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YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

tomshardware.com

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#61

Why do you pretend that you are entitled to free video storage and bandwidth from YouTube? You haven't been sleighted. That service costs money to provide. No, you don't have a right to free service either. Do you pay your other bills while you demand free rendered services from these companies? Having a disability or similar does not entitle you to an unsubsidized Times Square with no ads. (NASA is running their own…

> Why do you pretend that you are entitled to free video storage and bandwidth from YouTube? You haven't been sleighted. That service costs money to provide. Because Google has been monopolistic in their strategy to become the no.1 video platform and crushed alternatives. This behaviour comes at a cost, pushing alternatives and now forcing adverts on everyone? I can't do much to stop their monopolistic behavior but I…

The same guys who put patent-free video in everyone's browser have been "monopolistic"? Anyone can run a site like YouTube, Google isn't stopping them, and some people do. It's hard to compete with YT because they have built an enormous product at vast expense. To call it monopolistic you basically have to describe any kind of cross-subsidization as monopolistic.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#62
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sometimes legislation can end up with regulatory capture. If the govt reaches some sort of agreement with tech companies that results in some things (that we can already block) becoming illegal to display on their end, but other things now becoming illegal to block, that would be a worse result than the govt just doing nothing. Historically, when the govt gets involved, this is the result. Back when cable TV…

Regulatory capture sounds like a criminal activity to me. I'm concerned with the mindet that we shouldn't punish criminal activity because the response from the criminals may be more criminal activity. I think that if we put criminals in jail they will have less opporunity to commit crime, both while they're in jail, and afterwards when they are released and still have a criminal record. Criminals should go to jail f…

Currently they have not broken any laws while detecting ad blockers, besides what some guy declared. And historically, laws in this area have not been favorable to consumers.

As far as data protection laws go, those could always be stricter and are a much better area of focus.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#63
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seek ways to support the creators, not the platform. Videos that take a shitton of time and resources to make and are actually useful information-dense content don’t usually get enough viewers to pay for themselves with ads — their audience is way too small by definition — but some stupid low-effort viral shit that gets viewed by billions does.

> Seek ways to support the creators, not the platform. And where exactly will these creators publish their content if not on a platform? YouTube solves their techology problem, delivery problem, storage problem, costs problem for all the previous things and gets them access to advertisers that pay for their content and handles payments across the world for them. (Patreon is a platform too, which also works on handlin…

I agree, however AWS bandwidth fees are the biggest corporate scam of the decade

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#64
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't tell myself that I have a right to free stuff. Then it isn't free? Google have no right to make us watch ads either. IP laws protecting their profit is preventing youtube-dl like alternative hosting, since Google got the IP rights for the video. And the network effect is keeping creators trapped in their playground.

youtube-dl isn't hosting. It's like the opposite of hosting.

I meant some scraper using it to cache videos for its users. Sorry wasn't clear enough.

But you could also do private caching for a solo user.

Like the VCRs of old people used to skip ads. And later the hard drive equiped variants.

Hopefully someone will make such a service for YouTube if they block adblockers. Worst case, run YouTube in Chrome in a VM and record the screen.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#65

Why do you pretend that you are entitled to free video storage and bandwidth from YouTube? You haven't been sleighted. That service costs money to provide. No, you don't have a right to free service either. Do you pay your other bills while you demand free rendered services from these companies? Having a disability or similar does not entitle you to an unsubsidized Times Square with no ads. (NASA is running their own…

You are mixing up a lot of things, imo. Laws in EU countries are obviously not the same across all countries.

Yes, there's a eu-wide 30% content regulation. No, YouTube adblock detection scripts are/could not be legal because of not having EU competition. YouTube and Netflix are also entirely different, because on Netflix it's always required to pay. Not sure how this helps staying on topic, this thread is about ad blockers.

- A case that was in German media: Bild.de tried to take AdBlockerPlus off the market because of "circumventing complex anti-copyright mechanisms". It took some years & instances, but ABP was now deemed legal. - This case (Ireland) and some concerns in Germany about this are more about privacy (GDPR) and tracking. They are browser fingerprinting and tracking how often you are using the ad blocker. This may or may not be legal. Who knows.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#66
I would love to see the EU’s Digital Markets Act be applied to YouTube. By all accounts, they are a gatekeeper of the user-generated video streaming market. The DML could enforce some increased level of interoperability. This would not only make youtube-dl legal, but also allow other platforms to sideload videos from YouTube.

