6 ms·

To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the me

To be clear, this is not a value judgement. I pirate content sometimes, and I use adblockers, but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I realise that online ads have other implications such as tracking that, say, a blu-ray rip downloaded from a torrent doesn't have, but the reason for piracy doesn't change the fact that it is.

komali2 11mo ago
> but ad blocking is definitely piracy This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term. Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft? I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad. It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.
- HDThoreaun 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Nextgrid 11mo ago
    I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Nextgrid 11mo ago
        Sosumi? Next time I’ll instead pay someone to watch the videos on my behalf and then summarize me the videos sans-ads. Will you also sumi?
      - komali2 11mo ago
        You claim to know more than us. I would love to be educated: when did I enter into an agreement with YouTube that I must watch ads to use their website? YouTube is sueing me for damages. Their claim: I used their website but didn't watch the ads. (Maybe I used an ad blocker. Maybe I turned off my monitor and unplugged the speakers when the ads played. Maybe I walked away and let the ad play in a different room). What evidence do they submit in court to demonstrate I violated an agreement? You've made quite a few comments across this thread, as have others that support your position. Not even within the YouTube TOS has anyone pointed out a contractual obligation to view ads. Not to mention YouTube doesn't require you to agree to their TOS to view videos. With this in mind, it's perfectly understandable that someone could browse YouTube without any comprehension of something you seem totally confident on. I'm not being goofy here, I understand that YouTube wants me to view ads, I just genuinely am not aware of any contractual obligation to do so if I view videos.
  - komali2 11mo ago
    > The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video. Did I? Can you tell me where I made this deal? I navigated to YouTube.com, I don't see a contract, I don't see a place to sign or a hand to shake. Where is this bilateral agreement? I think what you meant to say was, YouTube really very much wants me to watch their ads, and I don't care to, so I won't. If your counter is that then YouTube will shut down, I say, oh well, I've already archived all the videos I care about, and someone else will replace them, or not, and either way life will go on.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      > I've already archived all the videos I care about That's quite literally what we call piracy.
      - Dylan16807 11mo ago
        What makes it different from VHS?
        JAlexoid 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... I don't know if you're making some edge case argument without elaborating, or if you're just being ridiculous.
      - justinclift 11mo ago
        No, that's just a you thing.
      - joquarky 11mo ago
        There are at least two words in your comment that do not align semantically with the definitions of those words.
  - rmunn 11mo ago
    What deal? What contract? I'm serious. Show me in the Youtube Terms of Service where it says that blocking ads is against the contract. I've looked. Carefully. There is no such language there.
    - HDThoreaun 11mo ago
      What contract do you make when you enter a grocery store?
      - defrost 11mo ago
        Nothing that obligates looking at in-store advertising. Deaf and blind people are allowed to enter despite their inability to see and hear adverts and jingles. Fully able people with headphones that avoid looking at ads are not ejected. You have a very weak position here that isn't advanced by this analogy.
        HDThoreaun 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        rmunn 11mo ago
        Where's the obligation to watch ads spelled out? The legal obligation to pay for groceries is spelled out in the law: they are the possession of the store, and if you want to acquire them you need to exchange something else of value (money) for them, at which point they become yours. What is the thing that compels you to watch ads on a service like Youtube? There's nothing in the law; if there is anything, it would be spelled out in the Youtube terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms https://www.youtube.com/t/terms Can you find it for me? I've looked. Many times. It isn't there.
        mrguyorama 11mo ago
        Grocery stores offer free samples and if you walk in, take a free sample, and leave, you are violating no laws, you are not morally depraved, and the store does not consider that a problem. This is true even when that free sample has "rules" like "not for adults" on a jar of cookies. Grocery stores often purposely price things below cost to get you in the door. If you go to your local grocer, buy a hundred subsidized Turkeys and nothing else, you have again committed no crime or moral violation even though you have explicitly cost the company money and they wanted you to buy other things. Terrestrial FM radio and TV broadcasts have existed for decades and both provide ample case law. You are just wrong, and Google knew that when they bought Youtube. Google also regularly reduces the ad pay out to Creators and increases their own take. Google can fuck off.
  - venturecruelty 11mo ago
    YouTube sends my browser a lot of data, a LOT of data. It's not my fault if some of that data doesn't make it to the screen, or if hardware on my network blocks certain DNS requests. No, I asked YouTube for a web page, and it sent one back to me. I'm not sure why everyone is so eager to let someone else dictate what code they run on their own machine. It's really strange.
- JAlexoid 11mo ago
