Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can't believe you're being serious. OK, let's take it a step further. What about this: in the middle of the book the author says you can't finish reading if you don't stand on your head. Will you do it? Classic reductio ad absurdum. That is not an ad reductio argument in the least. It's a silly condition, but if the author requires it, then you must do it, or you can simply not read the book. What part of basic s…
There is no requirement in social contract that you have to obey anything another person says, just because they said it. On the contrary, social contract has it that whether an exchange is a gift or a business transaction must be defined before the exchange happens.
The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
201–210 of 299 posts
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe fundamentally that any content creator has the right to specify the terms by which their content is consumed. If one of those terms is 'watch the ads', then you are morally obligated to watch the ads. In addition to the counterarguments you've already received, I'd also like to note that the quote above is simply your personal opinion. Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify…
> Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify how their content is consumed, none of which are absolute and most of which vary wildly between different jurisdictions. Not really. What's limited is not content creators ability to specify consumption, but rather the assumption of the ability of the counter-party to understand and agree to the terms. There are some genuine content restrictions,…
First of all, you've completely conflated the distinction between legal and moral obligations. Your entire argument in this post is a legal argument, from which you jump to an entirely unfounded moral assertion. Even if I agreed with your legal argument, which I don't, the moral conclusion would not follow. Since you've offered no moral argument, I'll confine the rest of my response to the legal issues.
Secondly, your legal argument seems specific to the U.S. legal system (for instance, you reference the first sale doctrine, which is specific to U.S. copyright law). In most of the world, I'm happy to note, EULAs are a legal non-starter and TOS are significantly limited by legislation. To give you a concrete and topical example, the GDPR directly invalidates virtually all existing website ToS in the EU (exceptions exist, but are few and far between).
Thirdly, even in the context of the U.S. legal system, which I am not subject to and from which I derive no moral obligation, I believe you're incorrect. The argument you propose is certainly one possible and strong objection to the legal (rather than moral) obligation to view ads, it is by no means the only one. For instance, the absolute majority of the ToS you're defending here do not force visitors to explicitly agree to their terms before proceeding further. This overwhelmingly popular class of ToS was rendered largely unenforcable even in the U.S. by the precedent of Nguyen v. Barnes & Noble, Inc. [1], and the legal argument had nothing to do with the ability of your average web surfer, but rather the lack of constructive notice on the part of the website. We can discuss other precedents if you like, as there are several, but it's clear that contrary to the picture you attempted to present, even in the U.S. legal system it is far from the case that browsing a website implies a contractual relationship with binding terms of service.
If you personally feel a moral obligation to watch ads on websites you visit, that's your business. I don't see any reasonable basis to your attempt to find a legal justification for your position, and you haven't presented any moral argument that didn't directly derive from an incorrect legal position. There are certainly moral arguments you could pursue and, although I haven't yet seen one that was even mildly persuasive, we can have that discussion as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_v._Barnes_%26_Noble,_In....
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Only a few years ago, even people who hated ads saw ad-blocking software as akin to stealing. > I've never felt like I was stealing nor do I know anyone that feels that way. Never understood that concept either. It probably originated with people who were making a quick buck with ads on their sites defending their turf when the winds changed. For a while advertising was like free money, so that's understandable. Th…
People have looked for better business models as long as the internet was around. It always comes back to ads. As it turns out, nobody wants to pay for micro-transactions, and organizations with more then 1 employee can't survive off Patreon. So, you get labour of love bloggers, a handful of donation-funded individuals making youtube videos, and everyone else in an arms race to put as many frigging ads on their sites…
Ad-serving systems clearly involve micro-transactions. With payments as small as $.0001 or less. There's no reason why ad-blocking intermediaries couldn't participate.
I suspect that you're referring to "micro-transactions" via PayPal or whatever, at $1 per article or more. It's not surprising that nobody wants to pay that much.
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're different because in the scarf example, you're expressing the expectation before giving the scarf. In the web example, the expectation is applied retroactively. It's as if you gave me the scarf, no strings attached, and later said "oh, since I gave you that scarf, I also want you to go to the store and pick up some cough medicine for me". On the web, we have a way to handle the exact equivalent to your scenar…
> They're different because in the scarf example, you're expressing the expectation before giving the scarf. In the web example, the expectation is applied retroactively. It's as if you gave me the scarf, no strings attached, and later said "oh, since I gave you that scarf, I also want you to go to the store and pick up some cough medicine for me". I'm glad we've come to agreement, then :). I agree, if the expectatio…
EDIT: maybe not 100% agree, because I'm not confident that "stealing" is the right word. The concept of theft carries extra connotations and constraints with it, and I'm too tired today to go into exploring this. But I definitely agree that if you consented to a contract and then proceeded to break it, then you're both morally in the wrong, and liable for any consequences that can be legally enforced.
