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Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal

37 points by robtherobber 1y ago

egorfine 1y ago
The one good news about this piece of brilliant German bureaucracy is that this legislation would be the easiest to ignore.
roscas 1y ago
Germany could soon be declared illegal by Mozilla and others. That said... this is a wrong move. We all know that. But like I said before, those marketing associations have loads of money and they make politics happy. Then there is the elephant on the room: Google. What they lobby and done with Chromium to change the browser so it won't be possible to block ads, it is a huge disaster for the people. Facebook is also the problem. The company that want's to track you from age 0 up to you die. And since they do track you from the moment you have a computer (aka smartphone), they will spend the money companies give them for them to put ads on your face. Let's not forget also Amazon and many other advertising companies. Privacy and data collection are the main concern here. Since that already happens, we should not be talking about ad blocking. We should be talking about how to split Google and Facebook in several companies. And make them stop collecting people data and active tracking.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  I can empathize with websites that lost revenue due to adblock being so prevalent. This has driven websites to put up a paywall. The internet was much better when it was ad driven than paywall driven like it is now. I realize that my opinion is unpopular on HN. Website owners need to eat too.
  - fodmap 1y ago
    Ads in the 'good old days' were generic ads, not anti-privacy, tracking hungry like now. I don't mind the former but I'm active against the latter.
    - Suzuran 1y ago
      Not to mention the bad actors that use ad networks to drop malware, and the ad networks that don't give a shit because all money is green.
  - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    I used to spend hours getting rid of ads in the old days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron
  - account42 1y ago
    I can't: ads are simply unethical. If you depend on ads, find a better business model.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > The internet was much better when it was ad driven than paywall driven like it is now. No. It was the same crap. We disabled javascript in old browsers and the internet worked as intended. Nowadays the browser is written in javascript. :(
gausswho 1y ago
The remarkable state of affairs here is that this has nothing to do with blocking ads. These sites can serve ads the same way they serve all their imagery. They don't do that because it's more profitable to turn your device into a tracking and serving mechanism. By the same argument they could claim the right to mine crypto across all their visitors' devices.
- account42 1y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand why the court even accepted the case. Next they'll sue scissor and pen manufacturers because those allow you to cut out or pain over ads in a physical news paper? There is no reason why copyright would give website owners authority over what you do with the content on your computer once they provide it to you.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912085
fontsgenerator 1y ago
If Germany moves forward with classifying DOM/CSS modifications as a copyright violation, this could set a really troubling precedent—not just for ad blockers but for any extension that customizes the browsing experience (like accessibility tools or dark mode). The browser is supposed to be user-controlled. Curious how courts will distinguish between legitimate user customization and illegal alteration

37 points by robtherobber 1y ago

The one good news about this piece of brilliant German bureaucracy is that this legislation would be the easiest to ignore.

roscas 1y ago

Germany could soon be declared illegal by Mozilla and others. That said... this is a wrong move. We all know that. But like I said before, those marketing associations have loads of money and they make politics happy. Then there is the elephant on the room: Google. What they lobby and done with Chromium to change the browser so it won't be possible to block ads, it is a huge disaster for the people. Facebook is also the problem. The company that want's to track you from age 0 up to you die. And since they do track you from the moment you have a computer (aka smartphone), they will spend the money companies give them for them to put ads on your face. Let's not forget also Amazon and many other advertising companies. Privacy and data collection are the main concern here. Since that already happens, we should not be talking about ad blocking. We should be talking about how to split Google and Facebook in several companies. And make them stop collecting people data and active tracking.

aurareturn 1y ago
I can empathize with websites that lost revenue due to adblock being so prevalent. This has driven websites to put up a paywall. The internet was much better when it was ad driven than paywall driven like it is now. I realize that my opinion is unpopular on HN. Website owners need to eat too.
- fodmap 1y ago
  Ads in the 'good old days' were generic ads, not anti-privacy, tracking hungry like now. I don't mind the former but I'm active against the latter.
  - Suzuran 1y ago
    Not to mention the bad actors that use ad networks to drop malware, and the ad networks that don't give a shit because all money is green.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  I used to spend hours getting rid of ads in the old days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron
- account42 1y ago
  I can't: ads are simply unethical. If you depend on ads, find a better business model.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > The internet was much better when it was ad driven than paywall driven like it is now. No. It was the same crap. We disabled javascript in old browsers and the internet worked as intended. Nowadays the browser is written in javascript. :(

gausswho 1y ago

The remarkable state of affairs here is that this has nothing to do with blocking ads. These sites can serve ads the same way they serve all their imagery. They don't do that because it's more profitable to turn your device into a tracking and serving mechanism. By the same argument they could claim the right to mine crypto across all their visitors' devices.

account42 1y ago
Yeah, I don't understand why the court even accepted the case. Next they'll sue scissor and pen manufacturers because those allow you to cut out or pain over ads in a physical news paper? There is no reason why copyright would give website owners authority over what you do with the content on your computer once they provide it to you.

ChrisArchitect 1y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912085

fontsgenerator 1y ago

If Germany moves forward with classifying DOM/CSS modifications as a copyright violation, this could set a really troubling precedent—not just for ad blockers but for any extension that customizes the browsing experience (like accessibility tools or dark mode). The browser is supposed to be user-controlled. Curious how courts will distinguish between legitimate user customization and illegal alteration