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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

#261

Post by allendoerfer »

rahrahrah wrote: post #41
allendoerfer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English) There were studies about this on HN. Has something to do with foreign words being stored/associated at different points inside the brain and therefor being less offensive to foreign language speakers.

Yeah, that's why I swear in Nepali /s That's obviously bullshit, the actual reason is the omnipresence of the word fuck in the english language, and the omnipresence of the english language everywhere in the world. You just adopt it.

Saying "shit" instead of "Scheiße", definitely sounds less rude to me.

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

#262

Post by owenwil »

baybal2 wrote: post #48

Google has chosen a wise stance on adblock: "they are not a threat, so we don't bother" (while it is, and they spare no effort to get precise stats in how much ads is blocked and where.) This alone was shutting down the conversation that adblock is threatening the market for long 10 years since industry people and sharehokders started raising the red flag. Now, when everybody downstrean, including publishers, realise…

That's not Google's actual stance. I went to a Digital News session held by the company last year wherein they had a "ad blocker" session - they basically said they're "just watching and waiting" for now but have "ideas" for fixing it in the future.

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

#263

Post by kuschku »

bigbugbag wrote: post #233
kuschku wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Have you checked their blog?

ABP still is "evaluating" that, and currently has a beta where acceptable ads are handled by an ad network as intermediate, which validates the quality of your ad, and handles payment to get it whitelisted.

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

#264

Post by dumb-saint »

summarite wrote: post #155
dumb-saint wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't give a single hoot about tracking and want quality ads. Do I not exist? Sure, people have all sorts of weird fetishes.

Interestingly you accuse the other side of being unreasonable when you are the one confusing reason and ideology. Good ads are not bothersome or harming you in a significant way. I prefer to see some ads rather than see sites that i benefit from go bankrupt. Id prefer a tiny payment option - €5- 10 a year would give any news publisher more gain from having me as a user than bombarding me with ads (just the same way i…

> Interestingly you accuse the other side of being unreasonable when you are the one confusing reason and ideology.

Nope, I said zero things about ideology. All I said was this: an AdBlock program is a program that block ads. That's what is reasonable to expect: that it does what it says in the tin. If an AdBlock program starts charging money to allow certain ads to go through, then it is betraying its users.

Some people want a program that filters ads according to some criteria of quality? Sure, I don't care. But it's not an ad blocker anymore, it's an ad filter. Right?

The only ideology in this discussion is coming from people who argue that the public has some obligation to accept ads or tracking in exchange for free content. I made no moral judgements, I just have a strong personal preference against ads and tracking, a lot of other people in my "box" or whatever the fuck it is do too, and this is why ad blockers became popular.

And let's be honest: people who claim to like to be exposed to "high-quality ads" typically have some vested interest in the ad business.

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

#265

Post by dumb-saint »

franciscop wrote: post #85
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?

And yet it's not trivial. Those programs have to be created and evolved as the advertising networks evolve. Now they block youtube videos when before they didn't. They will probably get those new FB ads soon. "the _only_ thing" is not as trivial as you make it sound. The tech evolves on both sides, so AdBlock tech should evolve too.

And yet uBlock Origin pull it off without betraying its users. Go figure.

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

#266

Post by YCode »

waterphone wrote: post #216
YCode wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you don't have to view the page. It's not as if you're required to view news articles from a specific outlet.

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

#268

Post by JadeNB »

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…

> 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".

But they only have this money because of AdWords. That means that, in this world, Google would still exist, but no-one could come enter the search space to compete with it—and surely that's not a desireable outcome.

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

#269

Post by joeblau »

pmontra wrote: post #145
joeblau wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just modify my `/etc/hsots` and block the ad hosted domains at the source. cat /etc/hosts | wc -l 34003

Did you automate that and how?

I use: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Works amazing.

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

#270

Post by marssaxman »

vacri wrote: post #228
jlarocco wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the same. Advertisers can negotiate with AdBlock Plus about what reasonable advertising should be. If we all choose our own block lists there is nobody for them to negotiate with. The war between ad blockers and advertisers continues forever. We have very different opinions, because I don't see it as a bargaining situation. The reasonable and acceptable level of spam, web advertising, malware, and user tra…

> The reasonable and acceptable level of spam, web advertising, malware, and user tracking is zero. Given that you put advertising in there with the other items, I assume this means that you pay for all websites that you block ads on? Because it seems to me that your model is "I get free stuff, fuck everyone else".

Are you suggesting that I have some obligation to download the object at the other end of a URL just because it happened to be embedded in a tag on a page I chose to view?

A URL is just an advertisement for a resource which is available on the web. Since when does seeing an advertisement obligate you to go acquire the object being advertised? Must I compensate the makers of highway billboards for the work they did presenting those advertisements, if I happen not to want to purchase their products?

No, it doesn't work like that. Web publishers can hope all they want that I choose to accept their invitations to download ads and look at them, but it's my machine and I'm paying for my own bandwidth, so I'll make my own choices about what to do with it. An adblocker is nothing more than an intelligent assistant for making those choices.

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