> > Web services are 'in' because that's the only way software can't be pirated. > That is cognitive dissonance. If your revenue is derived from advertising th

> > Web services are 'in' because that's the only way software can't be pirated. > That is cognitive dissonance. If your revenue is derived from advertising then users installing ad blocking software is revenue-equivalent to users pirating your software. The fact that it's legal for users to do when piracy is not provides no support for argument that ad-supported services are on stronger financial footing. It is not difficult to foresee a world in which "forging the appearance of a website" is illegal and userscripts and userstyles are forbidden as well. How many sites try very hard to block right click to hide their code? There are five actors that can modify the appearance of a website: * the author, * the server, * the network, * the browser, * the user (instructing a browser's add on). By definition the author can do whatever they want. But what if the server started serving slightly different pages, maybe with advertisements? This is happening now with hosted blogs and publishing platforms; it is frowned upon but accepted. If the network changes the content of a page, for example adding advertisements, the network will have to face a lot of bad reactions, so very few networks are doing it now. (see http://justinsomnia.org/2012/04/hotel-wifi-javascript-injection/ http://justinsomnia.org/2012/04/hotel-wifi-javascript-inject... ) The browser is in a similar situation. When Internet Explorer wanted to modify the received HTML to "enrich it", there has been a big backslash from authors «Microsoft thinks they can improve my writing. This makes me want to get a gun and go to war.» «With smart tags, Microsoft is able to insert their ads right into competitors’ sites.» (http://alistapart.com/article/smarttags http://alistapart.com/article/smarttags ) So the authors are against modifications to the way their sites appear. Their remaining problem is _the user_. Authors cannot force the user to see what they produced: users have the freedom to install an ad-blocker or strip the CSS away. But we have to realize that this may be only a temporary situation. With the app-ification of the web, userscripts and userstyles are gone. And the content producers are happy about this.