The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers • Hacker News Board

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#221

Post by shkkmo » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #192

danShumway wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your scarf example, you gave me the scarf after you gave me the terms. Let me flip it on you. Let's say you bake me a cake and give it to me. The following week you say, "Hey, you need to go to the store and pick up some cough medicine for me, because I gave you that cake." If I then refuse, would it be valid for you to claim I stole your cake? In your scarf example, I also probably indicated to you that I would a…

> In your scarf example, you gave me the scarf after you gave me the terms. I didn't intend that interpretation. However, if you believe that's the crux of our disagreement, then we in fact do not disagree. If a site does not make clear its expectations, then there's no theft. If they do, then there is. And certainly you cannot be expected to turn off your adblocker before seeing those terms - that's silly. Uninforme…

You must get somebody to agree to the terms, not just state them.

If you say "I'll give you this scarf if you go to the store for me" and then drape it over my shoulder, I haven't broken any agreement or stolen anything if i walk away. You gave me your scarf without any agreement on my part and will have a hard time enforcing that agreement in court.

Similarly, I suspect that the "by using this site you agree to..." declaration that is widely used has fairly limited legal efficacy precisely due the the lack of explicit agreement.

Even if I do agree to your terms, if I don't go the store it STILL isn't theft. I am merely in breach of contract and you will have to go to court to get them to force me to return the scarf you gave to me.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#222

Post by shkkmo » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:13 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #152

dwaltrip wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't correct. I believe there are extensive restrictions on what type of terms are considered "reasonable", especially between consumers and corporations. Arbitrary contract terms aren't automatically viewed as valid and binding by the courts.

You're correct, and this is the path to the primary legitimate argument against the view that you're morally obligated to view ads. None of the things other people are saying in response to me represent correct understandings of the issue. This is its crux: Can users meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit?

> This is its crux: Can users meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit?

Even if you can show that a user has fully read and understood the terms of an agreement, there are MANY legal restrictions on what these agreements can stipulate and require. These restrictions are NOT based only on a user's ability to "...meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit"

Furthermore, nothing at all of what you have said makes any sort of moral argument. There is nothing immoral about breaking a contract as long as you entered it in good faith.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#223

Post by NegativeLatency » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:14 PM UTC

ch4s3 wrote: post #4

Does anyone know if there are performance penalties associated with using a Raspberry PI as your DNS server? Also, a link[1] to the Pi-Hole page. [1] https://pi-hole.net/

The bandwidth for your DNS traffic is much less the PI's maximum.

You're probably getting a net performance win without all that add data being loaded.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#224

Post by flukus » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #105

annabellish wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>TOS are enforceable to some degree You cannot state "by reading this notice you have accepted our terms and conditions". Maybe - _maybe_ - you could force people to register and explicitly agree to your terms which specify that you may not view the page without also loading the ads, though I think such a clause would be immoral. The ability to control what code executes on one's computer is a fundamental freedom of…

> Maybe - _maybe_ - you could force people to register and explicitly agree to your terms which specify that you may not view the page without also loading the ads, though I think such a clause would be immoral. What moral rule exactly does that contravene? You can simply not load their content. What gives you the right to load their content on terms other than theirs?

> What gives you the right to load their content on terms other than theirs?

They gave me the right. I sent a request for the content, they sent me the content. If they would like to add additional terms then they should do so before they send me the content.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#225

Post by shkkmo » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:18 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #141

ryan-c wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First sale doctrine disagrees with this assertion.

First sale doctrine has nothing to do with this. First sale doctrine applies to resales, not the initial sale.

Nope.

First sale doctrine explicitly limits the restriction that the seller of a copyrightable work can place on the buyer.

It is illegal for you to sell me a book and say "you can't let any of your friends read this copy of this book" because that violates the first sale doctrine.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#226

Post by darawk » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:18 PM UTC

keldaris wrote: post #217

darawk wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you. I'm not making arguments about the behavior of most websites - i'm taking a more abstract perspective. > 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…

Okay, so you agree that in the absolute majority of cases users have no legal obligation whatsoever to watch ads, but you're interested in a hypothetical website that has constructive notice for terms of service that specifically include language which says users must watch ads. All right, let's discuss that. In this case, even though the contract itself is enforcable, it does not necessarily follow that every clause…

> Okay, so you agree that in the absolute majority of cases users have no legal obligation whatsoever to watch ads, but you're interested in a hypothetical website that has constructive notice for terms of service that specifically include language which says users must watch ads. All right, let's discuss that.

I'm not sure exactly how hypothetical it is - I see websites doing this now. But yes, this is what i'm talking about.

> Furthermore, if we lived in the (in my opinion, dystopian) world you envision, what happens if due to, for instance, an ISP routing issue the third party advertisements you've "agreed to" aren't loaded onto your computer? Are you in breach of contract?

I think you can answer this question yourself :). This happens all the time in real world contracts. Some unforeseen, unspecified circumstances crop up, and an arbiter or judge decides whether and to what extent they fall under the existing terms. My personal opinion is that if this happened and it was a condition not explicitly spelled out in the terms, it would not be a breach. Because you basically acted in good faith, and factors beyond your control prohibited you from complying.

