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Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

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Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#181

Post by uncensored »

downandout wrote: post #36

The article puts a significant emphasis on the idea that bulletproof ad-blocking technology, assuming that's what this turns out to be in practice, will work long-term becuase of legal restrictions imposed by the FTC. If Google, Facebook, or other multi-billion dollar entities detect an existential threat arising from this or any other technology, rest assured that the laws will change as quickly as is necessary to k…

How can anyone prevent me from coding an ML-based ad blocker and releasing it as open source and as something that would install between the broswer and the network?

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#182

Post by x0x0 »

deno wrote: post #140
aub3bhat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisements are a form of free speech. 6 vs 3 Supreme Court " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrell_v._IMS_Health_Inc . "

If ads are protected free speech how are tobacco ads illegal?

Speech is regulated all the time. Free speech in practice means we bias towards permitting speech, but many categories of speech are regulated. To wit: you cannot lie in advertisements, you cannot incite imminent violence, you can be successfully sued for slander and/or libel, etc.

Read the first two paragraphs of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite... ; it also discusses commercial speech.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#183

Post by jbmorgado »

IIIIIIIIIIII wrote: post #29

This is not the end of the arms race. At some point we will have AI designing and AI delivering ads, and while we may have AI designed to prevent us from having to watch ads we don't want we will also have AI that watches everything, gathering and filtering information that is too much for us to handle but tuned to our needs since it's "our AI". Then the race will be that one AI wants to trick the consumer AI into gi…

No you won't because that's ilegal. An advertisement must be clearly understood as such (at least in EU) and in fact (for instance) now the channels in here are actually having to tell you that you are about to see advertisements.

So, no, we won't have AI tuning the advertisements so that they can't be catch by software like this one because that means it also wouldn't be catch by humans and that a very big no.

I can see this as a paradigm change in the internet it's true, and it's hard to see the full reprecursions of this all.

Then again, I think that if we get back to sane advertisements in web pages, that are just a couple of lines of text clearly marked as such (like Google ads used to be), then people would be ok not using an ad blocker in those cases. The thing is, the marketing companies just pushed it too far...

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#184

Post by just2n »

skybrian wrote: post #123
downandout wrote: post #36

The article puts a significant emphasis on the idea that bulletproof ad-blocking technology, assuming that's what this turns out to be in practice, will work long-term becuase of legal restrictions imposed by the FTC. If Google, Facebook, or other multi-billion dollar entities detect an existential threat arising from this or any other technology, rest assured that the laws will change as quickly as is necessary to k…

This is too cynical. You can be sure there will be lobbyists involved making the case for companies affected, but this does not guarantee results . Any business plan where there's government involved is risky. Heck, even with a Republican-controlled Congress, the Republicans can't always get their agenda passed because they don't even agree among themselves what it is. Nobody can rest easy that Congress will do what…

Given how common it is for members of Congress to become mega millionaires over a few decades on a job that pays ~$200k/yr, I wouldn't trust them in this capacity.

How many of us would hold steady in our own ethics and morals if someone routinely offered something like a $2,500,000 payday and we had no risk at all of being fired or jailed?

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#185

Post by CalRobert »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #169
bduerst wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audience isn't obligated to listen, but it's also not entitled to use content in a manner that the copyright holder doesn't want them to either. If a copyright holder (like Forbes) stipulates that their content is paid for using ads and they won't let you consume it without looking at the ads, then you're neither obligated to or entitled to consume it.

Website terms of service are not law, no matter how people have abused the CFAA. You can't control how a browser displays content, whether it does so with a browser, screen reader, or musical interpretive dance. I look forward to seeing that battle play out.

Not to mention this basically makes cURL illegal..

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#186

Post by brianwawok »

oh_sigh wrote: post #173
bduerst wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audience isn't obligated to listen, but it's also not entitled to use content in a manner that the copyright holder doesn't want them to either. If a copyright holder (like Forbes) stipulates that their content is paid for using ads and they won't let you consume it without looking at the ads, then you're neither obligated to or entitled to consume it.

Is it within a musicians rights as a copyright holder of their own work, that you can't play their music on <$1,000 speakers?

If a musician clearly put that on the package of a CD, why not? I dont have a constitutional right to buy an artist's CD.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#187

Post by brianwawok »

derefr wrote: post #129
Chaebixi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure Anti-ad-blocking laws are practically enforceable An anti-ad-blocker ad would probably be easy to enforce: arrest the people making and distributing ad blockers. However, I think the main threat is a repeal of requirements to label ads (which this technology relies on), not to ban ad-blockers outright. I bet that would cause less resistance. Quoth the OP: > Perceptual ad-blocking, on the other hand, ignore…

You assume everyone who writes an ad-blocker lives in the US, or a in country the US has coerced into joining WIPO. If an ad-blocked is written by a Chinese citizen, hosted in a Russian data-center, and attached to an Iranian domain name, what precisely is the US government going to do?

Probably drop a MOAB on the datacenter.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#188

Post by BillinghamJ »

darkstar999 wrote: post #66
mdpopescu wrote: post #37

I think these guys haven't read pg's Submarine [1]. Assuming everything works as they claim (it won't), the ads will just pretend to be articles. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Yeah, can this thing block product placement in youtube videos? Didn't think so.

There are laws about that too, but most YouTubers ignore them unfortunately

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#189

Post by bduerst »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #169
bduerst wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The audience isn't obligated to listen, but it's also not entitled to use content in a manner that the copyright holder doesn't want them to either. If a copyright holder (like Forbes) stipulates that their content is paid for using ads and they won't let you consume it without looking at the ads, then you're neither obligated to or entitled to consume it.

Website terms of service are not law, no matter how people have abused the CFAA. You can't control how a browser displays content, whether it does so with a browser, screen reader, or musical interpretive dance. I look forward to seeing that battle play out.

Lack of means of enforcement doesn't void a copyright.

Forbes in this case seems to be able to control it to a certain degree anyways.

Re: Princeton’s Ad-Blocker May Put an End to the Ad-Blocking Arms Race

#190

Post by bradknowles »

ythn wrote: post #116
mschuster91 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does HN pay the server bills, etc.? I believe it's two relatively simple servers running the Arc code of HN, and Cloudflare as CDN. HN does not need much processing power or bandwidth - 5 assets (cacheable+versioned CSS/JS, three tiny gifs) and thanks to gzip usually two-digit KB sizes of content. The only real expense is the manpower needed for moderation.

> The only real expense is the manpower needed for moderation. dang, who would want to do that as their job?

Punmeister Meisterpunner sees what you did there. ;)
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