  If we're going with bad analogies I have an opposite one - you're walking past the Nike store and the store has a promotion on "Watch 5 minutes of ads and get a free pair of shoes", but you instead kick the TV with the ads over, grab the shoes and run away. Or are you going to pretend that there's no agreement between you and YouTube that you're going to watch ads in exchange for the free content?
  - baumy 11mo ago
    I will not be pretending that. I am _asserting_ it. I made no such agreement with YouTube. I am very confused why you think I did
    - tailrecursion 11mo ago
      I agree with this. There was no meeting of the minds, no contract. But, the terms in the Google account probably include something about the terms for viewing youtube videos.
      - JAlexoid 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        jemmyw 11mo ago
        > You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business You are incorrect about that, which probably invalidates your other arguments. A condition of entry is not a contract. If you disobey the condition of entry then you have not broken a contract, and nothing changes between you and the business owner. They can ask you to leave and they can trespass you if you do not, but importantly, they can do those things for any reason they like, whether you obey the conditions of entry or not. It is not a contract by law, nor does it meet the definition of a contract. Similarly, YouTube can retract their website from public view, or attempt to block you specifically. But you have not entered into a contract with them by viewing the site.
Nextgrid 11mo ago
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I disagree. If you were buying every advertised product and falling for every advertised scam then fair enough. But assuming you were ignoring them, there is no issue with offloading the thing you would do anyway to a computer and save everyone the time/bandwidth.
- danpalmer 11mo ago
  The advertiser is buying the right to put an advert in front of you, not the right to a sale. Whether they convert you is up to them, their product, their offering, etc. I think you can never buy a single product from an ad and this is still piracy. That said, a lot of advertising is not performance/pay-per-click focused as you've described and is instead brand advertising. The point of the Coca-Cola christmas ads is not to get you to buy a coke today, it's to have a positive impression that builds over years. This sort of advertising is very hard to attribute sales to, but a good example of how you don't need to buy a product for seeing the ad to be worth something to the company.
  - Nextgrid 11mo ago
    And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one. If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube. It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.
      - pessimizer 11mo ago
BobaFloutist 11mo ago
Was it piracy to leave the room and make a snack during TV ads?
- JAlexoid 11mo ago
  It's becomes piracy when you create a new distribution without ads... which you're doing with ad blockers.
  - bcraven 11mo ago
    https://www.tivo.com/support/how-to/how-to-use-SkipMode https://www.tivo.com/support/how-to/how-to-use-SkipMode A data point is TiVo who are, apparently, still around and have a 'skip ads' button on recorded content.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      Still not a new distribution.
      - phantasmish 11mo ago
        TIL when I watch YouTube I’m distributing things.
  - Dylan16807 11mo ago
    That is not what distribution means. I am allowed to splice up my personal copies of videos.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      You are allowed to splice it up, when you have a legally acquired personal copy. But in this case you don't have one in the first place.
      - Dylan16807 11mo ago
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content This ship sailed when adblockers first went mainstream. (One of the early developers dropped their product because they thought it was unethical.) I think we’ve now moved to the consensus that adblocking when viewing content isn’t pirating. It’s similar. But not the same, in intent, mechanism or effect.
belorn 11mo ago
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. So it is a payment?!? Through out the last decades advertisement has not been liable under customer protection laws that regulate sales of products, and generally avoided local laws. The stated reason has been that advertisement is not a sale since the viewer is not recompensating the publisher. A product given for free is in a completely different category of law than that of a sale. Im old enough to remember when phone companies tried the tactic of giving away mobile phones for free, but which carried a binding contract with the carrier. Courts found that to be illegal and forced companies to sell them for 1 cent since a free product can not have a binding contract, which turned the transaction into a sale. The outcome of that meant that information of the full cost must be given to the customer in no unclear terms, since we are now dealing with a sale. Products given for free with advertisement is also exempted in EU from value added tax. The given reason (can't find the original legal source) was that viewers may watch nothing, some or all the advertisement, and that makes putting a monetary value and taxing it difficult. If you buy a subscription it can be taxed, but watching it free with adds do not. This is true for both physical and non-physical goods.
Lerc 11mo ago
I don't think it is piracy. Most advertising supported content is made freely available to you with the expectation that you will view the advertising. That expectation is not a contract and was a decision made without your involvement. You have no obligation to perform to someone else's expectations. If the content is made freely available you are free to watch it whichever way you choose. Choosing not to view the advertising might mean they don't get paid for producing their content, but you are under no obligation in the absence of an agreement. Piracy involves you deciding to acquire content that has not been made freely available.
- foobarian 11mo ago
  Morally, it is piracy IMO. If you applied the rule universally, the site would go out of business and then there would be no video to see.
