Adblocking Does Not Constitute Copyright Infringement, Court Rules

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The ads are what's paying for your free content.

pro tip: if you "pay" for it, its not "free"... 

 

[SansVarnic]

This has nothing to do with copyright law, such stupidity.

[Kisai]

50 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

pro tip: if you "pay" for it, its not "free"... 

 

I think people confuse "free to access" with "free to consume"

 

Many of these sites, can, and would certainly block access if you block ads, and the only reason they haven't is that it creates heavier support costs when "the site breaks"

 

Trust me, I've been involved in such experiments. People assume your site is broken and go elsewhere when you do it, even though it's adblock that's breaking the page. I've also tracked such metrics and typically less than 10% of people block ads on any particular site. It's not worth pissing off people who might subscribe to your patreon or other paywall content just to get a few pennies from google.

 

Google adsense has not been sustainable, ever. All adsense has managed to do is enable trash ads to have easy access to websites that fail to set even the minimum of CPM's.

 

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

even though it's adblock that's breaking the page

Their stupid code is breaking the page not adblock, plus calling it "break" when its not really broken by adblock if you kill the detection is just dumb beyond description....

[leadeater]

Wait why are we defending the Ads industry right now? It's on them to have their products and solutions to not be offensive that people seek out to remove them, that's a them problem not an us problem.

 

I don't get out of my car to pull down road advertising signs because they don't prevent me from driving, seeing the road or other vehicles on the road.

 

If I were driving and had to see this

 

100% I'm stopping and pulling that shit down.

[Stahlmann]

10 hours ago, Moonzy said:

If y'all don't want me to AdBlock then stop doing shit like this

  Hide contents

-SNIP-

Literally blocking half the screen and it follows you until you tap the small 'x'

But then you miss the small x and accidentally click the ad itself.

[Stahlmann]

7 hours ago, sub68 said:

well thats good to hear.

I was done after 2020 elections so I put a adblocker since then I never looked back.(never knew what one was until then)

I'd say ad and cookie blockers are essential to make today's internet even useable...

 

I have no problem financially supporting the people who make content i endorse, which is why i have a lifetime premium membership on nexusmods for example. 

 

But the sheer amount of ads on pretty much every site is just ridiculous and essentially hindering the sites functionality in many cases. The fact that the YouTube TV app also somehow "recognizes" when i'm away or sleeping on the couch (probably when there wasn't any input for a few minutes or so) and starts to play 58 minute ads was the last straw for me. It was skippable, but come on. A 58 minute ad in front of a 10 minute video? What is this? I'd rather pay $15 a month for a YouTube specific adblock than $12 a month for YouTube Premium at this point.

[mr moose]

rabbit hole,   a company should be allowed to post ads on their own website, mind you a company should also take responsibility for those ads containing malware and other nasties.   A company should be allowed to challenge the legal fairness of an adblockers ability to ruin revenue on their product,  Mind you a company should probably be designing websites to  stop serving the ad to browsers with adblockers,  then again is it really the companies job to spend resources designing a website to avoid a revenue hit from another product who's sole job it is to void the main revenue function of a website?

 

So many questions, not nearly enough intelligent thought to answer them.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

Make ads actually palatable, then I won't need to use adblocks.

Speaking of palatable, they should be just as palatable as our sponsor, Glasswire!

[Beerzerker]

29 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

But then you miss the small x and accidentally click the ad itself.

You just gotta LOVE streches of highway that makes the car bounce up and down while browsing....
Bump-Bump...Bump-Bump... Bump-Bump, you know how it (And the mouse) goes as you browse.

Time your click perfectly and you'll get it right but if not... Yeah, you clicked that.

[Eigenvektor]

11 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Since this is regarding ABP though, I do think it lies in the grey area of copyright (or some sort of theft).  Consider the days when analog stations were determined by a filter installed by the cable company (at your location).  If someone was coming around saying you could buy a device that would circumvent the filter it's undoubtedly breaking the law.

I think there's a difference between breaking encryption or some other form of protection and ad blocking.

 

Technically a web server sends markup to the user. It is up to the browser's engine to interpret this code and render it.

 

If a technology alters the way the markup is rendered (e.g. by not rendering certain elements) then I don't quite see the issue.

 

Otherwise any form of "reinterpretation" becomes suspect. E.g. how about opening a site through Google Translate? This changes the content far more than ABP does. It doesn't remove stuff, but it completely changes the wording of the page.

