Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blocking ads is hardly "pirating" content
To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.
So it is a payment?!? Through out the last decades advertisement has not been liable under customer protection laws that regulate sales of products, and generally avoided local laws. The stated reason has been that advertisement is not a sale since the viewer is not recompensating the publisher. A product given for free is in a completely different category of law than that of a sale.
Im old enough to remember when phone companies tried the tactic of giving away mobile phones for free, but which carried a binding contract with the carrier. Courts found that to be illegal and forced companies to sell them for 1 cent since a free product can not have a binding contract, which turned the transaction into a sale. The outcome of that meant that information of the full cost must be given to the customer in no unclear terms, since we are now dealing with a sale.
Products given for free with advertisement is also exempted in EU from value added tax. The given reason (can't find the original legal source) was that viewers may watch nothing, some or all the advertisement, and that makes putting a monetary value and taxing it difficult. If you buy a subscription it can be taxed, but watching it free with adds do not. This is true for both physical and non-physical goods.