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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

#211

Post by bigbugbag »

morgante wrote: post #186
Thrillington wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site. uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this. ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I have…

A lot of quality content I find is on niche blogs where I might only read an article or two. These blogs are often advertising supported. I'd much rather outsource the work of whitelisting to ABP than having to do an individual consideration on every single site I visit. There's also the fact that I never want to see malicious/intrusive advertising. If I maintain my own whitelists, I have to experiment site by site.…

This argument makes no sense at all, a niche blog generates very little traffic which means it has very little advertising revenue, and this revenue goes to the hosting company which offers hosting for free in exchange of putting theirs ads on your blog.

Those niche blogs could choose to pay for their hosting and it costs less than 10$ a month ($5.99 or $8.25 at wordpress.com[1])

If the advertising based business model failed overnight, I highly doubt finding 75 to 100$ a year to stay online would be out of reach.

You do know that about 10% of the advertisers get in the whitelist by paying instead of conforming to the acceptable ads program ? You probably know that the acceptable ads is very limited in scope and most non intrusive ads never get whitelisted but surely you know that adblock plus has now evolved into an ad selling platform.

It seems to me that adblock plus does not fit your stated ideological stance as well as Brave[3] does. You should consider ditching ABP and using Brave instead which blocks tracking and replaces all ads by other non-intrusive ads and also offers and option to pay websites directly so you could contribute to the hosting fee of those niche blogs.

[1]: https://wordpress.com/pricing/ [2]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-... [3]: https://www.brave.com/

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

#212

Post by bigbugbag »

cm2187 wrote: post #80
ryuuchin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's the best solution for iOS?

Canning it and never look back ?

or use focus[1] instead of safari, it's what's recommended on the "block ads" website[2].

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/focus-by-firefox-content-blo... [2]: https://blockads.fivefilters.org/

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

#213

Post by ddebernardy »

> Because users aren't willing to pay for editorial content on the Web, "it is not economically viable for the Claimant to switch to this business model."

Speaks mountains of how conscious the newspapers are that they're producing stuff nobody wants to pay for. Perhaps they should put a bit more effort into producing things their audience values to read, and a lot less effort tracking users and fighting ad blockers.

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

#214

Post by bigbugbag »

Blackthorn wrote: post #95
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…

Personally I wish UBO would allow you to easily whitelist unobtrusive ads as part of their filters like ABP does.

UBO is against "acceptable ads" but there may be a way (or you can code one) to include ABP acceptable ads list[1] in UBO.

[1]: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...

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

#215

Post by waterphone »

Jdam wrote: post #33
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…

I tried to ditch ABP in favour of uBlock 1-or-so years ago and I found it way worse in terms of the amount of blocked ads.

That's surprising, given that I virtually never see any ads with uBlock Origin. Maybe you didn't have enough filter lists enabled?

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

#216

Post by waterphone »

YCode wrote: post #192
ThePhysicist wrote: post #74

IMHO, by choosing to provide their content as an HTML data stream via HTTP to the user, "Der SPIEGEL" implicitly allows to consume this content in whichever way the user sees fit, as HTML is simply a markup language that can be interpreted in various ways, and could even be read in a text editor. By trying to force the user to consume this data through a specific channel (e.g. through a standard-compliant browser wit…

The current solution of detecting ad-blockers and either blocking your content or requesting users disable their ad-blocker seems sensible. The latter especially works for me because I'm generally willing to disable my ad blocker for the domain and see what their ads are like. If their ads are reasonable I'll leave it off.

I don't find it sensible, because that requires exposing myself to tracking scripts. Tracking scripts are unacceptable to me under any context.

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

#217

Post by int_19h »

briandear wrote: post #60
JorgeGT wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The currently implicit trade of personal and behavioral data for services such as Facebook, Google, etc. is IMHO a domain in urgent need of some regulation.

Why? Those are voluntary services; the free market can regulate this just fine. It would be different if the government were requiring the use of those services.

The "free" (did you actually mean unregulated? because that's not the same as free) market has a poor track record of checking monopolies.

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

#218

Post by Angostura »

bigbugbag wrote: post #195
skybrian wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is a different political position. I don't want all advertising-supported websites to die, which is what would happen if you convinced everyone to do what you do.

This argument has no basis, those websites don't have to die, they have to think of an alternative business model. Some have already transitioned to crowdfunding (see patreon, the dice tower getting funded on kickstarter,...) micropayment, subscriptions. But this case of "your failed business model is not my problem" is not to blame on adblockers alone but also on dwindling ads revenue among others reasons due to fac…

OK, I prefer reasonable ad-supported to subscription.

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

#219

Post by int_19h »

summarite wrote: post #173
greyman wrote: post #87

It seems to me that Spiegel looks at it from a ridiculous premise, that Internet somehow should provide a working business model for them. I just can't imagine how something like ABP could be illegal... I made a http request to get a public resources, and it is up to me how I will display it, I can filter everything but a text, or if I want I can render the page so only ads will be displayed. :-) I have no obligation…

It would be pretty sad if the web really can't provide a working business model for quality news. I prefer ads rather than high-cost paywalls, and then ideally a "use as-free" option for a small sum (think android apps). I want to read diverse sources and can't cough up €50-160 for 10-20 different sites that i use more or less frequently. I'd pay €5-10 for each good site that i use frequently to see it ad free and am…

But paywalls are a working business model. Your dislike of them is understandable, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes.

As for reading diverse sources - well, how many people subscribed to 10+ newspapers at once, in the heyday of paper? And why should it be any different in the age of the Internet, if the amount of human labor required to make one newspaper (or equivalent) remains the same?

That said, I do think that the current subscription models are also broken (which is also why they're unpopular). What we really need is a seamless micro-transaction protocol, so that I could pay, say, 5c to view one article that I'm interested in. And the browser should provide a consistent UX for the website to request payment, and for me to approve it or not; and also to clearly distinguish links to paywalled resources.

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

#220

Post by bigbugbag »

chc wrote: post #209
bigbugbag wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has no basis, those websites don't have to die, they have to think of an alternative business model. Some have already transitioned to crowdfunding (see patreon, the dice tower getting funded on kickstarter,...) micropayment, subscriptions. But this case of "your failed business model is not my problem" is not to blame on adblockers alone but also on dwindling ads revenue among others reasons due to fac…

When a site as big as Wikipedia has to spend a large chunk of each year begging for handouts, I have trouble buying your suggestion that alternative business models are generally viable.

This counter argument would be valid if wikipedia model had failed but it actually manage to fund the project for 10+ years.

The day the usual website will receive 12 to 20Billions views a month and occupy 10TB of disk space, then we could use wikipedia as a representative example. Until then wikipedia should not be used as an example of how well the usual ad-supported website would fare with an alternative revenue model.

IINM wikipedia has chosen a business model not based on ads which successfully funds the project for about 10+ years.

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