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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

#51

Post by Fiahil »

> The judges took note of the fact that Spiegel could have done something about ad-blockers. For instance, it could have shut ad-blocking users out from the Web content, linked advertising directly to the website's HTML

I don't think that's a good idea. Doing exactly that would mean: the ad auction has to be closed and content injected server-side into the HTML page before sending the first byte to clients. And even if you're just inserting a JS snippet at the bottom of your body, it also means that you're giving the advertiser control over your entire page/website and of the clients' browser. Given the cluster of shitty and deceptive content pipelined by ad networks, no wonder they're not going to do that.

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

#52

Post by jhasse »

pfortuny wrote: post #34

Why do they not buy the ads and serve them from their servers in a difficult-to-guess way? Like a mid-sentence jpg or whatever?

Quoting from the article:

Spiegel said those options "would not be a long-term solution but rather result in a sustained race to stay ahead of the technological curve."

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

#53

Post by JorgeGT »

mioelnir wrote: post #38
pfortuny wrote: post #34

Why do they not buy the ads and serve them from their servers in a difficult-to-guess way? Like a mid-sentence jpg or whatever?

To serve the ads under the 1st party domain - without ending up in a situation where the entity reporting the number of ad impressions and the entity receiving money based on that number of ad impressions are the same - is often significant effort.

But newspapers have been doing this with printed ads for, literally, centuries...

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

#54

Post by a_plastic_bag »

I think it would be pretty hard to argue that you serve a "unified offer" (at the moment at least). The user requests the content without any promise of downloading and rendering all of the content linked, and the server happily serves the content. The fact that almost all web browsers by default (rather naively) obeys every instruction from the web server doesn't imply that the user actually agrees to render (and get tracked by) everything linked.

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

#55

Post by chei0iaV »

zant95 wrote: post #16
Kenji wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they'll just raise inconvenience to block the ads higher and higher, just like they did on Android phones, where Chrome did not have any extensions and apps serve ads that cannot be blocked without you getting root access to your phone (which is another inconvenience) and editing your hosts file or something like that.

Blocking ads is the only reason that makes me depend on root. I built a script[1] that generates flashable zip and from time to time I update it on my phone. [1] https://github.com/zant95/hBlock

If you weren't aware, if you have root there's AdAway:

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=adaway&fdid=...

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

#56

Post by dumb-saint »

franciscop wrote: post #49
Throwaway23412 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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?

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

#57

Post by matheusmoreira »

tmnvix wrote: post #10

Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users (assuming those users also allow JS)?

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 computer against an adversary with full physical access. The content has left the server and is on the user's machine. Nothing can stop a sufficiently determined user from consuming it, with or without ads.

I answered a question on User Experience.SE about this:

http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437

I tried to express just how big the power disparity between the developer and the user is. Looking back now, I think I came off as too extreme.

I think the other answers are excellent; they address the UX aspects in a way I wasn't able to. Definitely learned from them.

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

#58

Post by Cenk »

gorhill wrote: post #21
Cenk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm puzzled by the morality of that. Adblock Plus has a really weird business model. Basically anyone can write an ad blocker, and they all use basically the same lists of rules anyway. So why would an entire company with 74 employees ( https://eyeo.com/team ) exist just to make an Adblocker? By adding a bunch of shady stuff on top to make mon…

> Basically anyone can write an ad blocker Did you ever write one that endures? From first-hand experience, I spent so much time working on uBO in the last 2.5 years that I would appreciate the task to not be trivialised with such sentence as "anyone can write an ad blocker". Such trivialisation prevent those who don't understand software development from valuing all the work done, up to being told "F you!" when refu…

You’re right, I take it back. But my greater point still stands, imagine how great uBO could be if you had 75 full time employees!

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

#59

Post by briandear »

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 get your point, but opposed to ads? You lost me there. How do people find out about your product?

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

#60

Post by briandear »

JorgeGT wrote: post #50
saycheese wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.
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