Ad blocking is under attack
371–380 of 598 posts
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#372It was admiral that did this: https://blog.getadmiral.com/dmca-easylist-adblock-copyright-... They even clearly state they used the only tool available to them, DCMA. From all the current summaries on this, DMCA does not apply to a line entry in easylist. A domain can be trademarked. This should be added back in. And if github cannot standup to DMCA abuse, then well, easylist and all other developers should be giving…
So, in that blog post, they state: "We asked them 24 days ago to remove functionalclam[.]com on the original commit." Their request is here: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/1ba8d4afeec6d562... And was made by this account: https://github.com/dmcahelper So, they made a github account the same day they made the "request" with an account that in no way indicates where the request is coming from? The github p…
The DMCA request itself seems to be here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2017/2017-08-02-L...
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#373From a recent WSJ article about anti-ad blocking companies: “We really think the free internet is at risk because of ad-blocking, so these types of solutions are needed to turn the tide”, said Dan Rua, CEO of ad-blocking “revenue recovery” company Admiral, which recently raised $2.5 million to help build its platform."[1] It's amazing how selective the CEO's concern for the "free internet" is. Threatening community g…
From Dan Rua's LinkedIn:
>The power of the internet to inform, entertain and liberate mankind is at a crossroads. The future of ad-supported content is in peril, and with it, free access for citizens to critical news, education, discourse and resources the world over. The shorthand name for this looming catastrophe is "adblocking"
It's like a pimp claiming the human race is going to stop reproducing and die out because people don't want to pay for their prostitutes
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it that the tech set always forgets that CS pedantry != legal pedantry? Have we forgotten about intent? You can't just change the line to a regex that /just happens/ to match that URL and go "neener neener neener it's not the same!" Are you willing to argue in court that that line was changed and it /just so happened/ to match the domain from before? Do you have a plausible explanation for why that change woul…
Well, first of all, blocking a URL is not against the DMCA. So one argument to do is this is because it is NOT illegal, and the purpose would be to stop frivolous lawsuits. So yes, it would be trying to creatively skirt frivolous lawsuits. Another legit reason though, is obfuscation. The company that tried to threaten this frivolous lawsuit may have not even noticed, if it was some weird regex. And they'd either not…
>Well, first of all, blocking a URL is not against the DMCA.
But you'd significantly help the legal case of those claiming it is by trying to obfuscate that you're doing so; they would argue in court it's an implicit admission you "knew it was illegal."
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you understand the comment you replied to? The DMCA is not just about direct copyright infringement, but also about preventing the circumvention of technological protections for copyrighted content. No one is saying there was copyright infringement here. You can think that this is super bogus (I sure do) but make sure you understand the nature of what you're mad about. ;-)
again, what does a text file do to violate the dmca? what's next, a 128-bit number? IANAL, so i guess until it goes to the court and is decided, we won't know.
The complaint alleges that text file is used to configure software in such a way that it the software circumvents their copyrights, thus the text file itself is a tool for circumventing copyright and violates DMCA.
It's just super dumb, really.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#376Wow, this really stinks. They (Admiral) supposedly figured out how to use DMCA-1201 to prevent ad blockers from adding their domains. That's a glaring example which shows why this anti-circumvention garbage needs to be completely repealed.
As some proposed, they should move the repo out of the jurisdiction with these corrupted anti-circumvention laws.
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#377Are they going to issue DMCA takedown requests to the other (currently) 76 forks?
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#378You can tell a young person wrote that copy from the use of "on accident" instead of "by accident" on the DMCA image.
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5947035/29184514-2...
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#379I'm struggling to understand how preventing access to a tracking pixel circumvents copyright.
Does this make sense to anyone? It sounds like they're "crying DMCA" because someone turned off their analytics? Can analytics be a "right" under copyright?
Re: Ad blocking is under attack
#380I used to read about 25 or so online news publications each week. A bit more on a monthly basis. I had paid subscriptions to a handful of publications (8-9?), spending more money on these subscriptions than I had ever done for paper newspapers and magazines in the past.
Over the past 3-4 years I have ditched most newspapers and I have dropped most subscriptions. For three main reasons:
- Both advertising content and the newspapers advertising themselves has gotten really annoying. No, I don't appreciate you throwing modal windows at me. No I'm not going to subscribe to your newsletter. No I don't appreciate having to click away a second or third modal window.
- Advertising masquerading as content. Sure, it is marked as "sponsored content", but every effort is made to hide that fact. This is dishonest.
- I don't gain anything from reading most of these publications. They don't make me smarter and I don't remember what I read one week later. The bulk of news articles are written by uninformed people incapable of useful analysis. Important news is widely disseminated anyway so I won't miss anything.
When the ads are more important than the content, I won't burden them with my page views. It isn't for me.
In the process I found that I had been spending too much time reading news. Limiting my news intake to just a few news sources (3-4) whose biases I understand, and at least which I can try to adjust for, is enough. The number of books I've consumed per year has had a sharp uptick since I stopped reading as many news websites.