  - weregiraffe 11mo ago
    All things supported by ads should go out of business. Ads are 100% morally wrong.
  - aspaviento 11mo ago
    Many people used to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks while watching a movie on TV. Was that considered piracy? Was it immoral?
  - Saigonautica 11mo ago
    I find this argument fascinating overall! I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward) Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function? Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?
blitz_skull 11mo ago
lol, no it’s not pirating.
Brendinooo 11mo ago
I'm pretty anti-piracy, and I don't think ad-blocking is piracy. Metaphors are dangerous, but, for the purposes of this specific comparison, I see piracy as breaking into a video store and taking a disc, and ad blocking as allowing some people into my house but not others. YouTube is free to block me as a user or put its content behind a paywall if it doesn't like me doing this, but I am also free to decide what comes into my browser.
- sidrag22 11mo ago
  and they won't block you, because they understand that their dominance of this particular style of video content requires allowing everyone in.
wafflemaker 11mo ago
Just use AdNausem (uBlock Origin mod) that clicks ALL THE ADDS. Problem solved! Wish more people used it, so the creators could again make money from ads.
marssaxman 11mo ago
While this is not an unreasonable way one could define "piracy", surely you must be aware that your definition is significantly more expansive than the one in common use?
- danpalmer 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Dylan16807 11mo ago
    The common use means violation of copyright, specifically distribution rights. Payment is not a good indicator. Tons of free content has no payment, and a good chunk of pirate content is paid for.
donohoe 11mo ago
No. Ad blocking is NOT piracy. It’s really that simple.
venturecruelty 11mo ago
1. It's not piracy. 2. I don't care. I choose what code runs on my machine, not Google. Google can run their own code on their own machines, that's fine. Once data is in my processor, I'm going to do what I want with it. Google doesn't have to concern themselves with what I'm doing on my own computer.
- pixelpoet 11mo ago
  > 1. It's not piracy. Simply re-asserting your opinion doesn't lend any extra weight to your argument. If both sides just repeat their opinions, that's not a discussion.
  - 3578987532688 11mo ago
    "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
  - venturecruelty 11mo ago
    You don't seem to understand. Allow me to clarify. I'm not interested in winning some silly argument on Hacker News, I'm interested in using the internet without being spied on or paying out the ass. I just want all of the Very Good Boys and Girls who are doing unpaid public relations work for Google to understand why the rest of us don't care what they think.
    - pixelpoet 11mo ago
      Oh my god, the smarminess... yes, nobody except you understands, of course. Thank goodness we have you to grace us with wisdom, while also declining to actually argue a point and just repeating your opinion (essentially, "nuh uh"). Whatever, you already said you don't care about actual rational discourse and regard everyone else as (un)paid actors, so this is pointless.
kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago
Ad blockers are recommended by the FBI as safety measures. I follow the FBI's advice. Internet ads are a vector for executing untrusted code that can invoke exploits and engage in invasive fingerprinting. Revert back to the 90s web with dumb ads and I'll look at them. It's amazing how blinkered people will be about potentially malicious programs downloaded from the internet just because it's hidden behind a browser interface.
- alex1138 11mo ago
  Forbes literally did this. Guys, please disable your adblockers People disable adblockers Malware!
brokenmachine 11mo ago
Just because you say it's piracy doesn't mean it is. When they provide all the equipment necessary to watch the content, and pay for the internet connection and power to my house, only then will they have a claim to what commands are run on my computer. But my computer, that I paid for, using the power and bandwidth that I pay for, does not play ads. If they don't like those terms, they can feel absolutely free to not send me any content they don't want me to watch.
taftster 11mo ago
I can absolutely decide to reject with impunity any and all packets that my computer receives, no matter if I initialized the request. I have not made a sale by reading some other website content and have absolute authority to discriminate over which data is allowed or blocked. Ads have absolutely no higher authority or preference over other packets that would obligate my bandwidth, attention, or time.
exodust 11mo ago
> "you're circumventing the method of paying for content" Because the payment method is a scam. Imagine if all car owners were charged the same price for fuel regardless of how much they used. Likewise, imagine watching 10 videos and being charged the same as someone who watches 200 videos. We should pay for what we watch. The end. Ad blocking is not piracy when the payment option is at best a blunt extraction of funds from my wallet, at worst a sleazy shakedown.
lloeki 11mo ago
> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. Without an ad blocker I can stand up and walk to the next room - optionally muting audio output - then come back. Is that fraud? Or should I drink a verification can?
EliteGadget 11mo ago
What you are describing is not piracy/Copyright infringement. You can say that we should not be blocking those ads, that is fine. But blocking ads is not making unauthorised copies of the content.
zarzavat 11mo ago
Some of us are old enough to remember televisions. It's not piracy to leave the room or turn the TV off while the ads are playing. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_Network,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N...
fsflover 11mo ago
> but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45177601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45177601

