall I've been very happy with the outcome. I'm opposed to all tracking that isn't opt-in by default. I haven't thought about the topic at great lengths, so there may be cases which I'm fa…

> is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details) That's only if people agree with your ideology. Instead of making blanket statements which are inherently subjective, just explain why you prefer Adblock Plus. Personally, I vastly prefer Adblock Plus. I have no ideological objection to advertising or tracking in general, I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filter…

> I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filtering out intrusive ads while still allowing me to support the sites I like where advertising is minimal.

I was also in favor of that... until I noticed that the google ads[1] were links to malware and adware sites at times.

Now, I just block everything without distinction. And I make sure it's the same for every setup (i.e. rest of the family and friends who are not tech savy).

[1] AdBlock Plus unblocked adds from google after they started paying them. They introduced an opt-in button to "block non intrusive adds".

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#134

Post by millstone »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #65
ClassyJacket wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or because you use Safari.

Could you explain why you use Safari, other than it was pre-installed with your OS>

Best support for using multiple windows instead of tabs

Reader button

Scrolling performance

Most Mac-like UI

Privacy focus

Memory use and battery life

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#135

Post by irq-1 »

tscs37 wrote: post #99

I quite like AdBlock Plus. I've been using it for a long while and I appreciate the Acceptable Ads program, nothing is free and I wish to support websites if I can. It's either that or a paywall. I also use uMatrix, which I recommend to run in conjunction with adblock, it allows for a very finegrained permission control, much more finegrained than uBlock.

> I appreciate the Acceptable Ads program, nothing is free and I wish to support websites if I can. It's either that or a paywall.

You can't negotiate with advertisers -- you can't make a bargain between ads or paywalls. Advertisers want it all.

Only technical restrictions will stop them. Even then they'll try to use lawsuits, government agencies, moral shaming and worse.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#136

Post by anonymousab »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #57
tmnvix wrote: post #10

Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users (assuming those users also allow JS)?

Sure, they can detect ad blockers and present a nag screen. The ad blocker can respond by defeating their detection feature. For example, it can delete the detection function before it even executes. They could circumvent that; ad blockers could nullify their fix; they could fix it again... This could go on forever. In my experience as an user, no website has ever beaten an ad blocker. It's like trying to secure a co…

If a site declares that you should not access it without disabling your adblocker, and they go as far as to explicitly try to prevent your access with direct messaging (interstitials, pop-up/light boxes, etc.), yet the user then works around those protections and accesses it - wouldn't that qualify as illegal access in some form?

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#137

Post by criddell »

alkonaut wrote: post #79
ThePhysicist wrote: post #74

IMHO, by choosing to provide their content as an HTML data stream via HTTP to the user, "Der SPIEGEL" implicitly allows to consume this content in whichever way the user sees fit, as HTML is simply a markup language that can be interpreted in various ways, and could even be read in a text editor. By trying to force the user to consume this data through a specific channel (e.g. through a standard-compliant browser wit…

A logical step if a news outlet wants to show news+ads is to just offer their paper as PDF on the site. No click bait headlines, no Facebook trackers - just a newspaper, with ads. The catch? The ads in the PDF are images without scripts and tracking. Good. Does the income from such ads not generate enough income? Then GET OFF THE INTERNET or just close down the newspaper and take a long holiday. But don't tell me how…

> The catch? The ads in the PDF are images without scripts and tracking.

PDFs support scripting. Wouldn't that suffice?

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#138

Post by criddell »

guntars wrote: post #119
koolba wrote: post #90

> "The Claimant [Spiegel] argues that the Defendant’s [Eyeo's] business model endangers the Claimant’s existence," reads the judgment, which isn't final because it can be appealed by Spiegel. Because users aren't willing to pay for editorial content on the Web, "it is not economically viable for the Claimant to switch to this business model." In what situation is endangering someone's business model grounds for their…

Because it's not just about showing an ad to the user, it's about knowing which user to show that ad. The ad networks track you across the web, and in the process learn a great deal about your demographics and interests. This alows businesses to target you specifically. Spiegel can only track you across their own site which might not tell them much about you, making the ad space less valuable.

> This alows businesses to target you specifically.

You know, I keep hearing this as justification for tracking. It's been going on for about 20 years now and I still see terrible ads. I don't think the ads I see online are any better targeted than ones I see in People magazine at my doctor's office.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#139

Post by Thrillington »

a3n wrote: post #128
dawnerd wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why use an extension that white lists ads by default when there's an open source alternative that you have full control over?

Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort. I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar. People differ.

You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site.

uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this.

ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I haven't considered.

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