That's not how copyright works. Copyright is violated when a work is distributed or reproduced (or performed or... there's a few categories). If I take a webs

That's not how copyright works. Copyright is violated when a work is distributed or reproduced (or performed or... there's a few categories). If I take a website, duplicate it, then publish it myself, I am engaging in copyright infringement. If another person comes along and views my website, they are not engaging in an illegal act. It's the act of distribution that is infringing, not the act of receiving. In your example, if a publisher creates a website and distributes their content, that publisher is exercising their rights to distribute that work. But there's no strings attached, there. Unless I sign some sort of binding contract that stipulates that I must view ads in order to receive the content, there is nothing in copyright law that says I'm in any way stealing or breaking the law by blocking those ads. And if such a contract was in place (say, a click-through ToS... though whether those are enforceable is a question), my blocking those ads would be a contractual violation but it would not be "theft" in any meaningful sense, nor would it violate copyright law (it would be a violation of that specific contract). So no, they are not "inherently the same thing". A publisher publishes their content. As a receiver of that content, I can do whatever I wish with it, including censoring/redacting the portions I don't want to view. Similarly, if I bought a newspaper and cut out all the ads before I read it, no reasonable person would consider that "theft".