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> Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the sam

> Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the same package. The legal view here seems to be that a third party removed content B while delivering content A, and therefore violated the copyright of the provided work. It's not even framed as redistribution of copyrighted works, it's violating the "exclusive right of modification available under § 69c" I'm curious how this will play out. The only content you're interested in is content A, and the supplier chose a business model which requires you to consume content B against your will. Now they sued a third party which is stripping content B as a service to you. I believe a case needs to be made that content B is not part of the original work provided. Not easy though...

zeta0134 1y ago
It may be substantially simpler to acknowledge that there is no binding contract involved between me and the supplier of content B. Were this some sort of purchase or legal arrangement that I had consented to in some way, then the content provider would have a much stronger case. In practice, I arrive at any given site with nothing more than a crude hyperlink and almost no description of the contents. (Maybe I have a search page summary, often I don't. If I do it's usually rather out of date and incomplete.) I cannot trivially know whether content B is present, or what sort of agreement I may or may not be entering into, until data is actually transferred to my device. By that point, I typically already have content B, before I could possibly make an informed choice about whether I wanted to spend my bandwidth downloading it, what cost it may represent, etc. Technological solutions already exist here. A provider can choose to lock content behind a paywall, communicating an actual cost, and require that I pay it. Providers can also usually quite trivially detect ad blocking technology, and require that I disable it before delivering the content. (At that point, I am making an informed choice!) A provider doing neither of these things has a very weak case imho. I suppose we'll see if the courts agree.
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  Agree, but the publisher of content A is also the supplier of content B. They are sourced differently on delivery but they are legally delivered as a single piece of "original work" (as this is a law for PC-software, all included libraries in some app are also part of the "original work") Maybe a case can be made that the work is not shipped in entirety but needs to be assembled at the consumer...?
nobody9999 1y ago
>I believe a case needs to be made that content B is not part of the original work provided. >Not easy though... IANAL, and definitely not eine Rechtsanwalt. That said, assuming that digital ads work the same way in Germany as they do elsewhere, such ads are tacked on to the site after an auction that takes place moments before that ad is displayed. Given that the "copyright holder" of the site doesn't even know what ad will be displayed and, in point of fact, will likely never know which ads will be displayed to which individuals viewing their website, how is their "expression" being thwarted? Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here." If that's actually the case, just having a box where the ad would be that says "this is a space for advertisements" should be enough to satisfy "violations" of the copyright owner's "expression."
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  > Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here." Or he steers away from that and states "my program places an Ad here, removing this operation modifies my work", making not the Ad itself part of the work but the process (and outcome?) of an Ad being placed there... I do hope there's a better legal conclusion the court can take here. If I am legally required to execute arbitrary code on my machine as part of some openly accessible content, I expect a clear contract to be agreed upon...
daurentius523 1y ago
" that a third party removed content B" - which is insane, adblock in some browsers is integral part of the browser. By that definition the browser is third party. Should we ban links, dillo and lynx for not having a concept like js? Also EVERY browser is NOT 100% compatible with html/js specifications! Should we ban all browsers? What if browser changes behaviour after creation of website? Let's not skip legal implications which AGPL or GPL browser (ex GNOME Web) would have on supposed 'program' that results of opening the page? Would user of such browser always commit piracy? After all he was not given right to relicense supposed 'code' of the site, or did he when he informed website that he connects from such web browser which server accepted? Or did site broke the license by using engine to produce a result which cannot be distributed? > HTML = Hypertext Markup Language > A markup language is a text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document
- rickdeckard 1y ago
  Yes agree, but the case must be made legally, not technically. Legally these are all limitations the author of the original "work" can agree to accept, but he is still in his rights to not accept other more intentional modifications of his work, like an Adblocker. A computer program (for which this law was written) may also not execute in the same way on all machines it is executed on. Or: As an Author of a full-color graphic novel I may agree on my work to be printed in black&white and handed out on a specific occasion, but this doesn't waive my right to disagree on my original work being photocopied... --> I believe the case needs to be made that an article of a website is not a completed "work" in the sense of a compiled application, but something that is provided to the consumer for a range of applications (browser) to interpret and assemble using a range of tools. As the author doesn't provide those tools, he cannot legally dictate in which ways this is turned into a completed work by the consumer. If the author of that website doesn't want his page to be assembled in certain ways, he is free to provide his own means (app) or restrict access behind a mutual contract. But the publisher doesn't want this because he doesn't want the friction of a paywall or dedicated app/login, which is fine, but not a burden the legal system should carry for him then...
  - daurentius523 1y ago

