Adblocking Does Not Constitute Copyright Infringement, Court Rules

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

Promising to protect users against intrusive ads then turning around and offering to show the again for a fee does indeed feel wrong.

Well it sorta depends, im guessing its needed so they can pay the ppl who keep an eye on these allowed ads to make sure nothing iffy is going on.... (AFAIK they have some strict rules regarding these ads.)

[Alexeygridnev1993]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

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. 

... And that would have been totally fine with me. I don't mind paying for the content I like, I am subscribed to LTT on Floatplane, for example. I wouldn't mind subscribing to a couple of online newspapers if I really had to. As for social media, it's total garbage which wastes people's time and spreads misinformation and hate. If those disappear, I won't miss them (I deleted FB and Instagram accounts anyway).

 

It is the chase for the ad revenue which made the Internet as horrible as it is now. All methods are deemed good if they increase "engagement" and if they increase the amount of data collected on you.

[Kisai]

18 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Well it sorta depends, im guessing its needed so they can pay the ppl who keep an eye on these allowed ads to make sure nothing iffy is going on.... (AFAIK they have some strict rules regarding these ads.)

It's also impossible to do, because the people approving the ads, and the people seeing them are geofenced.

 

This is what happened with increasingly invasive tracking, is that ads that were only intended to be seen by people in X country turned into "BIPOC see ads for bail bonds and booze, white people see ads for Louis Vuitton"

 

People who started "opting out" of the tracking by running ad block started skewing those metrics so that everyone started seeing the trash ads, so sites with a high amount of ad blocking, just got nothing but trash. Sites with low amounts of ad blocking, or high amounts of American visitors got all the high paying ads.

 

What's going to happen as GDPR-like policies roll out in the US, is that we're going to see ads go back to geofences, where advertising on a site like youtube, means you're no longer allowed to target anything but individual channels, voluntary meta data from those channels (eg "what game is being played",) or individual countries. 

 

 

[jagdtigger]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

It's also impossible to do, because the people approving the ads, and the people seeing them are geofenced.

Ppl can be hired from other countries as remote workers so its not that impossible at all. Then there is also user feedback. And the last one is the hyped tech on youtube, VPN....

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Ppl can be hired from other countries as remote workers so its not that impossible at all. Then there is also user feedback. And the last one is the hyped tech on youtube, VPN....

It absolutely does not work that way. The people sending in the ad code to the systems, timebomb the code so that it doesn't trigger anything when being reviewed, thus humans can never discern bad code from good code.

 

This is the consequence of allowing javascript to be pulled from third party domains. They can bait-and-switch the code after the review process. Google doesn't catch this stuff until it's way too late and the damage has been done.

 

How it can be fixed, is also absolutely straight forward. No third party javascript. No third party cookies. If it's not entirely self-contained, non-obfuscated code, it does not get approved. Will this happen? No why do you think all this surveillance ad tech came from? It's going to have to be something the web browsers implement at the request of GDPR-like laws. Turn third party javascript, WASM, and third party cookies off by default. Problem solved. Will it happen? Also no.

[darknessblade]

Wasn't there a news-outlet that wanted to sue users that used the F12/Inspect element key/menu?

 

this is exactly the same thing. it does not alter a single thing on their server/host. everything is changed Locally.

 

All a adblocker does is detect ad-scripts and removes them before they can load. 

 

Heck i could even block the very "sub"domain the ad is Hosted on in my firewall. making it impossible for it to even circumvent a adblocker.

 

[Mark Kaine]

On 1/19/2022 at 7:20 PM, Alexeygridnev1993 said:

And that would have been totally fine with me.

me too tbh, but "the free internet" wouldn't die out anyway as the "free internet" never was made with prioritizing monetization in mind.

 

So i have to pay for Google mail now and am guaranteed they will not remove or lose my account and especially not my content for any reason, unlike they can now? fine with me, i would actually welcome that!

[Alexeygridnev1993]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

me too tbh, but "the free internet" wouldn't die out anyway as the "free internet" never was made with prioritizing monetization in mind.

 

So i have to pay for Google mail now and am guaranteed they will not remove or lose my account and especially not my content for any reason, unlike they can now? fine with me, i would actually welcome that!

Well, Google could probably lawyer their way out of it by making 100500 disclaimers in their contract for, e.g. email services. But if people pay money, their mindset will definitely change, and they might opt for another service provider which ensures better data security.

 

Your mindset definitely changes for the better if you become a paying customer.

[jagdtigger]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

It absolutely does not work that way.

Yeah, they totally cant open up the actual site at a later date to confirm  the partner is still adhering to the rules.... /s

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah, they totally cant open up the actual site at a later date to confirm  the partner is still adhering to the rules.... /s

go to any site right now and type in ads.txt and see how many "approved" ad partners they have.

 

Here I'll help

https://www.yahoo.com/ads.txt

There are 479 individual advertising partners on yahoo dot com

26 are AppNexus, one of the most credible advertising networks. Why are there 26 entries? Because there are 26 entities using AppNexus

7 are Contextweb (Pulsepoint) , the highest paying context-aware ads, also they hate content that isn't G rated.

68 are google.com (which can be either the adsense product or using just google's ad management tech)

23 are openx.com which is another ad management tech + ad sales platform.

41 are pubmatic.com, another common ad vendor

91 are yahoo.com (itself) arranged by country

 

need I go on?

