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The 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 de
by Touche 11y ago
The 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.