 

11 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I get the concept of "have to make money somehow", but given that they are blocking the ads and then telling companies like Google to pay them to unblock them...that to me doesn't feel right and should I think be illegal in some way (even if there aren't laws currently making it illegal).  To an extent it's like extortion.

I agree with this sentiment, just maybe not quite for the same reasons. Promising to protect users against intrusive ads then turning around and offering to show the again for a fee does indeed feel wrong.

[Ydfhlx]

15 hours ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Yeah, and it doesn't even have to be with adblock. If changing the way the content is displayed constitutes copyright infringement then the suggestion is that we must never do anything like zoom in or out of web pages. What about a colourblind person who uses software to adjust colours on the page so they can distinguish them, is that copyright infringement?

What about different screen resolution? Is that illegal, too? MFers really well over the line with this lawsuit.

[Alexeygridnev1993]

3 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

I think there's a difference between breaking encryption or some other form of protection and ad blocking.

 

Technically a web server sends markup to the user. It is up to the browser's engine to interpret this code and render it.

 

If a technology alters the way the markup is rendered (e.g. by not rendering certain elements) then I don't quite see the issue.

 

Otherwise any form of "reinterpretation" becomes suspect. E.g. how about opening a site through Google Translate? This changes the content far more than ABP does. It doesn't remove stuff, but it completely changes the wording of the page.

 

I agree with this sentiment, just maybe not quite for the same reasons. Promising to protect users against intrusive ads then turning around and offering to show the again for a fee does indeed feel wrong.

Extorting money from Google is OK in my book (kinda a Robin Hood move), but it is an obvious conflict of interests if a company blocks ads and at the same time allows companies to unblock their ads for a fee. So, I’d rather use tools from the companies or individuals which don’t do that (my solution is locally hosted PiHole + uBlock Origin).

[sub68]

3 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

I'd say ad and cookie blockers are essential to make today's internet even useable...

I never knew cookie blockers exist can you link me one

[sub68]

9 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

This has nothing to do with copyright law, such stupidity.

Yep corporate greed is stupid 

[Stahlmann]

9 minutes ago, sub68 said:

I never knew cookie blockers exist can you link me one

The brave browser comes with a cookie and adblocker built in.

 

For any other browser you can get "i don't care about cookies", which automatically accepts essential cookies and blocks all optional ones.

 

Then get the "Cookie auto delete" extention to constantly and automatically get rid of the "essential" cookies that still get saved. Deleting cookies will log you out of all pages when closing your browser, but you can add your most important pages such as LTT forum as an exception.

 

After that add ublock origin or adblock plus and your experience will be a lot better, not having to put up with ads or constant cookie consent popups.

[sub68]

1 minute ago, Stahlmann said:

After that add "ublock origin" or adblock plus and your experience will be a lot better, not having to put up with ads or constant cookie consent popups

I have Adblockers. So that’s 50% 

2 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

For any other browser you can get "i don't care about cookies", which automatically accepts essential cookies and blocks all optional ones.

 

Then get the "Cookie auto delete" extention to constantly and automatically get rid of the "essential" cookies that still get saved. Deleting cookies will log you out of all pages when closing your browser, but you can add your most important pages such as LTT forum as an exception.

I will probably use I don’t care about cookies. But I will consider the other one too, how many sites does it save the login.

I am using Firefox so it’s easier to add that stuff

[Stahlmann]

12 minutes ago, sub68 said:

how many sites does it save the login.

When you set all cookies to auto-delete, then no site will save your login. You will have to set commonly used sites where you want to stay logged-in on your exception list so "Cookie auto-delete" doesn't delete it's cookies. Thanks to "i don't care about cookies" rejecting all non-essentials you will still only keep the essential cookies when you make exceptions, not the cross-site tracking ones.

 

You might not need the auto-delete as some browsers support it natively. Edge does, idk about Firefox.

[PeachGr]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Well if you block ads, you are quite literately stealing the content, because you're consuming it without paying for it. The ads are what's paying for your free content

That doesn't make it illegal, and the content is free and that's it, ads are coming wanting them or not. It's like I have to watch the ads on every TV show, and zapping (switch channels for youngsters) is illegal. Ads do not make something legal nor illegal, they are just there. It's the same on Cinema movies, where there is a ton of product placement, even if you pay to watch it, and that is not illegal

[Elijah Kamski]

AdBlock is the new hacking tool that's all the rave.

