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The controversial part isn't the adblocking per se, but the viewing of pages that have ads while using an adblocker. It's fine to decide that ad networks don't
by ikeboy 11y ago
The controversial part isn't the adblocking per se, but the viewing of pages that have ads while using an adblocker.
It's fine to decide that ad networks don't have a "right" to run code on your machine, but the moral response (assuming you don't have an answer to the "consume content question") is to configure your adblocker to close any tab that would otherwise load an ad. If instead, you decide to view the page without the ad, then you need some answer beyond "I don't give ad networks the right to run code on my machine".
(I'm not saying ad blocking is morally wrong, just that your justification for it isn't sufficient. I block ads myself.)
- Touche 11y agoThe answer is the same as why you are morally justified in skipping commercials on your DVR, or ripping ads out of a magazine. Content creators do not get to decide how you view their content.
- ikeboy 11y agoI notice you did not include pirating movies. Do you think there's a difference?
- Touche 11y agoOf course, pirated movies are not acquired legally. We can debate the (moral) legitimacy of the laws, but that's a different animal than modifying content that you have legally obtained.
- anonymousab 11y agoSo if websites sent you a license agreement before serving content, which required you to load the ads for that content as the condition of viewing it, would blocking ads at that point be illegal? If this became a standard, automatic component of the web and of browsers, known at install time, wouldn't that move ad blocking into poor legal territory?
- Touche 11y agoIANAL so I can't answer your question. But I think we can posit a world in which advertisers have garnered enough political clout to enact anti-ad blocking laws and that would shift the conversation. At that point it still wouldn't be equivalent to pirating, IMO, but rather more like using DeCSS to circumvent DVD scrambling.
- ikeboy 11y ago>At that point it still wouldn't be equivalent to pirating, IMO, but rather more like using DeCSS to circumvent DVD scrambling. You're not paying. This seems more like borrowing a DVD from a library or friend, then ripping it using such software and watching it after you return it.
- Touche 11y agoIt's not, the creators (the website) directly gave it to me. I'm not borrowing it from someone that paid. My browser sent them a GET and they replied with 200 OK and some content. Whether I paid or not is irrelevant; they voluntarily gave it to me.
- ikeboy 11y agoDo you read every sites' TOS first to make sure they don't outlaw ad-blocking? If they do, it may be illegal under the CFAA, although there seems to to be conflicting precedents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Drew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Drew says TOS aren't CFAA, but the law that tried to make it explicit failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#A... In any event, it would be breach of contract.) See also http://www.cnet.com/news/web-ad-blocking-may-not-be-entirely-legal/ http://www.cnet.com/news/web-ad-blocking-may-not-be-entirely...
- Touche 11y agoIANAL so I don't know whether I am required to read or obey a site's TOS, or which parts of a TOS are legally binding or not. My intuition is that they cannot restrict me from blocking ads with their TOS, but again IANAL so it's possible I'm wrong here.
- ikeboy 11y agoSee http://harknesslabs.com/post/133804756984/are-adblock-companies-legal http://harknesslabs.com/post/133804756984/are-adblock-compan... and HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10615889 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10615889
- Grishnakh 11y agoBS. There is no contract if I have not signed anything. Viewing a website does not constitute a contract. Websites can take their TOS and shove them up their asses. If they don't want me seeing content without blocking ads, they are free to refuse to send me that content without me proving I've viewed the ads.
- ikeboy 11y agoIt depends. See https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-terms-service https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-t...
- gcr 11y agoThere is one important difference. The user paid for their cable subscription beforehand. The user paid for the magazine beforehand. That is not necessarily true for pirating movies.
- wongarsu 11y agoPirating movies has more similarities with stealing magazines than with ripping ads out of them.
- criddell 11y agoI have a confession. I rode the bus last week and the entire time I was reading my book. I never read any of the overhead ads before getting off the bus.
- ikeboy 11y agoYou're paying for the bus, correct?
- dheera 11y agoI want to build an augmented reality app (that runs on, say, HoloLens) that blocks all ads in real life and replaces them with historic works of art.
- realkitkat 11y agoJust a thoight, but in all likelihood it will be the exact opposite. With the eventual proliferation of functional VR tech that is available for everyone, we're likely to see every surface turn into an advertisement space. Every surface being re-painted in interior designs, and other content from the future VR advertisement conglomerates. Thus, with adblocked augmented reality, we may indeed be looking at a dystopian future of a world of plain and clean [morphing] surfaces that only exist to be augmented.
