5 ms·

You're visiting the site - you agree to it. Words have meaning and it's not theft, just like a store requiring you to wear a shirt isn't stealing from you, you

You're visiting the site - you agree to it. Words have meaning and it's not theft, just like a store requiring you to wear a shirt isn't stealing from you, you have to buy the shirt.

gpm 5y ago
A store requiring you wear a shirt isn't theft. A store seeing you walked into the store, and without telling you in advance that this is the deal, picking your pocket for $20 and forcing a shirt on over your head is theft, even if they afterwards claim that the $20 is for the shirt. I'm not sure I agree with the advertising is theft analogy, but this is a bad counter example.
Retric 5y ago
By reading this comment you agree to pay me 100$. Except that’s not how contracts work. A website is easily capable of requiring users to accept an actual agreement to see the content, but simply adding it to HTML isn’t a contract any more than listing it in some TOS somewhere is.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  It is not a contract and there exist a very similar arrangement that has existed for way longer: commercial radio
  - Retric 5y ago
    Commercial radio doesn’t cause me to connect to third party services.
  - lp0_on_fire 5y ago
    I don't incur additional costs for listing to a radio station that decides to play 30 second HD audio ads between segments. Unlike going to a blog to _read_ something and being forced to watch (and pay for the bandwidth) a 30 second HD video. I asked for a few hundred kb of data. They send me what could amount to several hundred megs of data. Many places in the world still are subject to metered data.
    - dantheman 5y ago
      What do you mean of course your endure costs - you're paying for the electricity running the radio, and the wear and tear on your device.
      - Retric 5y ago
        At an effectively constant rate independent of content.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    Also a broadcast stream where users pay exactly the same amount for the airwaves (nothing) regardless of how much content gets sent out across it. This is not like an IP stream where you impose a quite literal cost on the receiver by sending more data than they expected.
8note 5y ago
More specifically, you are choosing to render that content. You could use an ad blocker to be more selective about which content you render
- Retric 5y ago
  By that logic anyone failing to secure their servers are actively inviting hackers to do whatever they want. After all they connected to the internet.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  This is not how consent works.
nonameiguess 5y ago
This doesn't seem to follow from the example at all. What you're saying would be true if people only visited sites repeatedly, knowing what they were going to get. But much of Internet browsing is just following links, with text indicating you're going to get a story about topic X, only to arrive and see that, no, you get a autoplay video about topic Y, possible at 1 in the morning when your wife is in bed next to you trying to sleep. Imagine you ordered a book through the mail, knowing the book vendor offered it for free, but not knowing how, only after the fact finding out Toyota paid them to give away promotional pickup trucks, except you had to pay the shipping expense for a truck to go through the mail. Is that theft? How is bloating the web with unrelated content a user has to pay for without knowing in advance they'll be getting it or even how much they'll be getting any different? This is quite a bit different than all previous forms of advertising, which were directly embedded into the content media and added no cost to deliver. There was no way to order a newspaper and be delivered a video. Analog television streams were broadcast, with airwaves publicly allocated, not paid for by the consumer (you paid for the right to decode them).
jjulius 5y ago
>You're visiting the site - you agree to it... Do I, though? If I've never been to the site before and don't know what's on it, my simply visiting the site for the first time isn't consent to display an auto-playing video.

You're visiting the site - you agree to it. Words have meaning and it's not theft, just like a store requiring you to wear a shirt isn't stealing from you, you have to buy the shirt.

gpm 5y ago

A store requiring you wear a shirt isn't theft. A store seeing you walked into the store, and without telling you in advance that this is the deal, picking your pocket for $20 and forcing a shirt on over your head is theft, even if they afterwards claim that the $20 is for the shirt. I'm not sure I agree with the advertising is theft analogy, but this is a bad counter example.

Retric 5y ago

By reading this comment you agree to pay me 100$. Except that’s not how contracts work. A website is easily capable of requiring users to accept an actual agreement to see the content, but simply adding it to HTML isn’t a contract any more than listing it in some TOS somewhere is.

skinkestek 5y ago
It is not a contract and there exist a very similar arrangement that has existed for way longer: commercial radio
- Retric 5y ago
  Commercial radio doesn’t cause me to connect to third party services.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  I don't incur additional costs for listing to a radio station that decides to play 30 second HD audio ads between segments. Unlike going to a blog to _read_ something and being forced to watch (and pay for the bandwidth) a 30 second HD video. I asked for a few hundred kb of data. They send me what could amount to several hundred megs of data. Many places in the world still are subject to metered data.
  - dantheman 5y ago
    What do you mean of course your endure costs - you're paying for the electricity running the radio, and the wear and tear on your device.
    - Retric 5y ago
      At an effectively constant rate independent of content.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  Also a broadcast stream where users pay exactly the same amount for the airwaves (nothing) regardless of how much content gets sent out across it. This is not like an IP stream where you impose a quite literal cost on the receiver by sending more data than they expected.

8note 5y ago

More specifically, you are choosing to render that content. You could use an ad blocker to be more selective about which content you render

Retric 5y ago
By that logic anyone failing to secure their servers are actively inviting hackers to do whatever they want. After all they connected to the internet.
goodpoint 5y ago
This is not how consent works.

nonameiguess 5y ago

This doesn't seem to follow from the example at all. What you're saying would be true if people only visited sites repeatedly, knowing what they were going to get. But much of Internet browsing is just following links, with text indicating you're going to get a story about topic X, only to arrive and see that, no, you get a autoplay video about topic Y, possible at 1 in the morning when your wife is in bed next to you trying to sleep. Imagine you ordered a book through the mail, knowing the book vendor offered it for free, but not knowing how, only after the fact finding out Toyota paid them to give away promotional pickup trucks, except you had to pay the shipping expense for a truck to go through the mail. Is that theft? How is bloating the web with unrelated content a user has to pay for without knowing in advance they'll be getting it or even how much they'll be getting any different? This is quite a bit different than all previous forms of advertising, which were directly embedded into the content media and added no cost to deliver. There was no way to order a newspaper and be delivered a video. Analog television streams were broadcast, with airwaves publicly allocated, not paid for by the consumer (you paid for the right to decode them).

jjulius 5y ago

>You're visiting the site - you agree to it... Do I, though? If I've never been to the site before and don't know what's on it, my simply visiting the site for the first time isn't consent to display an auto-playing video.