komali2 11mo ago

> but ad blocking is definitely piracy This is a huge escalation of an already over-stuffed term. Equating piracy to theft was bad enough, now choosing to not view ads is also piracy, which is theft? I try to be chill here but no, foot down, absolutely not. Blocking ads is nothing more than determing what content comes in on the wire to the computer you own, or what content is rendered in your web browser. That's it. If that means someone isn't making money when they could be, well, too bad so sad. It's like, "if you walk past a Nike store without pausing to hear the sales pitch, you are stealing from Nike." Capitalist hellscape.

HDThoreaun 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  I don’t make a deal when I visit a website, and especially not when I have to visit it because it became the de-facto standard when sharing video content. I just get my computer to ask for some bytes and the server happily sends them to me. If the server happened to send me some garbage in addition, I am free to make my computer ignore it.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Nextgrid 11mo ago
      Sosumi? Next time I’ll instead pay someone to watch the videos on my behalf and then summarize me the videos sans-ads. Will you also sumi?
    - komali2 11mo ago
      You claim to know more than us. I would love to be educated: when did I enter into an agreement with YouTube that I must watch ads to use their website? YouTube is sueing me for damages. Their claim: I used their website but didn't watch the ads. (Maybe I used an ad blocker. Maybe I turned off my monitor and unplugged the speakers when the ads played. Maybe I walked away and let the ad play in a different room). What evidence do they submit in court to demonstrate I violated an agreement? You've made quite a few comments across this thread, as have others that support your position. Not even within the YouTube TOS has anyone pointed out a contractual obligation to view ads. Not to mention YouTube doesn't require you to agree to their TOS to view videos. With this in mind, it's perfectly understandable that someone could browse YouTube without any comprehension of something you seem totally confident on. I'm not being goofy here, I understand that YouTube wants me to view ads, I just genuinely am not aware of any contractual obligation to do so if I view videos.
- komali2 11mo ago
  > The deal you make with YouTube is that you watch the ad in exchange for the video. Did I? Can you tell me where I made this deal? I navigated to YouTube.com, I don't see a contract, I don't see a place to sign or a hand to shake. Where is this bilateral agreement? I think what you meant to say was, YouTube really very much wants me to watch their ads, and I don't care to, so I won't. If your counter is that then YouTube will shut down, I say, oh well, I've already archived all the videos I care about, and someone else will replace them, or not, and either way life will go on.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    > I've already archived all the videos I care about That's quite literally what we call piracy.
    - Dylan16807 11mo ago
      What makes it different from VHS?
      - JAlexoid 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        Dylan16807 11mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... I don't know if you're making some edge case argument without elaborating, or if you're just being ridiculous.
    - justinclift 11mo ago
      No, that's just a you thing.
    - joquarky 11mo ago
      There are at least two words in your comment that do not align semantically with the definitions of those words.
- rmunn 11mo ago
  What deal? What contract? I'm serious. Show me in the Youtube Terms of Service where it says that blocking ads is against the contract. I've looked. Carefully. There is no such language there.
  - HDThoreaun 11mo ago
    What contract do you make when you enter a grocery store?
    - defrost 11mo ago
