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AdBlock Plus wins in court

bbc.com

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Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bad_user wrote: post #19
honest_joe wrote: post #12

This is sad day for content creators. If the site is full of ads you are not comfortable to view do NOT VISIT such sites again. It's stealing, it's manipulating the statistics. We can't get good content because corporations taught people to not pay for content and now we will not get good content because people will slice the income of those who use ads.

While I would agree with this line of thought, ad networks have been used for the spread of malware and various scams. Ad networks have also tracked the browsing habits of users, with little regard for our privacy. It's easy to say that if the site is full of ads, I should not visit it again, however I also do not want to load pieces of Javascript doing the above by mistakenly visiting a website that I do not want to…

Its not just that they bungled it. Its a question of who owns my computer. I do, so I get to say what is displayed and what code is run. So clipping out the ads is entirely my own business, done in my own home on my own devices.

No, I can't possibly agree with the line of thought of the parent comment. Its self-serving nonsense.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#22

Post by Robadob »

jsingleton wrote: post #3
Fastidious wrote: post #2

Interestingly enough, AdBlock (different from the one the article refers to) blocks 7 ads on that page.

The BBC is weird. In the UK (bbc.co.uk) there are no ads as it's paid for by the license fee but abroad (bbc.com) there are ads as it's a different (commercial) entity.

It's also worth noting that, you can't view BBC worldwide content from within the UK either due to regional restrictions. I've heard this is due to the BBC policy forbidding them showing adverts to UK users, yet it's content regularly not freely accessible (without adverts) to UK users either, as its a separate entity.

There's been several occasions that BBC worldwide has had articles that I've been unable to read, or find on the standard BBC news website.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#23

Post by webjprgm »

baldfat wrote: post #4

Personally I don't use Ad Blockers just due to the fact my own personal ethics feels I am stealing when I do use it. When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube. AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.

Do you also consider TIVO to be stealing?

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#24

Post by eli »

sparaker wrote: post #9
baldfat wrote: post #4

Personally I don't use Ad Blockers just due to the fact my own personal ethics feels I am stealing when I do use it. When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube. AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.

I don't use AdBlock Plus but i do use AdBlock. I think its my decision to choose which ads i watch and which i don't. It's not stealing, Webmasters can detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.

It's actually not easy to detect adblock use. Popular ad blockers actively try to evade detection. If the intent is to let publishers decide whether to allow adblock users or not, it should send an easily detectable flag.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#25

Post by roma1n »

eli wrote: post #24
sparaker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't use AdBlock Plus but i do use AdBlock. I think its my decision to choose which ads i watch and which i don't. It's not stealing, Webmasters can detect if someone is using AdBlock or not.

It's actually not easy to detect adblock use. Popular ad blockers actively try to evade detection. If the intent is to let publishers decide whether to allow adblock users or not, it should send an easily detectable flag.

Why would a piece of software on my machine needlessly be under remote control ?

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#26

Post by NickNameNick »

honest_joe wrote: post #12

This is sad day for content creators. If the site is full of ads you are not comfortable to view do NOT VISIT such sites again. It's stealing, it's manipulating the statistics. We can't get good content because corporations taught people to not pay for content and now we will not get good content because people will slice the income of those who use ads.

On a fundamental level, your server is free to do whatever it wants with the requests I send it, and my browser is free to do whatever I want with the responses it receives. Because your server is yours, and my computer is mine.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#28

Post by npizzolato »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #13
k-mcgrady wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It's not stealing, Webmasters can detect if someone is using AdBlock or not. In other words it's not stealing unless you get caught? Edit: Relax people. Let's not get into another debate on copying vs. theft. I was merely pointing out that the parents analogy (which was the one that referenced stealing) was bad.

Is Google stealing from them when they crawl their pages but don't load in the ads? What about when I wget their page? Am I stealing from them now? Maybe when I disable javascript in my browser? Am I now a thief? No, I am not. It's not stealing whatsoever, ever. Even if they detect you're not loading in all the content they want you to load. If they manage to detect this, then they can choose to block your access to…

Not the op but, I often disable adblock on sites I enjoy because I feel similarly. I'm not really interested in a semantic debate about what is or is not "stealing," but it certainly deprives others of revenue for creating content I get value from. When that content is otherwise free except for ads, it makes me feel rather shitty to go out of my way to block their revenue stream.

Edit: that said, I do still keep adblock on for sites with rather abusive or obnoxious ads.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#29

Post by chengiz »

baldfat wrote: post #4

Personally I don't use Ad Blockers just due to the fact my own personal ethics feels I am stealing when I do use it. When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube. AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.

I had no idea ABP accepted money from advertisers to be put on their whitelist. I know they have to make money somehow but this just seems suspiciously like extortion to me.

Re: AdBlock Plus wins in court

#30

Post by summerdown2 »

baldfat wrote: post #4

Personally I don't use Ad Blockers just due to the fact my own personal ethics feels I am stealing when I do use it. When I am teaching I have ad blocker installed because I don't want to get in trouble for what advertisement will be shown, especially YouTube. AdBlock Plus and their paid white list is the worst and I don't know why people use them.

How do you feel about disabling javascript by default, and making things click-to-play? I ask because I think the line between "advert used for site finance," and "drive-by malware" can sometimes be blurry.

For example:

http://www.cnet.com/news/malware-delivered-by-yahoo-fox-goog...

I think that when I click on a link I agree to see the content they provide. I'm not sure I really want to agree to third-party stuff without knowing what it is - and I'm very sure I don't want to start loading third party scripts automatically.

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