- fucking_tragedy 11y agoBefore Netflix, did you sit and watch every commercial intently, never breaking concentration? I don't pay for Hulu without ads and I turn down the sound and go about my business while they play. While driving do you pay attention to each billboard or ignore them? Do you switch radio stations when commercials begin and the content you wanted to hear is over? My response is that it has always been my right to decide what I see and pay attention to. Adblockers are the extension and automation of my will. I shed no tears if you don't get a +1 in impressions according to the metrics your advertising network keeps, because if they took the time to gather the same statistics for other advertisements I encounter in my life, they'd get the same result. That lack of impressions implies something important: your mode of advertising/revenue generation is shit and it should be changed. Luckily, it seems enough people think the same way that it can't be ignored. Advertising is ugly, it is an unwanted distraction and it is often visual pollution. Take a drive through districts that ban billboard advertising. The obstruction of natural beauty and assault on the senses becomes offensive on your return to areas that have no such restrictions. Computers make it easier to track who views ads, something that's hard to track in real life. Computers also make it easier to automatically apply that mental adblock, something that's also hard to do in real life.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dheera 11y agoI believe that for any electrical signals that enter my private space or privately-owned devices, I have the right to do whatever I want with, including decide how to render or display said signals, within the confines of my private space. If you want to ask me to pay before those bytes will be sent to my private space, that's fine. You can recommend, but you cannot impose that I use a certain way to display your information. If I prefer using Lynx to view your website, I have the right to do that (and it won't show your ads because it's not even graphical). If I prefer using a modified version of Chromium, that's no different. Ad blocking on a web browser is no different from muting the TV and grabbing a snack when the ads come on. Yes, I understand advertising is a business model. That business model should take into account that a certain fraction of users are going to block them. If too many users start blocking ads, we can and will develop new business models to drive businesses. For example, perhaps a new form of advertising could be fun for the user, such that they wouldn't want to block them.
- Touche 11y agoOf course you do. We have a long history of modifying content to our liking. People listen to certain rock songs backwards thinking there is a satanic message hidden. People watch movie trilogies in orders other than the one the filmmakers intended (Such as the Star Wars Machete Order). People create mods for games that change the look and some times playing style. When CSS first came about, modifying styles was outright encouraged. Today there are numerous browser extensions that modify the experience of Reddit, Facebook, and other popular sites. Hell, there are several businesses built on modifying Gmail for better workflows.
- zeta0134 11y agoThis, so much this. Let's not forget also that most ad blockers fail to block the best kind of advertising: curated, first-party advertisements that are delivered as part of the original page, and which read like the other articles on the same site. Kotaku does a great job with this and their sponsored posts. It's not advertising itself that I object to, it's distractingly annoying motion and sound, and it's third party content injection. Advertising can be great, but the current trend is for it to be flashy and obnoxious, and that's not OK.
- Grishnakh 11y agoSorry, but that's crap. I have the absolute right to request data from other websites. If they choose to send me that data, that's their decision. If they choose to include ads, that's also their right, but I in turn have the right to ignore or block those ads and not run that Javascript on my computer. If they don't like this, they don't have to send the content to me. If they want to try to make it difficult for me to see the content without also seeing the ads, they have that right. I have the right to take extra measures to block the ads anyway and still view the content. Again, if they don't like this, they don't have to send the content to me at all. If they really want to make sure I view the ads, they are perfectly within their rights to only show ads first, and then make me take a test to ensure I looked at the ads and understood them and remembered things about them, and only then show me the content after having proved I viewed their ads and paid close attention to them. They could also devise measures to detect ad-blocking, and then block my IP address from viewing content in the future until I pay a fee or prove that I've viewed ads as above. As long as websites willingly send me content, I have every right to view it, however I choose to, and I do not care what a bunch of pro-advertising moralists in discussion forums think about it, and I utterly reject their insane idea that some unwritten contract exists that somehow requires me to not view content without viewing ads.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Zelmor 11y agoI call bullshit. We are force-fed advertisement on the way to work, to vacation, and while browsing the web. Your primitive reptilian brain has been sold to the highest bidder. What right do these corporations have to manipulate people into buying things, making them feel incomplete for they do not have the abs, the breasts, and phones and the shoes that the sexy models of these ad boards have? Burn them all, I say. Too bad nobody campaigns for elections with stating they will get rid of all and every advertisement not closely tied to a local or nearby business.
- ikeboy 11y agoI did not suggest that corporations have a right to advertise. I suggested that you don't have a right to consume content while blocking ads within, and if you don't want those ads, you shouldn't view the page.
- Zelmor 11y agoYour failing monetization strategy is none of my concern. Run a Patreon or allow me to donate once every while instead of potentially hurting me psychologically. If you hold the opinion that i have no right to your ccontent without paying, use a paywall or similar. But your suggestion that I have no right to something is utter hogwash. Where are your basis for such claims? Where have I signed anything regarding this? People calling out others and saying that another person has no right to this and that is nothing but forceful catering. You see others live happily and call them out on it. Go live in the pit of your misery if you will, but cease telling others what they can or cannot do.
- wtbob 11y agoThat's an interesting idea. I'd support an ad blocker which took a certain set amount of money per month and divvied it up amongst the sites whose ads it blocked. Heck, I'd probably throw $50/month into it.