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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

#41

Post by rahrahrah »

allendoerfer wrote: post #14
davidgerard wrote: post #11

Has Der Spiegel ever distributed malware via ads? I can't find anything solid, I can find a few scattered reports of such ... * https://plus.google.com/100667046318444095686/posts/brFPEa1j... * https://plus.google.com/+SaschaEm/posts/K9Uvc6KCHKx (TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English)

> (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.

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

#42

Post by sklivvz1971 »

muninn_ wrote: post #4
pmontra wrote: post #2

Some interesting facts from the article > As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet. > About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the large…

I prefer something like ublock as well, but I wouldn't call what AB+ is doing a morally ambiguous question. I think this is actually pretty straight forward all around. I can install or uninstall software on my computer. Websites can serve ads. Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad blocker installed. AB+ can whitelist sites. A website can or can not pay AB+ to be whitelisted.

> Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad blocker installed.

They can try, but it's fundamentally impossible.

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

#43

Post by sebow »

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.

I'm pretty sure ABP has paid ads.

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

#44

Post by grive »

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.

It is important to use uBlock origin and not uBlock. The latter was an error.

Otherwise, it is impossible: the blacklist are the same, the capabilities are the same, the only difference being that ABP will allow some ads by design.

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

#45

Post by yuhong »

alkonaut wrote: post #23
davidgerard wrote: post #11

Has Der Spiegel ever distributed malware via ads? I can't find anything solid, I can find a few scattered reports of such ... * https://plus.google.com/100667046318444095686/posts/brFPEa1j... * https://plus.google.com/+SaschaEm/posts/K9Uvc6KCHKx (TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English)

What is malicious? I consider any ad that has any kind of tracking to be malicous. I think they did that.

They are talking about many ad networks allowing arbitrary JavaScript/Flash etc to be executed.

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

#46

Post by grive »

muninn_ wrote: post #4
pmontra wrote: post #2

Some interesting facts from the article > As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet. > About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the large…

I prefer something like ublock as well, but I wouldn't call what AB+ is doing a morally ambiguous question. I think this is actually pretty straight forward all around. I can install or uninstall software on my computer. Websites can serve ads. Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad blocker installed. AB+ can whitelist sites. A website can or can not pay AB+ to be whitelisted.

There is no confusion as to what they are doing. That does not mean that there isn't any moral ambiguity.

What they are doing is akin to a racket protection. They place themselves in the position of deciding whether some ads are authorized or not, and of course some money can push them in the good direction.

The only ambiguity here is that they seem to at least respect a standard for the ads they accept. Beside that, this is racket and corruption.

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

#47

Post by oftenwrong »

joeblau wrote: post #40
pmontra wrote: post #2

Some interesting facts from the article > As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the computers in Germany used to access the Internet. > About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of those sites don't pay, but the large…

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

uuoc!

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

#48

Post by baybal2 »

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, realised just how much money they loose to blocking and started talking openly about it, the genie is out of the bottle

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

#49

Post by franciscop »

Throwaway23412 wrote: post #36
Jdam wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm struggling to see how that would even be true. ABP literally allows companies to pay to get past their block.

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).

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

#50

Post by JorgeGT »

saycheese wrote: post #9
Hermel wrote: post #5

Any other verdict would be a potential legal risk to Google and everyone else in the ad business for the following reason: if Google can force its users to see ads, this basically means that they are not providing a free service any more, but that Google and the user engage in an exchange: Google provides the search service, and the user agrees to look at a few ads in return. Legally speaking, this could be seen as b…

Using that logic, by Google forcing users to provide data and not allow anonymous access, they're bartering services for data.

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.
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