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

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

#231

Post by bigbugbag »

greglindahl wrote: post #146
franciscop wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% of the whitelist is not paid, and that 10% helps develop the program. Not only that, you are asked upon installation whether or not to allow for acceptable ads (which is ticked on by default, but still not such a controversial point as you make it sound).

90% by lines or sites or 90% by money? ABP charges medium-sized websites through the nose -- and most startups qualify as medium-sized. Great business model, especially given that the filter lists are made by volunteers.

>Great business model, especially given that the filter lists are made by volunteers.

And the leverage by its users who do not get paid them. IIRC ABP gets paid around a third of the advertising revenue from whitelisting the advertiser if it reaches 10m impressions, so the more users seeing ads ABP has, the more money they make.

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

#232

Post by staticassertion »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #106
staticassertion wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, lower power/memory usage equals better battery life at the cost of performance, This is almost never actually the case. In reality, better performance tends to mean better battery due to improved usage of resources.

This is kind of a ridiculous statement. Not a single category other than energy consumption does Safari benchmark near Chrome, Firefox or even Edge http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-browser-internet... Any of you are free to offer actual data proving otherwise

Err, I didn't say anything about any browser. I said that performance and battery life are not at odds, they often go hand in hand.

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

#233

Post by bigbugbag »

kuschku wrote: post #201
greglindahl wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90% by lines or sites or 90% by money? ABP charges medium-sized websites through the nose -- and most startups qualify as medium-sized. Great business model, especially given that the filter lists are made by volunteers.

> especially given that the filter lists are made by volunteers. Except, the acceptable ads list for larger companies can only be modified by Eyeo, and they only do it after being paid. It’s a racket.

Are you sure ? It was supposed to be handed over to an independent board in 2016[1].

[1]: https://gigaom.com/2015/09/30/adblock-plus-list-of-acceptabl...

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

#234

Post by michaelmrose »

morgante wrote: post #84
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…

> is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details) That's only if people agree with your ideology. Instead of making blanket statements which are inherently subjective, just explain why you prefer Adblock Plus. Personally, I vastly prefer Adblock Plus. I have no ideological objection to advertising or tracking in general, I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does an excellent job of filter…

Ublock is objectively lighter on resources and you can either manually whitelist the sites you like or look into using Adblocks acceptable ad list with ublock.

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

#235

Post by bigbugbag »

summarite wrote: post #147
dumb-saint wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that 10% helps develop the program Develop in what sense? uBlock origin is at least 10% better than ABP just by not doing that. The _only_ thing people want from such a program is to block all ads and trackers. That's it. That's the feature list. You decide to compromise the single goal to fund further "development"? How does that make any sense?

I don't mind paying for a service by letting them show ads, as long as those ads don't feature malware or are otherwise annoying/resource-straining/... I hate TV ads and never watch TV as i find the ads intrusive. But taking the minor rewards from content creators that my presence can bring - when I'm benefiting from their content and cost them server resources - seems pretty unfair to me. Here's your reason for popu…

It seems to me investigative journalism is disappearing because journals got bought by large transnational corporations with agendas.

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

#236

Post by hulahoof »

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.

Wikipedia most definitely does NOT require the donations they ask for every december to continue day-to-day operations. In fact, they can survive quite comfortably on the standard donation rate they receive each month outside the December drive[1].

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports#Fun...

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

#237

Post by cyborgx7 »

senior_james wrote: post #153

Adblocking has indirectly created many of these fake news sites we see today and will only create a more cluttered and product-filled user experience. Most news sites rely only on advertising for income. Real reporting and investigation costs money. Since their main money source is now drying up, news is starting to become hearsay, rumors, and things you see on Twitter (anything you can find from the comfort of an of…

Quite the opposite. Ads led to all these fake news sites. Ads disable the concept of people paying for something they consider valuable. Instead all you need to make profit is to get people to look in your direction long enough to show them something they might actually consider spending money on. You don't need facts and journalism for that. You only need facts and journalism to build trust with your customers so they might consider paying you directly.

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

#238

Post by phpnode »

bigbugbag wrote: post #224
phpnode wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take something like Google Search, a service that is ad-supported but is free to use and produces an enormous amount of value for virtually everyone on the internet. What is their business model in a post-adwords world, where they've been forced to adapt ? Presumably they'd have to charge for it, which means that the poorest people on the internet would not have access to this amazing tool that we take utterly for gr…

Google search is not only ad-supported, it is also ad-supporting. it is carefully designed to collect and track your every click to feed their advertising business. I suppose google search business model in a post-adwords world could also be "we have enough cash to run this service until everyone currently alive is dead". In the event of google search disappearing, affected people would use other search engines and i…

> "we have enough cash to run this service until everyone currently alive is dead"

They might have the money but why should they give it away? They are not a charity.

> it would make room for better search engines to emerge

How would those search engines fund themselves? what would their business model be?

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

#239

Post by matheusmoreira »

anonymousab wrote: post #136
matheusmoreira wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they can detect ad blockers and present a nag screen. The ad blocker can respond by defeating their detection feature. For example, it can delete the detection function before it even executes. They could circumvent that; ad blockers could nullify their fix; they could fix it again... This could go on forever. In my experience as an user, no website has ever beaten an ad blocker. It's like trying to secure a co…

If a site declares that you should not access it without disabling your adblocker, and they go as far as to explicitly try to prevent your access with direct messaging (interstitials, pop-up/light boxes, etc.), yet the user then works around those protections and accesses it - wouldn't that qualify as illegal access in some form?

Anticircumvention laws may or may not apply. I'm not sure. It certainly sounds like it does. The thing is I don't think those laws are very successful at preventing anything.

They didn't save the music records, movies and video games industries. They're still actively fighting against the user, an adversary that has all the power. DVD content was successfully decrypted despite the DMCA; ironically, genuine games are often inferior to their pirated counterparts. A site without ads has better usability and is more secure.

Even if sites say you can't access content already transmitted to your computer unless you view ads, they're not in a position to enforce that. A bunch of laws saying people can't circumvent their protection won't suddenly change that fact.

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

#240

Post by nyolfen »

tscs37 wrote: post #205
kuschku wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. uBlock can be configured to show acceptable ads (it’s just opt-in). 2. uBlock is faster than ABP. So you have zero disadvantages, but one advantage. As a result, it’s strictly superior.

Point 1 is basically what your personal preference is. I prefer it opt out as this will lead to more people supporting websites with ads. (defaults matter, check out organ donor studies on this) While I admit that ublock is faster, Adblock plus has much better integration and looks better. When it's installed it presents me with very few options and I'm basically good to go without changing and settings. Additionally…

>Additionally I use umatrix which covers and options abp does not,which helps abps speed to almost not matter anymore.

you realize running abp on top of umatrix is completely redundant, right?

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