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Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

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Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#61
post #53
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's also the main warning from the blog: the reasoning here is that adjusting how the website code executes on your computer is copyright infringement. The effects of that would go way beyond just adblockers.

> adjusting how the website code executes on your computer is copyright infringement. I would be interested in how German law works to make this so, IANAL but pretty sure USA copy right law does not work that way. Modification for personal use is normally going to be 100% acceptable under USA copyright law. The DMCA Anti-Circumvention is one exception I know to this but it was and is a big deal for being an exception…

One of the things that came out of several Blizzard anticheat/Warden lawsuits back in the day is that, technically, the act of running an executable is copyright infringement, because the data is being copied from disk into memory, into registers and into caches.

Running any software that then does anything with the same memory space (cheating software or, say, antivirus) is another, separate instance of copyright infringement on top of that.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#63
Germany is trying more and more shitty stuff and it wouldn't be far from the government (this one, or the previous one, or the next one) to implement something like this, whether aware of the consequences or not. Lobbyism here is very strong and they try over and over again their tired old lines "fOr ThE cHiLdReN!" and "but, ... but, ... tErRoRiSm!". We can also not trust in our courts to have sufficient expertise or listen to experts, when it comes to these things. We must stop them before they happen.

It is scary to watch, because with Germany's slow bureaucracy, they probably only need to get such a thing through once, and then it would take years of effort of fighting against billions Euros lobbies by the people, because our politicians are so corrupt and bought by them. People would probably have to get to the streets in millions, which is unlikely to happen with "advanced" digital rights topics like ad blocking.

Germany is very much in danger of becoming even worse of a democracy than it is already. I am not quite sure where I read it, but somewhere I recently read that Germany has moved down in democracy ranking to a tainted democracy. Which it is. If politics don't change soon, AfD will get even more votes next time around, and then Europe will have an enemy of Europe in its heart, which as well is the most populous country. Not sure I want to go further into the future of this imagination.

Many countries in the EU or elsewhere, which are still democratic for the most part face similar challenges. I just wish people would finally punish these opportunists and criminals we have in our governments and political parties, by voting for something else. But I guess the average German person is too disconnected and too uninformed and eats it all up every 4 years, instead of voting for progressive parties, to bring some fresh air.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am a huge fan of ad blockers, and as some one with ADHD I am very sympathetic to the argument, I suspect that your friend is not a lawyer, and/or is not very familiar with the limitations of the ADA.

He is not, nor am I, but I don’t see a reason you and I shouldn’t get the same legal protections as other groups. What about blind people who pipe the output of a screen through text-to-speech? Or people with epilepsy who can’t use flashy screens? Or someone who needs to enlarge print or change its contrast? There are plenty of medical reasons to need to alter their browser presentations.

Sounds like images are illegal

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#65
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot coerce me into believing that buying an ebook is any different than buying a physical copy. Either way I’m exchanging money for the right to possess a copy of it. Legal fictions be damned, if I pay for it, I own it, and can do whatever I want with it short of distributing copies of it to others.

It's because they managed to get DRM-circumvention into copyright laws in most countries, so they just have to put some kind of DRM in the ebook and then they can claim that any attempt to use the ebook outside of the official software is DRM-circumvention and therefore illegal, even if you are not necessarily infringing on any copyright per se.

Oh, I understand their arguments. I just wholly reject them as nonsensical. If I buy an ebook, I will happily strip the DRM so that I can read it on the device or app I choose, and I’m morally and ethically fine with that.

I use to rip DVDs so I could watch them on my laptop. Same idea here; same lack of moral conundrum. I wouldn’t share copies of those things outside my household, in the same way that I’ll let my kid read my physical books but I’m not scanning and sharing them on my website. But for my own personal use? Of course. I own those copies.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#66
post #53
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's also the main warning from the blog: the reasoning here is that adjusting how the website code executes on your computer is copyright infringement. The effects of that would go way beyond just adblockers.