Also, out of curiosity, looking at all your comments in this thread - is all this discussion a one big exercise at applying stuff from Scott Alexander's "Varieties of Argumentative Experience"? ;).
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they put up a public sign in front of it that says "come on in and take anything you want" then... kind of. Do you believe that putting up a website is the equivalent of that sign?
Yes. https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-stat... It's hard to describe an HTTP status as anything other than a sign. If it was purely technical, we wouldn't distinguish between 402 (payment required) and 403 (forbidden).[0] While HTTP status codes can be understood by a machine, they're also designed to be highly semantic and understandable by humans. I would argue that the burden is on people who…
I agree that the existence of those status codes does a good job at disambiguating representations of intent regarding payment. However, to my knowledge, there's no status code that means "Ok, as long as you don't use an adblocker". As such, any such provision has to be layered on higher up the stack. The current solution is to put it in the site's terms of service.
That seems pretty equivalent to an HTTP status code, no? I'd argue that you have contracts simply operating at multiple levels here. All an entity ought need to do is clearly communicate the terms of access to their interlocutor. If they have done so, and the client understands the terms, then they should be bound by them if they proceed.
> Edit: Potentially interesting as well is a semi-recent court ruling about web scraping[1], where courts effectively ruled that once LinkedIn made their information public, they couldn't block web scrapers from accessing that information, which suggests that the law also agrees with the web community on this one.
Haha, yes i'm quite familiar with this case, having written a LinkedIn scraper recently. LinkedIn still does not make this particularly easy, despite being compelled to by the courts. The nuances the judge seems to have settled on are a bit interesting. Apparently they're allowed to block access to stuff that requires you to login to see, but not stuff that doesn't.
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans didn't implement physical reality, you have no choice but to live in it. If you use the internet to distribute your content however, you agree to its rules. And unlike physical reality, you may choose another platform to distribute it that conforms to your views. You may say that the internet is the most popular way to distribute content, but it didn't get there by accident.
You believe that protocols ought to represent binding contracts, then? Does that mean that exploiting bugs and stealing people's money is a perfectly legal and justifiable use of the internet?
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whether if it's the contents of a home or the contents of a text file sitting on a web server, if I ask, "can I have the contents of that, please?" and they answer in the affirmative then the answer to your question is, umm, yes? And should I decide to leave items that I don't want, I don't see where the homeowner has reason to complain.
So, you consider a GET request to be the equivalent of an unconditional request for content. That's an interesting perspective. What if the GET request delivers you the terms of a contract, that then requires a POST request containing "agree=yes" to the terms of the initial GET request to obtain the actual content, and the terms of that first stage GET request say "You must not use an ad blocker when viewing the seco…
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. No one owns your attention.
> This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. Indeed this is the question. If you haven't meaningfully entered an agreement, then I don't believe you're obligated to abide this term. However, that's sort of the question. What constitutes entering an agre…
Also, with GDPR, this argument is about to become perilous.
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe fundamentally that any content creator has the right to specify the terms by which their content is consumed. If one of those terms is 'watch the ads', then you are morally obligated to watch the ads. In addition to the counterarguments you've already received, I'd also like to note that the quote above is simply your personal opinion. Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify…
> Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify how their content is consumed, none of which are absolute and most of which vary wildly between different jurisdictions. Not really. What's limited is not content creators ability to specify consumption, but rather the assumption of the ability of the counter-party to understand and agree to the terms. There are some genuine content restrictions,…
You can't use a EULA to extend the term of your copyright. EULAs are quite definitely limited by far more than the "ability of the counter-party to understand and agree to the terms".
Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify how their content is consumed, none of which are absolute and most of which vary wildly between different jurisdictions. Not really. What's limited is not content creators ability to specify consumption, but rather the assumption of the ability of the counter-party to understand and agree to the terms. There are some genuine content restrictions,…
I disagree with you on quite a few different levels and, for clarity, I'll attempt to separate them out in this reply. First of all, you've completely conflated the distinction between legal and moral obligations. Your entire argument in this post is a legal argument, from which you jump to an entirely unfounded moral assertion. Even if I agreed with your legal argument, which I don't, the moral conclusion would not…
> and the legal argument had nothing to do with the ability of your average web surfer, but rather the lack of constructive notice on the part of the website
Indeed, I also do not consider websites without constructive notice to have legally binding terms. I'm referring specifically to cases that do have constructive notice.
> but it's clear that contrary to the picture you attempted to present, even in the U.S. legal system it is far from the case that browsing a website implies a contractual relationship with binding terms of service.
Those terms are limited, but there are terms. That is my point. The existence of such a contract is limited, but not zero.