151–160 of 211 posts
> It's important to note that blocking ads is NOT theft. Don't fall for this creepy idea, which is the criminalisation of the inalienable right to privacy. This is something I've never actually focused on but it's wild the amount of people I've installed AdBlock and ublock for who think it's something nefarious.
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This stance is absurd. It's your device, you choose what content you want to consume on it. Do you imagine a world where you buy a monitor and once every hour it shows you fullscreen ads from the device manufacturer without your consent? Maybe you do, but for everyone else that's a dystopia.
Visiting sites consume resources. If you walk into a store and take a gift card you're still consuming resources meant to be paid for, even if they're mostly digital resources. Regardless of the car or shoes you used to do it. I don't welcome a world of paid products that also include ads. Yet ads do make some paid products cheaper, like say a Kindle or a TV. Folks blocking ads from a premium product probably have a…
Not our problem. They're the ones sending free web pages to any client who requests. Their servers are free to return 402 Payment Required if they require payment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Visiting sites consume resources. Less if you block their ads and JS.
but are ads actually served using resources of the site? i just assumed that the ad was served from the ad provider. the only resources used of the site was the initial JS code. redirecting through the host seems very inefficient.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is clearly not true; Wikipedia isn't ad supported and is incredibly successful and prolific. You can use educational tools like WolframAlpha freely and pay (using a normal subscription model) for its more advanced features, no advertising required. KhanAcademy is completely free (yes I know they host many of their videos on YouTube; that's a minority of the content on KA these days and I suspect would be a relat…
Wikipedia has a somewhat unique architecture in that it's mostly text and most of that text can be cached. This is also true about blogs and sites like HN and Stackoverflow, but not social media sites, search engines, messaging services, video and image hosting sites etc. Most Wikipedia visitors use an ad-supported search engine to find articles. All that Wikipedia itself needs to do is to find the URL in their cache…
Taylor Swift could publish an RSS feed, or pay Twitter since it's basically a marketing channel for her. Messaging apps could have been p2p (and maybe ISPs would've had a reason to get ipv6 working since otherwise you'd hear "IM doesn't work on Cox" etc. Or maybe ISPs could provide federated chat gateways like they did with email). ISPs might bundle hosting (they used to), or Microsoft would have had a reason to have built Personal Web Server into something everyone uses today. Maybe people would share viral videos they liked on something like gnutella using magnet links from forums.
It might not work for companies trying to corral the entire world onto their platform, but maybe that model isn't very good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sites don't require advertisements around links to their sites. Once you follow a link (scent) to the destination that is when advertisements are shown in exchange for allowing you to access something of value. >Once you have served it to me, you don't get to dictate how I use it. If you do not have a license to modify the site that is copyright infringement.
> If you do not have a license to modify the site that is copyright infringement. It is fair use. If I buy a physical copy of a poster, and draw on it before I hang it on my wall, it's fair use. If I buy a CD and it includes an instrumental version of a track and I badly sing to it, it's fair use. If I buy a designer brand table and decide it's too tall, I can saw off 5cm from its legs, and it's fair use. If I downlo…
It's not necessarily fair use.
>If I buy a CD and it includes an instrumental version of a track and I badly sing to it, it's fair use.
Unless the venue you are at has paid for the performance rights of that song that is copyright infringement.
>If I buy a designer brand table and decide it's too tall, I can saw off 5cm from its legs, and it's fair use.
It's not necessarily fair use.
>If I download a freely distributed document from the Internet, to display on my computer's screen, and decide not to look at a part of it - it is fair use.
Considering removing ads hurts monetarily I definitely don't think it could be fair use.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sites don't require advertisements around links to their sites. Once you follow a link (scent) to the destination that is when advertisements are shown in exchange for allowing you to access something of value. >Once you have served it to me, you don't get to dictate how I use it. If you do not have a license to modify the site that is copyright infringement.
For personal consumption? I modify the ebooks I read, changing the font and other formatting, reducing the size of images or removing them entirely, and removing advert pages (sometimes, not compulsively). I do this for my own readability preferences (I don't have a formalized disability, just preferences at this point). As I am not reselling the artist's work, I consider this fair use. To what degree am I wrong?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get where you're coming from. The free content is possible because of the advertisements, and you are sort of consenting to the ads when you choose to visit the site. It's not an explicit agreement but it is at least an understanding of what lets the wheels keep turning. However, when ads are so obtrusive that they slow down my computer or ruin the use of the site completely, or if they have malware payloads (does…
If we collectively boycotted the sites that allow such garbage then they would serve less obtrusive ads. To consume the content without even considering ads makes it unethical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
props to founders & gov of France that has special funding for such institutions.
Except if you look at their financials they are paying a huge tax being a French company. Their resources would go further if they left.
No, because they would have to pay on the open market for the things those taxes provide for. The tax they’re paying is insignificant compared to their costs.
You’ll note their developer costs are a fraction of what they would be in the US.