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Ad blocking is under attack

blog.adguard.com

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Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#411

Post by nkrisc »

nicc wrote: post #155
danarmak wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIUC, the DMCA says that if there's some technological mechanism X that's used to enforce copyright, and a tool Y that is (or can be) used to circumvent X, then making or distributing Y is itself illegal (as opposed to the act of using Y to circumvent X, which is already illegal even without the DMCA). The DMCA then provides a notice-based method for 'taking down' online copies of Y. In this case, X is the Admiral te…

Thanks, I understand better now. If Admiral enables paywalls, then I kind of agree with Admiral. If companies want to put paywalls, circumventing them is kind of like jumping the gate to see a concert for free. I always hit the back button, but publishers should be free to put up paywalls (no idea why they don't do it server-side, but that's another story). So, I guess the article or at least the title are a little s…

They shouldn't send the content before they check if the user has paid to view it. Otherwise if they send the content to anyone who requests they can't complain when I choose what does and doesn't run on my computer.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#412

Post by mikeash »

allemagne wrote: post #400
mikeash wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most legislation needs 60 votes to pass the Senate, which means you need at least 8 Democrats (counting the two independents with them). Legislation which Republicans can pass by themselves is the exception, not the rule. One of the problems they had with their health care bill was that it had to fit into the narrow budget reconciliation rules so that they could pass it with a simple majority.

Yes, a hurdle that Republicans already jumped over for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and don't need a single Democratic vote to do so again.

Confirmations are quite different from legislation. Most confirmations had already been reduced to only requiring a simple majority. Supreme Court was the only remaining position for which a confirmation still required 60 votes.

There doesn't appear to be any movement toward changing the rules for legislation. If they were willing to do that, they wouldn't have tried so hard to squeeze the AHCA under the budget reconciliation umbrella.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#413

Post by blurbleblurble »

Gracana wrote: post #247
jxramos wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if folks could get sneaky and change the design from a literal url to a regular expression tailored to single out that url but would also include additional sites that are just gibberish and could be relaxed if useful sites ever do fall into the URL overlap. This might be a new line of research to craft regExs to filter out a specific string while also throwing out a bunch of sister gibberish strings that wo…

I'd rather just go a level up... You don't want users to tamper with your ads? Ok, we'll block your entire site. No tampering.

I've done this with FB.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#415

Post by default-kramer »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #309

From Admiral's responding blogpost: > 5. We asked them 24 days ago to remove functionalclam[.]com on the original commit. > Transparent engagement between publishers and visitors is a critical piece of that. Umm, no? Admiral created an account that they hoped would be mistaken as an official github bot or something. And then, instead of asking, they threatened disruption of the repository. So, in summary, they: * Tri…

Also

> 3. Circumventing a publisher’s paywall or copyright access control technology is not OK

Would any technologist who doesn't work for Admiral consider javascript a "copyright access control technology"? (I'm assuming their product is javascript.)

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#417

Post by politician »

Admiral's product is so poorly designed that it requires cooperation from the browser to work? That violates rule #1 of client/server programming: never trust the client. Instead, they have to abuse the DMCA to cover for their uninformed engineering choices.

This is despicable.

"Here hold this copyrighted content in memory for me, but don't make any other copies of it because, uh, you don't have the license to make copies of it. Except for, uh, the one that we sent you? To hold in memory? Look, computers are magic.

Nevermind. DMCA!"

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#418

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

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…

Even if we take for granted the absurd premise that this is "copy protection circumvention", it's still nonsense for the same reason that gun manufacturers aren't sued for murders.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#419

Post by justinmayer »

Hoshea wrote: post #272
vinylkey wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in that blog post, they state: "We asked them 24 days ago to remove functionalclam[.]com on the original commit." Their request is here: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1ba8d4afeec6d562... And was made by this account: https://github.com/dmcahelper So, they made a github account the same day they made the "request" with an account that in no way indicates where the request is coming from? The github p…

It may not be a bad idea to report this user via GitHub's "block or report" feature when viewing that account: https://github.com/dmcahelper That type of behavior can only be bad for open source software. Threats like "to minimize file and repository impacts" are going to push more folks toward private repositories if they don't understand that it's not an actual authority pressing them into making changes on a given…

Agreed. I just reported that account (https://github.com/dmcahelper) for submitting spurious DMCA takedown requests. GitHub personnel responded promptly:

  Hi Justin,
  
  Thanks for writing in. We're looking at the account.
  
  All best,
  
  (GitHub employee name redacted)
GitHub is listening. Please consider reporting this account, which can be done via the link above. Look for Block or report user link under the user description at left.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#420

Post by allemagne »

sorokod wrote: post #402
allemagne wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans control congress and the presidency. With some exceptions, Republicans don't need a single Democratic vote to pass legislation.

Don't think it's accurate to say that the Republicans (or indeed anyone else) controls the presidency

Well, the President is the member of the Republicans that is meant to control the presidency. If that Republican cannot control himself then I don't think the rest of the Republicans would have any Democratic obstruction to worry about if they wanted to replace him with someone who does.
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