> Also, while this is an amusing legal question to ponder, I continue to hold that the finer points of contract law in a particular jurisdiction don't really serve to illuminate any underlying moral questions.

I agree, they don't. I think the basic moral principle is this: You create a thing. You say to the world "Hey world, i'll let you consume my thing, if you do this other thing". The world has the right to say "No thanks, we don't want your thing, because the other thing is too onerous". They do not have the right to say "The other thing is too onerous, but we're going to take your thing anyway, thanks."

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#227

Post by mirimir » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #104

c22 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this point of view. Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser and then didn't buy the newspaper? Would it be different if you did it at a newsstand? At a coffee shop? If I buy a newspaper, read it, and then give it to a friend, would that be a form of theft? Is using a Tivo to prerecord a show then fast-forwarding through…

> Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser and then didn't buy the newspaper? Would it be different if you did it at a newsstand? At a coffee shop? Reading through the glass may be a bit different, because the glass is transparent on purpose to entice you to buy the paper, so they intend for you to do that. That is, it's part of the deal…

> > What about just using the mute button?

> Yes.

Seriously?

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#228

Post by trothamel » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:25 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #200

c22 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that web users with adblockers are rejecting these agreements by refusing to HTTP GET the linked ad content and that the sites are accepting the modified terms if they subsequently serve the requested non-ad content.

Yep, that'd be a reasonable case to make. Although the site could simply augment its terms with "Serving the content any way does not represent a change in terms; proceeding to consume our content remains in violation" to clarify.

While we're into making one-sided arrangements, one could add to the HTTP headers: "Serving this request in any way consents to having the content returned displayed in a matter that is determined by the user-agent and the user. This supersedes any other terms of service that purport to governing the processing of this requerst."

This, at least, has the precedent of accurately describing how websites have been presented since the days of NCSA Mosaic.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure that unread terms presented from either side should have anything to do with it.

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#229

Post by darawk » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #219

darawk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"? ;). Haha, well, I did say this in the discord channel I share with some friends about an hour ago: > whew boys, i'm arguing on like 87 fronts on hn simultaneously > rly stirred up a hornets nest > told them using ad blockers…

Hah :). > And I am also a pretty religious reader of slate star codex :). So am I! > > not even sure if i believe it, but makes for a good tussle So are you now more, or less sure if you believe it?

> So are you now more, or less sure if you believe it?

Haha well....I'm not sure i'm any closer to an answer, other than of course that the label 'theft' is slippery and labeling something "theft" or "not theft" is kind of meaningless [0] (except insofar as the whole prison thing is concerned - it's kind of meaningful there). It is theft in the sense that something has been taken from someone under conditions other than those they specified. It is not theft in the sense that maybe they didn't really specify it clearly, or maybe society has decided to limit the media within which such terms may be specified? But why did we decide to do that? It all seems a little arbitrary, and really kind of boils down to the way certain mediums make people "feel". People (myself included) "feel" like digitally copying something is not the same as taking a physical object. Partly maybe because digital goods are non-rivalrous? I'm not sure.

There is actually a physical world example of this exact sort of thing: time share presentations. They often will give you some reward like a trip for sitting through their presentation. The dynamics are a little different, because you can't get the reward without sitting through the presentation. But what's really going on there? Is it the physical gating mechanism that gives it moral force? If they said "On the honor system, don't take any free meal coupons unless you watch the whole presentation", does that change the moral dynamics of the situation? I think the answer is probably no, but i'll tell you that it makes me personally a whole lot more likely to skip the presentation :p.

[0] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-mad...

Re: The Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers

#230

Post by shkkmo » Thu, May 10, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #186

TeMPOraL wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, the only implicit conditions on the Web are those of networking protocols - which work in the following way: I can request whatever I want. You can do whatever you want with my request - namely serve it (e.g. HTTP 200 + data), refuse to serve it (e.g. HTTP 4xx / 5xx), or ignore it (just terminate the TCP connection, or not accept it in the first place). Whatever you choose, our interaction ends there . Whatever…

> Anything beyond that is defined by laws, and there are no laws that tell me I have to use a Typical Browser in a Typical Configuration to render all the data you sent me with a HTTP 200 response. There are no such laws, and there can't be, because they would be completely ridiculous. Not true. There exists a thing called contracts. Contracts allow two (or more!) parties to come to complex agreements about the manne…

>Not true. There exists a thing called contracts. Contracts allow two (or more!) parties to come to complex agreements about the manner and conduct of transactions.

Um... it was completely true.

1) Contracts are not laws, they are agreements that have some ability be enforced by our legal system.

2) The are strong legal limitations (by actual laws) on what restrictions contracts can impose on "the manner and mode of consumption, use, or disposition of goods and services"

3) There is no debate as to whether web users can meaningfully agree to such contracts. If the terms of the contract are illegal, then the contract is invalid. A recent example is the FCC's recent statement about warranty stickers. There is debate as to what degree the common trope "check here to agree to our ToS" actually constitutes agreement to a contract.

4) You seem to have backed yourself into a corner where websites must explicitly get you to agree to now block their ads before showing you content. This still isn't stealing, but it may be a breach of contract. Now do you have any examples of websites that are doing this? Or has your entire point been to acuse 0 people of breaching 0 contracts?