On the one hand, it's not reasonable to treat "blocking" as the problem that needs a law. Sanity-preservation aside, when ISPs can charge people through the no

On the one hand, it's not reasonable to treat "blocking" as the problem that needs a law. Sanity-preservation aside, when ISPs can charge people through the nose for the amount of data being used, some form of blocking software IS REQUIRED. (If sites stop auto-running full-screen video ads with sound, or ISPs stop being complete thugs, then we can talk.) On the other hand, to the extent that people are more willing to pay ad-blocking companies than the web sites that provide content, I think something needs to change. Ad-blocking companies seem to earn a lot of revenue, disproportionate to their value-add. Compared to all the complex products in the world trying to make a buck, the DOM analyzers and regex lists in ad-blockers are hardly ground-breaking things worthy of massive income. They benefit primarily from having a huge audience. I've commented before[1] on how protocols might cage data use and scripting in a reasonable way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10407810