      Nothing that obligates looking at in-store advertising. Deaf and blind people are allowed to enter despite their inability to see and hear adverts and jingles. Fully able people with headphones that avoid looking at ads are not ejected. You have a very weak position here that isn't advanced by this analogy.
      - HDThoreaun 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        rmunn 11mo ago
        Where's the obligation to watch ads spelled out? The legal obligation to pay for groceries is spelled out in the law: they are the possession of the store, and if you want to acquire them you need to exchange something else of value (money) for them, at which point they become yours. What is the thing that compels you to watch ads on a service like Youtube? There's nothing in the law; if there is anything, it would be spelled out in the Youtube terms of service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms https://www.youtube.com/t/terms Can you find it for me? I've looked. Many times. It isn't there.
        mrguyorama 11mo ago
        Grocery stores offer free samples and if you walk in, take a free sample, and leave, you are violating no laws, you are not morally depraved, and the store does not consider that a problem. This is true even when that free sample has "rules" like "not for adults" on a jar of cookies. Grocery stores often purposely price things below cost to get you in the door. If you go to your local grocer, buy a hundred subsidized Turkeys and nothing else, you have again committed no crime or moral violation even though you have explicitly cost the company money and they wanted you to buy other things. Terrestrial FM radio and TV broadcasts have existed for decades and both provide ample case law. You are just wrong, and Google knew that when they bought Youtube. Google also regularly reduces the ad pay out to Creators and increases their own take. Google can fuck off.
- venturecruelty 11mo ago
  YouTube sends my browser a lot of data, a LOT of data. It's not my fault if some of that data doesn't make it to the screen, or if hardware on my network blocks certain DNS requests. No, I asked YouTube for a web page, and it sent one back to me. I'm not sure why everyone is so eager to let someone else dictate what code they run on their own machine. It's really strange.
JAlexoid 11mo ago
If we're going with bad analogies I have an opposite one - you're walking past the Nike store and the store has a promotion on "Watch 5 minutes of ads and get a free pair of shoes", but you instead kick the TV with the ads over, grab the shoes and run away. Or are you going to pretend that there's no agreement between you and YouTube that you're going to watch ads in exchange for the free content?
- baumy 11mo ago
  I will not be pretending that. I am _asserting_ it. I made no such agreement with YouTube. I am very confused why you think I did
  - tailrecursion 11mo ago
    I agree with this. There was no meeting of the minds, no contract. But, the terms in the Google account probably include something about the terms for viewing youtube videos.
    - JAlexoid 11mo ago
      [flagged]
      - jemmyw 11mo ago
        > You know that when a public pace of business has "No dogs" sign and you enter it, that you entered into a contract with that business You are incorrect about that, which probably invalidates your other arguments. A condition of entry is not a contract. If you disobey the condition of entry then you have not broken a contract, and nothing changes between you and the business owner. They can ask you to leave and they can trespass you if you do not, but importantly, they can do those things for any reason they like, whether you obey the conditions of entry or not. It is not a contract by law, nor does it meet the definition of a contract. Similarly, YouTube can retract their website from public view, or attempt to block you specifically. But you have not entered into a contract with them by viewing the site.