Forget Kali Linux, AMD CPUs, faster internet speeds etc, AdBlock is all automated!

Be sure to give this to Peter!

[Elijah Kamski]

Out of all honesty, this is absolutely dumb, and these people that are going against AdBlock need to seriously find something else better to do.

[PeachGr]

I think it is illegal to close you eyes or look elsewhere while the ads are playing

[pythonmegapixel]

27 minutes ago, PeachGr said:

I think it is illegal to close you eyes or look elsewhere while the ads are playing

You laugh (or at least use an emoji to that effect), but that's probably not too far from reality.

 

I think there's a company has a patent for a system which plays a video ad while tracking your eyes to check you are actually looking at it. If you haven't looked at the ad all the way through then it makes you watch it again.

 

This stuff is creeping in - slowly but surely. Just imagine it in live scenarios like cinemas/theatres: an voice booming down from the ceiling apologising that "we cannot show this film because the gentleman in seat D3 ignored the ads". Accompanied, of course, by a spotlight shining down on seat D3 so that everyone can shame them for not bowing down to our great leaders, the advertising corporations.

[PeachGr]

1 minute ago, pythonmegapixel said:

You laugh (or at least use an emoji to that effect), but that's probably not too far from reality.

 

I remember there's a company has a patent for a system which plays a video ad while tracking your eyes to check you are actually looking at it. If you haven't looked at the ad all the way through then it makes you watch it again.

 

This stuff is creeping in - slowly but surely. Just imagine it in live scenarios like cinemas/theatres: an voice booming down from the ceiling apologising that "we cannot show this film because the gentleman in seat D3 ignored the ads". Accompanied, of course, by a spotlight shining down on seat D3 so that everyone can shame them for not bowing down to our great leaders, the advertising corporations.

That's also an episode on black mirror, the one with the black guy and the bicycle. But yeah only the discription of the movie made me laugh

[wanderingfool2]

6 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

I think there's a difference between breaking encryption or some other form of protection and ad blocking.

 

Technically a web server sends markup to the user. It is up to the browser's engine to interpret this code and render it.

 

If a technology alters the way the markup is rendered (e.g. by not rendering certain elements) then I don't quite see the issue.

The old-school analog tech wasn't regarding breaking encryption.  Back in the day, based on how cable worked, the cable running to your house contained all the channels...how they prevented you from seeing them was at your house they essentially installed a filter that got rid of the higher frequencies.  If you bypassed the filter, you would get the channels....I'm beginning to feel old.

 

6 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Otherwise any form of "reinterpretation" becomes suspect. E.g. how about opening a site through Google Translate? This changes the content far more than ABP does. It doesn't remove stuff, but it completely changes the wording of the page.

Yea, well I'm just arguing that I can see how they could consider it copyright, not that I actually think it's copyright   Although I do recognize that by saying that it's not copyright infringement, it allows people to reach slightly more.  An example being, can your ISP insert ads into the packets streamed to you without it being copyright?

 

7 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

I agree with this sentiment, just maybe not quite for the same reasons. Promising to protect users against intrusive ads then turning around and offering to show the again for a fee does indeed feel wrong.

The way I look at it, if everyone used an ad block that was 100% effective, then the free internet as itself would die out.  A way I look at it, imagine YouTube.  When google purchased it, it was losing a ton of money...I mean estimates being that in 2015, while making about $5 billion from ad revenue on YouTube they were at roughly the break even point.  I could also be wrong, but the ads that ABP held over Google wasn't even the intrusive ads [iirc, which I could be wrong, it was the ads shown during Google searches which personally I find super non-intrusive]

 

I get that ads are annoying, personally I don't use an ad blocker (although I do run no-script, not with the concept of blocking ads...but the consequence being a lot of ads do get blocked).  I think the more ad blockers become a thing, and a standard feature you will have two things happen.  Ads fully embedded into the webpage itself so that it's more difficult to remove (and likely even more annoying), or for those who don't use ad blocks they get even more annoying and more forcing a click kind of ad (as they try making up lost revenue).  There are people who say that they wouldn't use it for non-intrusive ads, but I think by default a lot of ad-blockers would shift towards allowing no ads.