6 ms·

I'm curious about this point of view. Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser a

by c22 9y ago

I'm curious about this point of view. Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser and then didn't buy the newspaper? Would it be different if you did it at a newsstand? At a coffee shop? If I buy a newspaper, read it, and then give it to a friend, would that be a form of theft? Is using a Tivo to prerecord a show then fast-forwarding through the ads stealing? What about just using the mute button? What if I watch all the ads but never buy any of the advertised products? From my point of view advertisers pay to access channels where they believe their messages will have an impact. Presumably they will pay more for higher-impact channels and less for low-impact ones, it would be unreasonable for them to expect their message to have 100% consumer penetration. If people without technical expertise have chosen to package "valuable" content along with a low-impact advertising channel in a way where the ads can be trivially stripped and relying on these ads to be profitable I posit that these entities deserve to go out of business and stripping their ads is no more stealing than buying a gizmo from a company that has unwisely decided to offer their product for less than it cost to produce.

darawk 9y ago
> Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser and then didn't buy the newspaper? Would it be different if you did it at a newsstand? At a coffee shop? Reading through the glass may be a bit different, because the glass is transparent on purpose to entice you to buy the paper, so they intend for you to do that. That is, it's part of the deal they're making with you. > Is using a Tivo to prerecord a show then fast-forwarding through the ads stealing? Yes. > What about just using the mute button? Yes. > What if I watch all the ads but never buy any of the advertised products? No. Advertising is a risk taken by the advertiser. The contract is that they pay for the content and you consume the message. You're under no obligation to be impacted by that message. > From my point of view advertisers pay to access channels where they believe their messages will have an impact. Presumably they will pay more for higher-impact channels and less for low-impact ones, it would be unreasonable for them to expect their message to have 100% consumer penetration. If people without technical expertise have chosen to package "valuable" content along with a low-impact advertising channel in a way where the ads can be trivially stripped and relying on these ads to be profitable I posit that these entities deserve to go out of business and stripping their ads is no more stealing than buying a gizmo from a company that has unwisely decided to offer their product for less than it cost to produce. I think you're right in a certain sense, but also conflating some things. Let me clarify a bit. If a website clearly states "You must watch the ads in order to consume our content", then I believe it is stealing to contravene that. They have stated their terms, and are providing content to you contingent upon your adherence. If you break that agreement, you're stealing. Simple as that. If the agreement is not explicit, that's less clear. If the website does not say that you have to watch the ads to view the content, then i'd say that it's not stealing. Same with television, by the way. The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. I believe fundamentally that any content creator has the right to specify the terms by which their content is consumed. If one of those terms is 'watch the ads', then you are morally obligated to watch the ads. If they don't specify, then i'd say you're free to do as you wish.
- alex_young 9y ago
  > The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. No one owns your attention.
  - darawk 9y ago
    > This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. Indeed this is the question. If you haven't meaningfully entered an agreement, then I don't believe you're obligated to abide this term. However, that's sort of the question. What constitutes entering an agreement? How explicit do they have to be exactly to make it enforceable? I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems to me that there ought to be some standard by which you can be considered to have agreed to some sort of service-terms.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      If sites want to force the issue, they can block ad blockers. Also, with GDPR, this argument is about to become perilous.
    - stepvhen 9y ago
      as a baseline, to constitute entering an agreement, each party must have a reasonable idea of what they are agreeing to, as well as the capacity (mental, emotional, physical, rational, etc) to actually make such an agreement. to enforce an agreement, it must be recognized that some term.has been broken by some party. ad providers, as a collective (that is, no single actor is responsible by themselves, and not every actor is at fault) began breaking the terms of the implicit agreements with Pop-up ads, ads with sound, ads with visual motion, ads with full video, ads that look like real articles, ads that block actaul content from the website you are visiting, dishonest or misleading ads, targeted ads without the users consent, ads that are significantly louder than the video you are watching, ads that hijack your mouse, etc. each of these phenomena were introduced after previous terms were implicitly agreed upon, that is, they were introduced without informing the user beforehand. and so, as a collective, ad providers have broken the agreement much more and morw often than users who wholesale block ads. in this moral economy then, the users have the high ground.

by c22 9y ago

darawk 9y ago

> Would you consider it stealing if you read the before-the-fold content of a newspaper through the glass of the dispenser and then didn't buy the newspaper? Would it be different if you did it at a newsstand? At a coffee shop? Reading through the glass may be a bit different, because the glass is transparent on purpose to entice you to buy the paper, so they intend for you to do that. That is, it's part of the deal they're making with you. > Is using a Tivo to prerecord a show then fast-forwarding through the ads stealing? Yes. > What about just using the mute button? Yes. > What if I watch all the ads but never buy any of the advertised products? No. Advertising is a risk taken by the advertiser. The contract is that they pay for the content and you consume the message. You're under no obligation to be impacted by that message. > From my point of view advertisers pay to access channels where they believe their messages will have an impact. Presumably they will pay more for higher-impact channels and less for low-impact ones, it would be unreasonable for them to expect their message to have 100% consumer penetration. If people without technical expertise have chosen to package "valuable" content along with a low-impact advertising channel in a way where the ads can be trivially stripped and relying on these ads to be profitable I posit that these entities deserve to go out of business and stripping their ads is no more stealing than buying a gizmo from a company that has unwisely decided to offer their product for less than it cost to produce. I think you're right in a certain sense, but also conflating some things. Let me clarify a bit. If a website clearly states "You must watch the ads in order to consume our content", then I believe it is stealing to contravene that. They have stated their terms, and are providing content to you contingent upon your adherence. If you break that agreement, you're stealing. Simple as that. If the agreement is not explicit, that's less clear. If the website does not say that you have to watch the ads to view the content, then i'd say that it's not stealing. Same with television, by the way. The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. I believe fundamentally that any content creator has the right to specify the terms by which their content is consumed. If one of those terms is 'watch the ads', then you are morally obligated to watch the ads. If they don't specify, then i'd say you're free to do as you wish.

alex_young 9y ago
> The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. No one owns your attention.
- darawk 9y ago
  > This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party. Indeed this is the question. If you haven't meaningfully entered an agreement, then I don't believe you're obligated to abide this term. However, that's sort of the question. What constitutes entering an agreement? How explicit do they have to be exactly to make it enforceable? I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems to me that there ought to be some standard by which you can be considered to have agreed to some sort of service-terms.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    If sites want to force the issue, they can block ad blockers. Also, with GDPR, this argument is about to become perilous.
  - stepvhen 9y ago
    as a baseline, to constitute entering an agreement, each party must have a reasonable idea of what they are agreeing to, as well as the capacity (mental, emotional, physical, rational, etc) to actually make such an agreement. to enforce an agreement, it must be recognized that some term.has been broken by some party. ad providers, as a collective (that is, no single actor is responsible by themselves, and not every actor is at fault) began breaking the terms of the implicit agreements with Pop-up ads, ads with sound, ads with visual motion, ads with full video, ads that look like real articles, ads that block actaul content from the website you are visiting, dishonest or misleading ads, targeted ads without the users consent, ads that are significantly louder than the video you are watching, ads that hijack your mouse, etc. each of these phenomena were introduced after previous terms were implicitly agreed upon, that is, they were introduced without informing the user beforehand. and so, as a collective, ad providers have broken the agreement much more and morw often than users who wholesale block ads. in this moral economy then, the users have the high ground.