I would love to see other streaming services offer access to videos on YouTube for cheaper. YouTube‘s premium tier is exorbitantly expensive.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#67

Why do you pretend that you are entitled to free video storage and bandwidth from YouTube? You haven't been sleighted. That service costs money to provide. No, you don't have a right to free service either. Do you pay your other bills while you demand free rendered services from these companies? Having a disability or similar does not entitle you to an unsubsidized Times Square with no ads. (NASA is running their own…

You are regurgitating Google‘s marketing where their poor YouTube division struggles to stay afloat due to all the evil ad blockers out there.

This is nonsense.

They are the gatekeepers to what is effectively a captive market. And they don’t exactly play fair to content creators (professional journalists and amateur video producers), do they?

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#68
From an end user‘s personal, YouTube‘s ad block detector is unwanted malware, running on hardware that YouTube does not own.

If there is no law against that, then there should be. Let’s face it, the advertising and data harvesting revenue model of the Web has done so much damage, it deserves to be dismantled. If need be through legal enforcement.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#69
post #63
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seek ways to support the creators, not the platform. And where exactly will these creators publish their content if not on a platform? YouTube solves their techology problem, delivery problem, storage problem, costs problem for all the previous things and gets them access to advertisers that pay for their content and handles payments across the world for them. (Patreon is a platform too, which also works on handlin…

I agree, however AWS bandwidth fees are the biggest corporate scam of the decade

Sadly, even when self hosting a large video delivery platform, it doesn't get that much cheaper. Once you get past X GB per month the ISPs will hit you badly and you start needing CDNs across the world to keep costs manageable.

Re: YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts

#70
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube may very well charge for whatever they want. But pretending to offer the service for free and looking at your information (in the form of browser capabilities and other PII), is like you entering a store and the owner going through your wallet just because you want to browse around

I really want to understand the psychology of the people who show up and comment like the OP did. Does he work for Google? For Youtube? More than a few people here on HN must, right? But there are so many like him, it can't be the explanation all the time. Does he worship big tech companies to the point that if he shills for them, he believes that career success will rain down on him, like some sort of occupational c…

> the psychology of

Here's this: "I hate ads. My time is valuable. I want free things. What I do is justifiable. Especially when you consider moral relativism and their practices."

And this: "I hate war, but the corporate media of the 2000s sold it to me and then didn't pay the bill; so we need citizen media."

I don't think we're entitled to free video streaming; maybe because I remember how much it costs to host an .mp4 without HLS on a shared hosting account without nginx-rtmp-module (C and ffmpeg, not yet Rust) and how long it takes to encode video without buying custom hardware video encoding accelerator cards and low-volume ASIC/FPGA TLS load balancer accelerators because now video over HTTPS, and because I don't want to pull media from your MediaGoblin tube site.

I don't support artists suing fans listening from the streets.

Artists are entitled to proceeds from their work if that's how they want to run the show.

I do support paying artists with the audio fingerprinting that YouTube pioneered.

(As an artist and a visual artist - it doesn't matter what kind - I don't want to ruin YouTube with payout demands; but if musical artists are due their cut for their plays, then visual artists are too. No musical artists have yet stood up for the plight of visual artists. Nobody has yet determined how to pay everyone on a production with a smart contract that gives them their fair cut for their contribution to the collaborative ari project.)

It costs money to encode, host, and moderate video, live video, comments, and live chats.

It costs money to stream video.

Good content costs money to create, in an ad hominem-d influencer-affected landscape devoid of critical thinking and media literacy.

Artists don't get paid when you stream for free without ads or premium subscription.

How can we pay artists and content producers and privately bootstrapped infrastructure if the marginal cost of a stream is not offset by the marginal returns of a stream?

Content creators have real costs.

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Copyleft is my decision as an artist. Open Source is my decision as a developer who can't donate their services to charity.

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Anti-competitive anti-competition context:

What's not fair, anticompetitively? Tying, Bundling, Exclusive agreements, Price fixing, Colluding cartels (for non-essential commodities), Bribery, Kickbacks, Becoming a lobbyist without waiting a fair amount of time first,

What is fair? Selling to the highest bidder. Approved mergers and acquisitions. Strategies against hostile corporate takeover. Taking the bank's money and your creditworthiness and bootstrapping. Penny-pinching to scale and gain market share. Appeasing shareholders/owners. Charging people when they use hours of free services per week.

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