zeta0134 1y ago

It may be substantially simpler to acknowledge that there is no binding contract involved between me and the supplier of content B. Were this some sort of purchase or legal arrangement that I had consented to in some way, then the content provider would have a much stronger case. In practice, I arrive at any given site with nothing more than a crude hyperlink and almost no description of the contents. (Maybe I have a search page summary, often I don't. If I do it's usually rather out of date and incomplete.) I cannot trivially know whether content B is present, or what sort of agreement I may or may not be entering into, until data is actually transferred to my device. By that point, I typically already have content B, before I could possibly make an informed choice about whether I wanted to spend my bandwidth downloading it, what cost it may represent, etc. Technological solutions already exist here. A provider can choose to lock content behind a paywall, communicating an actual cost, and require that I pay it. Providers can also usually quite trivially detect ad blocking technology, and require that I disable it before delivering the content. (At that point, I am making an informed choice!) A provider doing neither of these things has a very weak case imho. I suppose we'll see if the courts agree.

rickdeckard 1y ago
Agree, but the publisher of content A is also the supplier of content B. They are sourced differently on delivery but they are legally delivered as a single piece of "original work" (as this is a law for PC-software, all included libraries in some app are also part of the "original work") Maybe a case can be made that the work is not shipped in entirety but needs to be assembled at the consumer...?

nobody9999 1y ago

>I believe a case needs to be made that content B is not part of the original work provided. >Not easy though... IANAL, and definitely not eine Rechtsanwalt. That said, assuming that digital ads work the same way in Germany as they do elsewhere, such ads are tacked on to the site after an auction that takes place moments before that ad is displayed. Given that the "copyright holder" of the site doesn't even know what ad will be displayed and, in point of fact, will likely never know which ads will be displayed to which individuals viewing their website, how is their "expression" being thwarted? Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here." If that's actually the case, just having a box where the ad would be that says "this is a space for advertisements" should be enough to satisfy "violations" of the copyright owner's "expression."

rickdeckard 1y ago
> Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here." Or he steers away from that and states "my program places an Ad here, removing this operation modifies my work", making not the Ad itself part of the work but the process (and outcome?) of an Ad being placed there... I do hope there's a better legal conclusion the court can take here. If I am legally required to execute arbitrary code on my machine as part of some openly accessible content, I expect a clear contract to be agreed upon...

daurentius523 1y ago

" that a third party removed content B" - which is insane, adblock in some browsers is integral part of the browser. By that definition the browser is third party. Should we ban links, dillo and lynx for not having a concept like js? Also EVERY browser is NOT 100% compatible with html/js specifications! Should we ban all browsers? What if browser changes behaviour after creation of website? Let's not skip legal implications which AGPL or GPL browser (ex GNOME Web) would have on supposed 'program' that results of opening the page? Would user of such browser always commit piracy? After all he was not given right to relicense supposed 'code' of the site, or did he when he informed website that he connects from such web browser which server accepted? Or did site broke the license by using engine to produce a result which cannot be distributed? > HTML = Hypertext Markup Language > A markup language is a text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document

rickdeckard 1y ago
Yes agree, but the case must be made legally, not technically. Legally these are all limitations the author of the original "work" can agree to accept, but he is still in his rights to not accept other more intentional modifications of his work, like an Adblocker. A computer program (for which this law was written) may also not execute in the same way on all machines it is executed on. Or: As an Author of a full-color graphic novel I may agree on my work to be printed in black&white and handed out on a specific occasion, but this doesn't waive my right to disagree on my original work being photocopied... --> I believe the case needs to be made that an article of a website is not a completed "work" in the sense of a compiled application, but something that is provided to the consumer for a range of applications (browser) to interpret and assemble using a range of tools. As the author doesn't provide those tools, he cannot legally dictate in which ways this is turned into a completed work by the consumer. If the author of that website doesn't want his page to be assembled in certain ways, he is free to provide his own means (app) or restrict access behind a mutual contract. But the publisher doesn't want this because he doesn't want the friction of a paywall or dedicated app/login, which is fine, but not a burden the legal system should carry for him then...
- daurentius523 1y ago