Nextgrid 11mo ago

> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. I disagree. If you were buying every advertised product and falling for every advertised scam then fair enough. But assuming you were ignoring them, there is no issue with offloading the thing you would do anyway to a computer and save everyone the time/bandwidth.

danpalmer 11mo ago
The advertiser is buying the right to put an advert in front of you, not the right to a sale. Whether they convert you is up to them, their product, their offering, etc. I think you can never buy a single product from an ad and this is still piracy. That said, a lot of advertising is not performance/pay-per-click focused as you've described and is instead brand advertising. The point of the Coca-Cola christmas ads is not to get you to buy a coke today, it's to have a positive impression that builds over years. This sort of advertising is very hard to attribute sales to, but a good example of how you don't need to buy a product for seeing the ad to be worth something to the company.
- Nextgrid 11mo ago
  And I have the right to pay someone to watch the ads + videos for me, and then summarize me the video minus ads. Just like I have the right to hand my ad-full newspaper to someone, have them cut out the ads and hand me back the now ad-free one. If both of those are legal and ethical (I’d be curious what argument someone would make against this), then offloading this work to a machine should be just as ethical.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    You can rationalize this any way you want, but at the end of the day you're screwing over not a faceless corporation - but the very people who put out videos on YouTube. It's fine if you're OK with it, but don't pretend that you're not doing that.
    - pessimizer 11mo ago

BobaFloutist 11mo ago

Was it piracy to leave the room and make a snack during TV ads?

JAlexoid 11mo ago
It's becomes piracy when you create a new distribution without ads... which you're doing with ad blockers.
- bcraven 11mo ago
  https://www.tivo.com/support/how-to/how-to-use-SkipMode https://www.tivo.com/support/how-to/how-to-use-SkipMode A data point is TiVo who are, apparently, still around and have a 'skip ads' button on recorded content.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    Still not a new distribution.
    - phantasmish 11mo ago
      TIL when I watch YouTube I’m distributing things.
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  That is not what distribution means. I am allowed to splice up my personal copies of videos.
  - JAlexoid 11mo ago
    You are allowed to splice it up, when you have a legally acquired personal copy. But in this case you don't have one in the first place.
    - Dylan16807 11mo ago

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content This ship sailed when adblockers first went mainstream. (One of the early developers dropped their product because they thought it was unethical.) I think we’ve now moved to the consensus that adblocking when viewing content isn’t pirating. It’s similar. But not the same, in intent, mechanism or effect.

belorn 11mo ago

> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. So it is a payment?!? Through out the last decades advertisement has not been liable under customer protection laws that regulate sales of products, and generally avoided local laws. The stated reason has been that advertisement is not a sale since the viewer is not recompensating the publisher. A product given for free is in a completely different category of law than that of a sale. Im old enough to remember when phone companies tried the tactic of giving away mobile phones for free, but which carried a binding contract with the carrier. Courts found that to be illegal and forced companies to sell them for 1 cent since a free product can not have a binding contract, which turned the transaction into a sale. The outcome of that meant that information of the full cost must be given to the customer in no unclear terms, since we are now dealing with a sale. Products given for free with advertisement is also exempted in EU from value added tax. The given reason (can't find the original legal source) was that viewers may watch nothing, some or all the advertisement, and that makes putting a monetary value and taxing it difficult. If you buy a subscription it can be taxed, but watching it free with adds do not. This is true for both physical and non-physical goods.

Lerc 11mo ago

I don't think it is piracy. Most advertising supported content is made freely available to you with the expectation that you will view the advertising. That expectation is not a contract and was a decision made without your involvement. You have no obligation to perform to someone else's expectations. If the content is made freely available you are free to watch it whichever way you choose. Choosing not to view the advertising might mean they don't get paid for producing their content, but you are under no obligation in the absence of an agreement. Piracy involves you deciding to acquire content that has not been made freely available.

foobarian 11mo ago
Morally, it is piracy IMO. If you applied the rule universally, the site would go out of business and then there would be no video to see.
- weregiraffe 11mo ago
  All things supported by ads should go out of business. Ads are 100% morally wrong.
- aspaviento 11mo ago
  Many people used to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks while watching a movie on TV. Was that considered piracy? Was it immoral?
- Saigonautica 11mo ago
  I find this argument fascinating overall! I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward) Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function? Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?

blitz_skull 11mo ago

lol, no it’s not pirating.

