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German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

arstechnica.com

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Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#21

Post by gorhill »

Cenk wrote: post #6
pmontra wrote: post #2

Some interesting facts from the article > As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet. > About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the large…

>I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that. Adblock Plus has a really weird business model. Basically anyone can write an ad blocker, and they all use basically the same lists of rules anyway. So why would an entire company with 74 employees ( https://eyeo.com/team ) exist just to make an Adblocker? By adding a bunch of shady stuff on top to make mon…

> Basically anyone can write an ad blocker

Did you ever write one that endures?

From first-hand experience, I spent so much time working on uBO in the last 2.5 years that I would appreciate the task to not be trivialised with such sentence as "anyone can write an ad blocker". Such trivialisation prevent those who don't understand software development from valuing all the work done, up to being told "F you!" when refusing to spend more time on the project than I already do.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#22

Post by zuzun »

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. This court is a broken clock when it comes to Internet-related rulings. Recently they found a website owner guilty because a single link on his website lead to a third-party website that used a CC picture without proper attribution.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#23

Post by alkonaut »

davidgerard wrote: post #11

Has Der Spiegel ever distributed malware via ads? I can't find anything solid, I can find a few scattered reports of such ... * https://plus.google.com/100667046318444095686/posts/brFPEa1j... * https://plus.google.com/+SaschaEm/posts/K9Uvc6KCHKx (TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English)

What is malicious? I consider any ad that has any kind of tracking to be malicous. I think they did that.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#24

Post by ekidd »

gorhill wrote: post #21
Cenk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that. Adblock Plus has a really weird business model. Basically anyone can write an ad blocker, and they all use basically the same lists of rules anyway. So why would an entire company with 74 employees ( https://eyeo.com/team ) exist just to make an Adblocker? By adding a bunch of shady stuff on top to make mon…

> Basically anyone can write an ad blocker Did you ever write one that endures? From first-hand experience, I spent so much time working on uBO in the last 2.5 years that I would appreciate the task to not be trivialised with such sentence as "anyone can write an ad blocker". Such trivialisation prevent those who don't understand software development from valuing all the work done, up to being told "F you!" when refu…

Your efforts on uBO are strongly appreciated! It Just Works, it doesn't slow down my pages, and it's easy to use. I know exactly how hard that can be to achieve for even a moderately popular app; the "last 10%" takes a lot more than 90% of the time.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#25

Post by DiabloD3 »

msandford wrote: post #18
fritzw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you described isn't complex logic, it makes sense, but that's not where the moral ambiguity enters. Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals to slip through as long as they pay on the side... that's the moral issue. Granting access for paying members simply means ABP has become a gatekeeper with its own power and it is now offering access at a price, unethically

> Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals to slip through as long as they pay on the side... that's the moral issue. Only if ABP states that they block ALL ads, full stop. But their website doesn't say that, it says "Surf the web without annoying ads!" which wouldn't exclude non-annoying ads. Maybe that's not how the extension/service was initially introduced but at this point they're not lying to new users…

I'd like to comment on the non-annoying part.

I use uBlock (and previously, ADP) because of the fact that parts of the Internet will give you ADHD, no matter if you started with it or not.

Parts of the Internet are quite literally unusable without ad blocks. This should be a much larger discussion than it is, given how shitty sites don't get lots of views, ergo, who's actually viewing the ads to begin with?

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#26

Post by forgotpwtomain »

gorhill wrote: post #21
Cenk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that. Adblock Plus has a really weird business model. Basically anyone can write an ad blocker, and they all use basically the same lists of rules anyway. So why would an entire company with 74 employees ( https://eyeo.com/team ) exist just to make an Adblocker? By adding a bunch of shady stuff on top to make mon…

> Basically anyone can write an ad blocker Did you ever write one that endures? From first-hand experience, I spent so much time working on uBO in the last 2.5 years that I would appreciate the task to not be trivialised with such sentence as "anyone can write an ad blocker". Such trivialisation prevent those who don't understand software development from valuing all the work done, up to being told "F you!" when refu…

I've been using uMatrix and uBlock (for firefox on mobile) for years, I think not just for me but the prevailing sentiment among uBlock users is a great appreciation for your work. Thanks!

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#27

Post by ryuuchin »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #15

Since this submission relates to blocking ads and trackers, I think it's worth bringing up that uBlock Origin [0] is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details). I migrated to it a few years ago and overall I've been very happy with the outcome. I'm opposed to all tracking that isn't opt-in by default. I haven't thought about the topic at great lengths, so there may be cases which I'm fa…

The only reason for still using ABP is because you haven't heard of uBlock.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#28

Post by userbinator »

Kenji wrote: post #7
mehdix wrote: post #3

I'm interested in eventual Google's reaction to ad-blocking software. Will they try to weld ads to web technologies or they'll accept the current situation?

I guess they'll just raise inconvenience to block the ads higher and higher, just like they did on Android phones, where Chrome did not have any extensions and apps serve ads that cannot be blocked without you getting root access to your phone (which is another inconvenience) and editing your hosts file or something like that.

This is where MITM can be very useful. You can still configure the DNS server to one you control, and which blocks the domains you don't want. I believe you can still install your own certificates and MITM the rest of the traffic too, filtering it through a proxy like Privoxy or Proxomitron. The availability of VPN means you don't need to be at home to have a filtered connection, but you do need another machine running the endpoint+proxy.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#29

Post by denim_chicken »

Kenji wrote: post #7
mehdix wrote: post #3

I'm interested in eventual Google's reaction to ad-blocking software. Will they try to weld ads to web technologies or they'll accept the current situation?

I guess they'll just raise inconvenience to block the ads higher and higher, just like they did on Android phones, where Chrome did not have any extensions and apps serve ads that cannot be blocked without you getting root access to your phone (which is another inconvenience) and editing your hosts file or something like that.

That's why you should be using Firefox.

Re: German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal

#30

Post by RhodesianHunter »

galfarragem wrote: post #17

System is funded by X. One day, some smart people fed up of paying X invent a way of evading. «It's not fair to pay X!» they say. Most people follow them, why wouldn't they? Next day, same smart people: «Humm, how about people paying X/? to us instead of paying X to the system? Let's make a compelling argument explaining the fairness of it as some people feel that evading is somehow immoral. They will bite.» -- Devil…

More likely:

System is funded by X.

People evade X.

System gets progressively shittier.

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