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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

#161

Post by summarite »

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…

This would probably result in less relevant ads and more power of ad providers, ie less neutral reporting. Think about how some companies or political parties 'punish' critical media by pulling ads and advertising with the competition instead. Imagine you little newspaper have a harsh truth to deliver about Nestle or P&G - and you know if you do so a large chunk of your revenue will disappear.

On the other hand this would allow the site to be more picky and set prices - which could really increase overhead.

I love the idea they use eg for wetransfer (a very minimalist file sharing site) - one huge, beautiful ad in the background . I'm sure those aren't cheap, but they are certainly visible and usually quite interesting. Everyone wins. But i doubt that would scale and seems unlikely to suit content-filled sites like news sites

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

#163

Post by TeMPOraL »

intrasight wrote: post #141
irq-1 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that it doesn't work for the advertisers. It also isn't a technical solution: ad-blockers don't just use domain names; they also block based on tags, ids and css classes, etc..

I'm sure the advertisers would rather have ads than not, so I'd argue just the opposite - this will work for advertisers. And you can't block arbitrary and tags, so I don't understand your second assertion.

Ad blocking in general is an AI-complete problem, but there are still lots of low-hanging fruits left to be picked - like blocking tags based on class names ("ad", "sponsor.*"), on content (basically spam filtering), etc., all backed by crowdsourced list of per-domain entries.

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

#164

Post by colejohnson66 »

cm2187 wrote: post #80
ryuuchin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason for still using ABP is because you haven't heard of uBlock.

What's the best solution for iOS?

For your home wifi network, look at Pi-Hole[0], a DNS based ad blocker

[0]: https://pi-hole.net

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

#165

Post by TeMPOraL »

senior_james wrote: post #153

Adblocking has indirectly created many of these fake news sites we see today and will only create a more cluttered and product-filled user experience. Most news sites rely only on advertising for income. Real reporting and investigation costs money. Since their main money source is now drying up, news is starting to become hearsay, rumors, and things you see on Twitter (anything you can find from the comfort of an of…

Water flows downhill and market optimizes for profit. If you don't remove ads, the extra money gets pocketed by the companies, but that in no way incentivizes them to do "real journalism". Bullshit has better ROI than truth, and that's why there's so much of it.

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

#166

Post by summarite »

tim333 wrote: post #37
supergreg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a cat and mouse thing. If they add some js to check for ad blockers then ad blockers block that too. They could check over time if a user has seen as many ads as page views and block them then but users would just need to delete their cookies.

Until recently I've not had problems using ad blockers but in the last month http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ has become good at telling if I'm using one and not returning content if so. I wonder if this is the start of a more general fight back. I guess as blockers stop ads downloading they just need to have something like an ad or an actual one and check if it's downloaded.

And you can be sure they pay a hefty sum for up-to-date anti-blocking software.

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

#167

Post by jlarocco »

skybrian wrote: post #127
ryuuchin wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's only if people agree with your ideology. You don't even have to do that. It behaves exactly the same as ABP if you use the same filter lists. It's just also happens to be more efficient than ABP.

It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. That's not to say AdBlock Plus does a great job (I don't know) but some people think collective bargaining is a good thing. For more read about countervailing power. ht…

> It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever.

We have very different opinions, because I don't see it as a bargaining situation. The reasonable and acceptable level of spam, web advertising, malware, and user tracking is zero. I won't accept any more than that because (very near) zero is easily achieved using the currently available tools.

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

#168

Post by majewsky »

criddell wrote: post #137
alkonaut wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

But you can use a PDF reader that does not support (and thus ignores) scripts. [1] Of course, the publisher could build the script such that it displays the article text only after the ad has been displayed, and we get the next arms race of adblockers and adblocker-blockers.

[1] Fun fact: Okular has an "Honor DRM restrictions" checkbox in its settings dialog that you can actually uncheck.

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

#169

Post by CaptSpify »

Blackthorn wrote: post #95
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…

Personally I wish UBO would allow you to easily whitelist unobtrusive ads as part of their filters like ABP does.

Me too, but I also want that list off by default

Opt-in > Opt-out

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

#170

Post by jasonthevillain »

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…

> Also, I don't get why larger content owners don't self publish ads.

You're right, it's about auditing. They need to be able to prove the quantity of ads were delivered as sold, which needs to go through a third party.

Actually, Vox, NBC, Quartz, The Outline, and NYT have started building their own ad creatives in-house, which is an excellent idea because it gives the publisher control of what code runs. This gets straight to what the readers want solved.

They're all technically capable of building their own delivery system too, but I'm not sure what the benefits would be?

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