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Ad blocking is under attack

blog.adguard.com

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Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#591

Post by jimktrains2 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #584
jimktrains2 wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box The issues is that there is normally a expectation of paying for things like produce. Unless there was explicitly a "Free Produce" sign, I would expect to have to pay. There is no expectation that you need to pay for the data sent to you later; if payment is required for access, you're told so and need to provid…

Because what a court does isn't always logical or even reasonable. Especially on IP stuff, especially on IP stuff involving software. Did you pay attention to Oracle v. Google?

So far in the Oracle v Google case it's been ruled that apis are covered under copyright, but that implementing them from scratch is covered by fair use. I mean, that's not wholly unreasonable.

Oracle has appealed, would we'll see what happens.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#592

Post by l1feh4ck »

vinylkey wrote: post #145
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…

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…

>ads themselves could be the “copyrighted content” in question

Ok. We do not want to copy your add. We just want to get rid of those by putting them in a filter. How on earth this can come under DMCA?

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#593

Post by jerf »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #458
jerf wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I added after you replied, I agree that this is an improper use of the takedown procedures. However, your reward for successfully armchair-lawyering that may be a full-on Federal lawsuit. Also, I agree that Easylist itself may still not be a lawsuit target. It simply makes a claim about a certain domain, it doesn't do any access circumvention itself based on that claim. But if Easylist isn't, the ad blockers using…

I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to. I can't be sued for not watching commercials. Actively circumventing access restrictions is another issue entirely, but if I'm sent data, there is no reason or guarantee it must be displayed as intended. What about blind folk, or those who don't run JavaScript? Is turning off j…

"I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to."

This is an assertion that is commonly made on the internet, but I see no reason to believe it carries any legal force, or even necessarily any moral force. In fact it's not that hard to read it as an argument made solely to come to the desired predetermined conclusion rather than any sort of principled argument. It implies that the sender loses all rights to anything they send to you, which is definitely legally untrue; I gave examples above already.

Also, if you win on this point, you will not experience a glorious utopia in which ad blocking is OK and you can save whatever streams you want and so on... you'll experience a world in which all this content gets removed from the web and locked behind even more proprietary clients that will come with what the publishers want. What may seem to you to be a simple bugbite back in favor of what you believe your rights to be may cause a much larger allergic response than you'd anticipate.

"I can't be sued for not watching commercials."

You haven't signed a contract saying you will. That may not be the case online.

The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion. However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up. There's too many rights and rights-holders that won't stand for it, and even if you did somehow win that case, they'll simply retreat and retrench in whatever it takes to recover those rights for themselves. If you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything."

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#594

Post by ionised »

digital_trench wrote: post #99
zb3 wrote: post #60

If 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.

But the ad will leave residue on your brain. So you are still being advertised to.

Then perhaps like me, that ad will mean he actively avoids that product and brand out of ad-fatigue and simple spite rather than the intended effect, which is to attract people to them.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#595

Post by emh68 »

How to really fix this: make an extension that detects when a request is made to a domain owned by these scumbags and pop up a warning message, allowing the user to make the right decision and close the tab and go elsewhere.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#596

Post by earenndil »

danarmak wrote: post #149
nkkollaw wrote: post #101

I 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…

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…

Ahhhhh. PERFECT. It looks like the counterargument here is that easylist itself isn't used to circumvent admiral, it's only a list. Other things, like ublock, are the ones that use the list, and are actually blocking admiral.

Re: Ad blocking is under attack

#598

Post by jimktrains2 »

jerf wrote: post #593
jimktrains2 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to. I can't be sued for not watching commercials. Actively circumventing access restrictions is another issue entirely, but if I'm sent data, there is no reason or guarantee it must be displayed as intended. What about blind folk, or those who don't run JavaScript? Is turning off j…

"I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to." This is an assertion that is commonly made on the internet, but I see no reason to believe it carries any legal force, or even necessarily any moral force. In fact it's not that hard to read it as an argument made solely to come to the desired predetermined conclusion rather…

> The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion.

But you can't accept a contract just by visiting the site. Especially since the in the same action as becoming aware of the exist of the contract also makes you breach the contract.

> However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up.

Why? This has always been the purpose of the user agent and it's difficult to impossible to actually make sure things will always look the same in all browsers. Could viewing a site in FireFox or Edge become illegal? Again, how would I know that _before_ taking the action. What about systems such as links2, w3m, elinks, and lynx?

> f you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything."

Which terms? The UA has always been the agent of the user, not the site whose content is being displayed.

I just find it very difficult to believe that the court will accept that I've broken a "contract" I can't know exists without breaking it.

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