> adjusting how the website code executes on your computer is copyright infringement. I would be interested in how German law works to make this so, IANAL but pretty sure USA copy right law does not work that way. Modification for personal use is normally going to be 100% acceptable under USA copyright law. The DMCA Anti-Circumvention is one exception I know to this but it was and is a big deal for being an exception…

Yes, in the US at least copyright is specifically about reproduction/distribution, not use. This goes to the core of things every HNer encounters like open source licenses vs EULAs for example. A copyright license only governs somebody's ability to legally make copies and reproduce/derive/distribute in turn, not to what use they put it to for themselves. Absent any other contractual agreement they're perfectly free to mark up/modify/cut up a book or painting or the like that they have acquired, and they can sell that specific copy too. But other then the exceptions of Fair Use they can't distribute that work or derivatives without a separate license. Granted, most proprietary software slaps on additional restrictions which sadly have been found legal despite the massive perversion of contract and society it has entailed, but that's not inherent.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#67
post #7
post #5

... how would it be enforced?

The same way laws against online piracy are enforced: attack the infrastructure. AdBlock Plus is being attacked right now. If distributing this software is made illegal, all blockers will vanish from the addon stores, and only very tech savvy users will have palatable Internet.

The mozilla devs were warned that mandatory addon signing and code verification turns them into the main arbiter which extensions may exist and thus a legal target. They insisted that for the sake of security it must be done anyway.

The spirits that I called...

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#68
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but the critical thing to know is that the ADA doesn’t mean that every assistive technology is mandated / required. Wheelchair users would benefit from dedicated elevators where their face is not butt-level with strangers in tight spaces; the ADA doesn’t mean not mandate this accommodation.

Is there an alternative technology that allows people to use websites without flashing ads?

screen readers / text based browsers / etc.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#69
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not how copyright works, at least not in this country, but probably not in many countries. You buy a book, not a license. Copyright luckily isn't an unlimited right to dictate exactly how a work is used. Ebooks sadly are different. I only buy DRM-free ebooks that grant me rights similar to what always exists for printed books, but that sadly limits what ebooks I can buy quite significantly.

You cannot coerce me into believing that buying an ebook is any different than buying a physical copy. Either way I’m exchanging money for the right to possess a copy of it. Legal fictions be damned, if I pay for it, I own it, and can do whatever I want with it short of distributing copies of it to others.

I own the hard drive. How I choose to arrange the little magnetic islands on the platter is my business. I do not exchange money to possess a copy of it, but sometimes I have to wait three days while libgen.li is doing whatever the fuck it's doing (being DDOSed, having Russian FSB datamine the logs, downtime to have all 14 million epubs get their covers replaced with the fuzziest 141x296 cover image that's a bad scan of a worn out paperback printed in the early 1980s, etc).

Copyright is unfortunately like one of the supernatural demons. You draw the little chalk circle on the ground and voice the incantations, and you think you're in control. That it can't leave the circle. But once summoned, this demon does not go away, and it just ignores the circle... it's just a scribble in chalk. Then you run around gibbering forever, crying about how it should've worked, you should've been safe while ignoring that it's a demonic force hellbent on burning down the Library of Alexandria and plunging humanity into a new dark age. Reject copyright. You'll never get it to play nice. They always feel hungry, always trying to take more. Every book on the New York Times Book Review Notable 100 list is available for 4 minutes of your bandwidth. Every Hugo winner, every Pulitzer novel, ever Nobel winner, every trashy little magazine you liked to skim through when you had to go to the grocery store with mama as a kid, all the classics of antiquity, everything. They're right there, waiting for you.

Re: Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

#70
post #25

Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this? What if it does it while showing me an ad for something at the same time? How does running a bit of software on my computer concern anyone other than me? I am not a lawyer and I haven't read the court's rulings but this seems assinine!

> Ok, I'll bite... what if an "ad" on a website is a bit of javascript that mines bitcoins using my GPU? Does this mean I have to let it do this?

Maybe. The Court has only ruled that the lower instance has to research the topic more, there is no clear answer yet. But it's really notable how incredible wild the judgment is. They are speaking about objectcode and bytecode, and which of them are protected by law or not. F**ing insane. It's not really clear whether they are actually talking about JavaScript, or if someone explained/understood it wrong, or if they probably mean WebAssembly? Is WebAssembly used for ads and handled by Adblockers?

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