Brendinooo 11mo ago

I'm pretty anti-piracy, and I don't think ad-blocking is piracy. Metaphors are dangerous, but, for the purposes of this specific comparison, I see piracy as breaking into a video store and taking a disc, and ad blocking as allowing some people into my house but not others. YouTube is free to block me as a user or put its content behind a paywall if it doesn't like me doing this, but I am also free to decide what comes into my browser.

sidrag22 11mo ago
and they won't block you, because they understand that their dominance of this particular style of video content requires allowing everyone in.

wafflemaker 11mo ago

Just use AdNausem (uBlock Origin mod) that clicks ALL THE ADDS. Problem solved! Wish more people used it, so the creators could again make money from ads.

marssaxman 11mo ago

While this is not an unreasonable way one could define "piracy", surely you must be aware that your definition is significantly more expansive than the one in common use?

danpalmer 11mo ago
[flagged]
- Dylan16807 11mo ago
  The common use means violation of copyright, specifically distribution rights. Payment is not a good indicator. Tons of free content has no payment, and a good chunk of pirate content is paid for.

donohoe 11mo ago

No. Ad blocking is NOT piracy. It’s really that simple.

venturecruelty 11mo ago

1. It's not piracy. 2. I don't care. I choose what code runs on my machine, not Google. Google can run their own code on their own machines, that's fine. Once data is in my processor, I'm going to do what I want with it. Google doesn't have to concern themselves with what I'm doing on my own computer.

pixelpoet 11mo ago
> 1. It's not piracy. Simply re-asserting your opinion doesn't lend any extra weight to your argument. If both sides just repeat their opinions, that's not a discussion.
- 3578987532688 11mo ago
  "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
- venturecruelty 11mo ago
  You don't seem to understand. Allow me to clarify. I'm not interested in winning some silly argument on Hacker News, I'm interested in using the internet without being spied on or paying out the ass. I just want all of the Very Good Boys and Girls who are doing unpaid public relations work for Google to understand why the rest of us don't care what they think.
  - pixelpoet 11mo ago
    Oh my god, the smarminess... yes, nobody except you understands, of course. Thank goodness we have you to grace us with wisdom, while also declining to actually argue a point and just repeating your opinion (essentially, "nuh uh"). Whatever, you already said you don't care about actual rational discourse and regard everyone else as (un)paid actors, so this is pointless.

kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago

Ad blockers are recommended by the FBI as safety measures. I follow the FBI's advice. Internet ads are a vector for executing untrusted code that can invoke exploits and engage in invasive fingerprinting. Revert back to the 90s web with dumb ads and I'll look at them. It's amazing how blinkered people will be about potentially malicious programs downloaded from the internet just because it's hidden behind a browser interface.

alex1138 11mo ago
Forbes literally did this. Guys, please disable your adblockers People disable adblockers Malware!

brokenmachine 11mo ago

Just because you say it's piracy doesn't mean it is. When they provide all the equipment necessary to watch the content, and pay for the internet connection and power to my house, only then will they have a claim to what commands are run on my computer. But my computer, that I paid for, using the power and bandwidth that I pay for, does not play ads. If they don't like those terms, they can feel absolutely free to not send me any content they don't want me to watch.

taftster 11mo ago

I can absolutely decide to reject with impunity any and all packets that my computer receives, no matter if I initialized the request. I have not made a sale by reading some other website content and have absolute authority to discriminate over which data is allowed or blocked. Ads have absolutely no higher authority or preference over other packets that would obligate my bandwidth, attention, or time.

exodust 11mo ago

> "you're circumventing the method of paying for content" Because the payment method is a scam. Imagine if all car owners were charged the same price for fuel regardless of how much they used. Likewise, imagine watching 10 videos and being charged the same as someone who watches 200 videos. We should pay for what we watch. The end. Ad blocking is not piracy when the payment option is at best a blunt extraction of funds from my wallet, at worst a sleazy shakedown.

lloeki 11mo ago

> you're circumventing the method of paying for content. Without an ad blocker I can stand up and walk to the next room - optionally muting audio output - then come back. Is that fraud? Or should I drink a verification can?

EliteGadget 11mo ago

What you are describing is not piracy/Copyright infringement. You can say that we should not be blocking those ads, that is fine. But blocking ads is not making unauthorised copies of the content.

zarzavat 11mo ago

Some of us are old enough to remember televisions. It's not piracy to leave the room or turn the TV off while the ads are playing. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_Network,_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Broadcasting_Co._v._Dish_N...

fsflover 11mo ago

> but ad blocking is definitely piracy – you're circumventing the method of paying for content https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45177601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45177601