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Ad blocking is under attack

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Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#171

Post by sillysaurus3 »

tyingq wrote: post #154
chii wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a url isn't and can't be IP - otherwise, how would anyone go to any website without violating copyright?

That's what I'm getting at. The DMCA complaint should have been rejected. It wasn't because the people filtering the incoming requests are using a simple high pass filter of "is this text on this page". So, if you encode the data, you remove the ability to use the DMCA inappropriately.

There are two aspects to your question which are tangled together.

1. Can IP be encoded as a way of dodging the DMCA? a: no.

2. Will encoding the source material allow you to dodge DMCA trolls?

I think the answer is again no. The tradeoff in complexity isn't worth the marginal gains. Imagine not being able to browse the code on github, for example, since it's encoded.

A better response is to fight. If the DMCA has been abused, it's up to us to meet each claim with energy and on the same battlefield. It's tiring work, but this is the compromise America has reached circa 2017.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#172

Post by falcolas »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #41
dhimes wrote: post #10

Is it illegal to claim something under DMCA when it does not in fact represent a DMCA claim?

Yes, but: A. Nobody - NOBODY - is ever punished for violating. B. The folks in question here think they have a colorable argument for why it really is DMCA. As linked from the OP, this is here [1]. (FWIW, I think it's silly) [1] http://blockadblock.com/adblocking/is-adblock-plus-violating...

Nobody is punished because the DMCA claim/counterclaim process gives them a chance to back out of the claim before it goes to court. And the word is that if it does go to court, proving that they willfully and intentionally misrepresented their ownership of the material under question is a very high bar; it would probably require some internal memo with content approximating "We know we don't own X but let's issue a DMCA against Y for hosting X anyways."

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#173

Post by silverwind »

falcolas wrote: post #151
superflyguy wrote: post #27

Store a hash of the URLs instead of the URLs themselves.

URLs are matched via a regex or wildcard type syntax, to eliminate files served out of /ad/ paths (yes, people still do this). This makes hashes somewhat less useful. And a distinct hash of a URL could likely be considered to be the URL itself for the purposes of a legal action.

Regexp could still work by only hashing the domain name and keeping the regexp separate.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#174

Post by 659087 »

exabrial wrote: post #44
nilved wrote: post #3

The DMCA only applies to the US. Fork the repo and move on. It's time to forget about American hosting.

Sad but true :( If we could only remove the logjam in congress right now to get some real work done... currently the two parties are deadlocked in a power struggle and have completely forgotten why they're there.

They never forgot why they were there, it's just that the reason (self enrichment, both financially and in terms of power) isn't the one US citizens believe it's supposed to be.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#175

Post by daenney »

skymt wrote: post #82
gremlinsinc wrote: post #13

Wonder if we could create a git in the blockchain... where DMCA just can't exist/happen since there's no central authority to ask to take stuff down...

Copyright law doesn't care what technology you use to store and distribute material. If you have a blockchain that contains unauthorized copyrighted material, any host participating in that network would be legally subject to DMCA requests by the copyright holder. What would the defense look like in court, anyway? "We can't stop illegally distributing the plaintiff's content because that would break the chain?" In ef…

How would that work though? DMCA only applies to the US, so with a global network how would the DMCA be effective? Even if every node in the network in the US removes it, all you might achieve is break the chain. The content will still be there.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#177

Post by op00to »

> That domain is part of the DMCA copyright access control platform Admiral provides publishers so they can engage visitors in a transparent way on the value exchange for their copyrighted content, instead of resorting to surprise ad reinsertion the way some of our competitors advocate but visitors and advertisers dislike.

Does anyone actually understand what this garbage paragraph is actually saying? It stinks of corporate-esque bullshit to me.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#178

Post by danarmak »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #170
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

It was admiral that did this: https://blog.getadmiral.com/dmca-easylist-adblock-copyright-... They even clearly state they used the only tool available to them, DCMA. From all the current summaries on this, DMCA does not apply to a line entry in easylist. A domain can be trademarked. This should be added back in. And if github cannot standup to DMCA abuse, then well, easylist and all other developers should be giving…

DMCA is not the appropriate tool for this. Filing a DMCA takedown notice when you know that there is not any copyright infringement going on in the document you are asking to be taken down is a misuse of the DMCA, and an entity filing such a takedown can be liable for any monetary damages or attorney fess of the other party. Although I don't know that's ever happened, it's in the law as a penalty for intentional misu…

The DMCA doesn't just let you request the takedown of copyrighted content. It lets you request the takedown of tools which can be used to "circumvent technological restrictions" on accessing other, unrelated copyrighted content.

So for instance, when the CSS encryption on DVDs was broken, there were DMCA takedown requests issued to sites hosting the deCSS decryption code, even though the copyright of that code itself wasn't at issue.

ETA: a comment below corrects me, saying that the DMCA prohibits distribution of circumvention tools (i.e. makes it illegal and even criminal I think), but doesn't allow takedown notices for such tools: you have to actually sue them in court. So this takedown notice seems to have been incorrect even if the DMCA is invoked.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#179

Post by turc1656 »

xigency wrote: post #54
richardknop wrote: post #4

There has been a growing trend of websites that will ask me to either: a) whitelist their site in my adblocker b) or subscribe to their monthly subscription and keep reading their site with adblocker

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this alternative: disable JavaScript. It's fairly easy in any browser to create a list of websites to ignore JavaScript on.

Yep. I do it in a slightly different way. I have uMatrix installed as a browser add-on to help control for privacy, fingerprinting, security etc. But it can also be used for stuff like this. Simply disabling scripts on many sites' root domain and hitting refresh solves paywalls and adblock prevention on a fair amount of sites. For others it obviously doesn't work and nothing will load, but it works on more than you may expect.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#180

Post by [deleted] »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #170
anilgulecha wrote: post #32

It was admiral that did this: https://blog.getadmiral.com/dmca-easylist-adblock-copyright-... They even clearly state they used the only tool available to them, DCMA. From all the current summaries on this, DMCA does not apply to a line entry in easylist. A domain can be trademarked. This should be added back in. And if github cannot standup to DMCA abuse, then well, easylist and all other developers should be giving…

DMCA is not the appropriate tool for this. Filing a DMCA takedown notice when you know that there is not any copyright infringement going on in the document you are asking to be taken down is a misuse of the DMCA, and an entity filing such a takedown can be liable for any monetary damages or attorney fess of the other party. Although I don't know that's ever happened, it's in the law as a penalty for intentional misu…

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