I say don't just move it out of Github - move the list to a blockchain. It's the obvious solution.
Ad blocking is under attack
561–570 of 598 posts
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
ah, but you might be. This gets into a crazy area where we're talking about some entity offering up information via HTTP and you choosing how to represent that data. You could use Lynx, Firefox, Chrome, IE or even just browse everything with Python/BeautifulSoup in a console. Does the provider get to chose how you represent that data? Well it turns out they kinda do. Sites have terms of service people supposedly agre…
Worse. A world where companies just take their stuff off the web and require you use their apps for everything. Much fewer legal questions there.
That is not a problem because there will be competitors without this requirement. The problem is laws that are not well balanced and are biased towards interests of one party.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A... It most certainly does apply to anti-circumvention in many cases.
I don't understand how your comment is a response to mine. Could you please clarify? The DMCA is a set of laws. The DMCA takedown procedure is a part of those laws, defined in a fairly rigid way: it has specific notification requirements, timeframes, and is clearly defined to only apply to copyright infringement. Just because the DMCA also prohibits circumvention, it doesn't automatically follow that circumvention is…
But nothing prevents Admiral from notifying Github about a DMCA violation informally and Github removing the code.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can block anything I like. And I can do whatever I like to help others do that. And I'll make sure that nobody can stop me, or them, or threaten me about it.
Well, if you do not live in the DMCA country then you are correct.
I make sure that nobody knows who I am, or where I live in meatspace.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box. Except the honesty box isn't visible on the way in, it's located on the back of the enter sign so you only see it on the way out, and the driveway is so long that surely you've already started munching on the fruit while starting to leave. Since I'm still on a food kick the whole expectation-of-paying thing is st…
I seem to have hit the max reply depth, so sibling posts will have to do. > disable JS and images > They're all the same thing. I'm deciding how I want to consume content; I'm not circumventing a access control mechanism. I guess the difference I am trying to highlight is: * a lack of ads for hard technical and/or compatibility reasons (JS not enabled, images not enabled, graphics subsystems not existing, not having…
Hn removes the reply for an increasing amount of time per level, I think.
But it's not "screw you" it's "I don't want to waste the bandwidth I pay for and am metered on with things I don't want to download and could potentially harm my computer". Viewing those ads costs me money as well, money which isn't going to the person serving the ads, not to mention the risk of malware.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like NPR's approach to broadcast ads: their own commentators read a short little script, rather than playing an audio clip that was provided to them. There are various ways this can and has been applied to Internet ads, like making them text-only. On the other side of things, I would love to see a search engine that pushes sites down in its rankings proportionally to the obnoxiousness of their ads.
"I like NPR's approach to broadcast ads: their own commentators read a short little script" This is not always true - for instance, the "brought to you by" slots at the beginning of the PBS Newshour are advertiser-supplied audio clips.
but NPR and PBS are not the same thing.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, why not circumvent the "argue in front of a judge" aspect? Instead of a list hosted on GitHub, put it on some server that's very hard to take down, leased anonymously. You could get EasyList, and then add back whatever's been removed. And make sure that no logs are retained concerning user input.
Because that means you have lost and agree that you don't have a right to block ads.
You have it backwards. Being able to do it freely means that I have the right.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> That type of behavior can only be bad for open source software. Using github is bad for FLOSS.
How so?
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#569Earlier 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…
Why is it that the tech set always forgets that CS pedantry != legal pedantry? Have we forgotten about intent? You can't just change the line to a regex that /just happens/ to match that URL and go "neener neener neener it's not the same!" Are you willing to argue in court that that line was changed and it /just so happened/ to match the domain from before? Do you have a plausible explanation for why that change woul…
Not looking up a domain name cannot constitute circumvention.
Imagine a DVDCSS-like system that used remote servers to convey permission and defaulted to ALLOW. Would users who unplugged their DVD players from the Internet be guilty of circumvention? Now imagine that DVDs for said player were handed out freely on the street, stuffed into people's mailboxes, etc. Would people who played those DVDs without connecting their players to the Internet be guilty of circumvention?
That's the same thing, in principle, that's going on here. Claiming that it's circumvention (whoever makes that claim; I don't know if you are) is preposterous. This is obviously an abuse of the DMCA (not hard to do, considering the DMCA itself is an abuse, but I digress).
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about using ROT13 encryption for the list and then go after them if they circumvent your content protection scheme.
That's a funny thought, but the company making the complaint could probably prove that the ad blocker was interfering with their ads even without looking at the source code. Moreover, the DMCA covers unauthorised access to copyrighted content, and the ad blocker cannot claim ownership of the ROT13'ed domain name, just as the domain name itself is not copyrightable. In theory the ad blocker could use a more complicate…
This is a crucial point: the software is not blocking their ads, neither are the software's authors--the users of the software are. And the users have every right to not connect their computers to any other computer they please.
It's interesting to compare this to Second Amendment arguments. Do ad blockers block ads, or do users? Do users have a right to keep and bear ad blockers? Of course it's silly, and ad blockers are passive tools, but there are some striking parallels.