Well, I just blocked functionalclam.com in my OS hosts file, try to DMCA that
Ad blocking is under attack
261–270 of 598 posts
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#262There 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 think it's fair game to say "Our newspaper pays for quality journalists to do quality journalism, please consider subscribing or not using an adblocker on our site". I prefer this to the WaPo model of paywalling or having a limited number of articles. I do object to the Bloomberg model though, where they say "We notice you're using an ad blocker, which may adversely affect the performance and content on Bloomberg.c…
> Please ask nicely,
Asking nicely doesn't work.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#263I have a very unpopular opinion that pulls me in two directions. Advertisements have exceeded the point of being a nuisance for many years. But adblocking is a fight that solves symptoms and will affect more than just advertising in a negative way. The best parallel I can draw is to the Napster era when pirating music cut off the head of the chicken in the industry. Hollywood and like were refusing to adjust to digit…
> The best parallel I can draw is to the Napster era when pirating music cut off the head of the chicken in the industry.
I don't think this comparison holds up. Napster was a peer to peer network where publishers of the works being downloaded had no control over who was able to download what. By contrast, web publishers have extraordinarily fine grained control over distribution of their works.
For example, when I connect to nytimes.com to read some news, I politely ask the nytimes.com servers for access by saying:
GET /some/article HTTP/1.1
If publishers are upset about people reading their content without displaying ads, maybe they should stop giving it all away for free.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#264I didn't get what the hell happened. So, Admiral—an anti-adblocker company—contacted EasyList and told them to remove a domain from their list. This domain was a server they needed for their anti-adblocker platform to work. EasyList told Admiral that they would only do it if GitHub agreed, so Admiral contacted GitHub and the domain was removed from the EasyList list after GitHub told EasyList they should comply. The…
> EasyList told Admiral that they would only do it if GitHub agreed
I don't understand. Why would GitHub have to "agree" that EasyList removes a domain from their own list (for whatever reason)?
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#265>"However, further research showed that this domain hosts the code of an anti-adblocking startup Admiral"
Who goes to work for an anti ad blocking startup? What is their mission statement "to make the web a more intrusive place"?
I am OK with Ads and understand their purpose in the business model. The reason I use and ad blocker is because of how intrusive they are to consuming actual content. You can subscribe yes but you will still get intrusive ads:
http://www.kirkville.com/i-pay-for-news-why-do-i-still-see-a...
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#266It 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…
This might create a new front in the war against ads. You'll have ad blockers, then they'll build in a component to block anti-adblock mechanisms, which will force the ad makers to employ more countermeasures... I don't see how the content providers will ever win this war. They have more to lose here.
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Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#267Everyone should contact their investors. "Your portfolio company @getadmiral is committing fraud by filing false DMCA requests. Can you fix this?" Birchmere Ventures Florida Gulfshore Capital Florida Institute for the Commercialization of Public Research Mosley Ventures New World Angels https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/admiral-2#/entity If they are made aware a portfolio company is committing fraud, hopefully…
I'm not convinced people that do this wouldn't be making an arse out of themselves. No lawyers have appeared in here to say that anything fraudulent has happened. The DMCA does prohibit dissemination of any software whose purpose is to circumvent technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. If the domain we're talking about is key to such technical measures, then distributing software that blocks it may in fact be illegal under the DMCA, and sending a DMCA notice to take it down ordinary and allowed. "New World Angels" have no power to overturn the law of the land, especially one which is implementation of a broad international treaty.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#268The DMCA only applies to the US. Fork the repo and move on. It's time to forget about American hosting.
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Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no way that affiliate links can pay the bills for publishers; numbers don't ad up (otherwise everyone would do it, and no one does -- well, actually, there's extremely limited situations where it works in some consumer corners, but those situations are limited and the total amount of revenue is also very limited). And how much extra traffic are you really going to refer? Ads are sold on the thousand -- $X per…
But they would not make any money via ads from me anyways. I never click ads unless I do it accidentally by mis-clicking. So even with disabled adblocker I'd just lower their CPC (cost per click). So it costs them nothing to let me read their website with adblocker and there a tiny possible upside from me referring more traffic to them. Either way I assume people like me are a fast growing part of millennial populati…
Ads are far more influential than you think, clicking on them is not the only they care about nor the only way they are paid.
Also the ad business is not going anywhere, the tech will evolve and you'll start seeing more native advertising and sponsored content.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#270If in the future I am forced to view ads, I won't click on them and I won't buy any products advertised via forced ads.
If I see an ad, I click it. In fact, I right-click it and click the button for my shitty addon "thousand-click".
Then my raspberry pi loads that ad in a headless firefox and clicks it thousands of times.
You won't believe how soon you stop getting ads, and instead just empty iframes, or warnings from Google that you're abusing their ads. Well, their problem.
Luckily, there's now an addon that does this fully automatically: AdNauseam.
Fully automated ad abuse, and ensures that if enough people use it, online advertising will die within of weeks.