 

Now if you go line by line through list, you also learn who their tier-1 partners are:

North America:

ABP - Ad Block 

ADX - Google

AppNexus - Xandr / AT&T

CBS

Conde

EMX

Index - Index Exchange

Kargo

Magnite

Media.net

MediaGrid

Nascar

NFL 

OpenX

Pubmatic 

Pulsepoint - Contextweb

Rubicon

Sharethrough

Spot.im

Sovrn

Triplelift

Unrely

Xad

Yieldmo

33Accross



Europe

AdX

DailyMotion

GroupM

Index

OpenX

Pubmatic

RichAudience

Rubicon

SkyMedia

TwiagoGmbH

Zoomin.TV

Time

The Gaurdian

Immediate Media

Godlbach Germany

Celebrity Wire

SmartClip



Latin America:

AdX

Pubmatic

LKQD

Rubicon



Australia/NewZealand:

AdX

Pubmatic

Tremor



Asia Pacific

AdX

Pubmatic

Index

AppNexus

Pulsepoint

Rubicon

Teads



Geographic-specific block

121 more entries

 

And one more thing, sort by the third column. 152 are "Direct", the rest are resellers.

 

Do you know what reseller means? That means they buy the ads from someone else.

 

The first-party website, by putting ads.txt on the site says "everyone without question from these publishers are allowed to bid on ad space on this site", it's a means to prevent fraud by resellers, but ultimately it's undermined by having resellers in it at all.

 

Now multiply those ads networks by how many potential ads might be on those networks. That's so beyond manageable it's amazing web advertising hasn't collapsed because of google's inept algorithms. But also take a look at how few partners exist outside of North America, that is why you get garbage ads in the rest of the world. All the money to be made is in the US, so advertising dollars focus almost entirely on the US market.

 

 

[LAwLz]

I think it's funny that a court rule this. Meanwhile, Linus is on Twitter having a meltdown that people use adblock to watch his videos, saying it's piracy.

 

"You're objectively wrong"

-Person who is wrong.

 

[jagdtigger]

Yeah pretty funny, if he wants to blame someone blame the ad industry for occupying half of the screen with irritating ads....

[Blademaster91]

2 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Yeah pretty funny, if he wants to blame someone blame the ad industry for occupying half of the screen with irritating ads....

Yeah and ads can be a security risk as well, I'm not disabling adblockers after youtube had an incident of ads that were found CPU mining, since youtube can't even get rid of p*rn bots in the comments, I don't trust youtube with ads, and I think sites should be liable for using ads that contain malware.

30 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I think it's funny that a court rule this. Meanwhile, Linus is on Twitter having a meltdown that people use adblock to watch his videos, saying it's piracy.

 

"You're objectively wrong"

-Person who is wrong.

He is even blaming a person that buys merch but says they want to keep using an ad blocker. Why can't Linus just enjoy his millions and a successful company? Blaming it on viewers is only going to get people to leave ad blockers on lol.

[LAwLz]

20 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Blaming it on viewers is only going to get people to leave ad blockers on lol.

Judging by the replies he is getting, that is exactly what is happening.

 

It seems like he is trying to backpedal now by saying AdBlocking circumvents a digital protection (which it doesn't) and that "I never said it was illegal", even though the definition of piracy is "an infringement of intellectual properly", which is illegal.

The more I read the worse his takes seems to get.

 

I agree with you. Linus is probably best served shutting up and enjoying his millions upon millions of dollars.

 

It's a shame he didn't respond to the person who brought up the fact that clicking the "skip ad" button results in the creator not getting paid. Should clicking "skip ad" also constitute piracy in Linus' opinion?

 

Maybe I should start using Twitter. Between this, Linus defending racism and all his other bad takes, it might be a great source of entertainment. Anyway, AdBlocking is not piracy. 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

I think it's funny that a court rule this. Meanwhile, Linus is on Twitter having a meltdown that people use adblock to watch his videos, saying it's piracy.

First, this is a case of ABP vs a media company.  The ruling actually doesn't really say that ad-blocking isn't copyright infringement...really what it's saying is that ABP as the program itself doesn't constitute as enough to classify the program as violating copyright.

 

To address your other point, piracy doesn't not have to strictly be copyright infringement.  An example being sharing your Netflix password amongst your friends; courts would likely uphold that it doesn't violate copyright infringement...but it for sure is illegal and a violation of the contract.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

To address your other point, piracy doesn't not have to strictly be copyright infringement. 

Yes it has. The law literally says piracy is defined as copyright infringement. That's what piracy mean. They are synonymous. 

 

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

An example being sharing your Netflix password amongst your friends; courts would likely uphold that it doesn't violate copyright infringement...but it for sure is illegal and a violation of the contract.

I am not following your logic here. 

Are you sure a court wouldn't rule it as copyright infringement? I am lot sure how the license is written but if it specifies that it is bound to you as the person and isn't allowed to be shared, it is copyright violation to share it. 

If your friend doesn't have permission to view the content but does so anyway, they are breaking copyright law. Simple as that. 

 

Also, what law do you think it would break if it wasn't copyright infringement? 

[Bitter]

If you don't want people to access your media without watching ads that pay you then you better put your media behind a walled garden that makes that impossible. I block ads, I find them jarring and intrusive and I dislike how they track me across the internet. On some sites I do allow ads because they're worthy of my support and on those sites they're not horrible tracking ads. Youtube/Google/Alphabet (whatever the hell it is these days) could easily fix their ad system, Linus et al should be blaming them and holding them accountable not blaming the end users trying to work around a creepy semi-broken system. I'm sure there's some kind of snappy analogy here but I can't think of one right now.

 

If blocking ads on Youtube is piracy then changing the channel to avoid commercials is piracy. See how absolutely bonkers that sounds?

[mr moose]

I personally don't think it is piracy, not at a technical level anyway.  But the bigger problem is not whether it is technically piracy or not, but that the ad system which is nasty and we need to protect ourselves from it, and allowing content creators their dues.  I mean the only thing they ask in return for enjoying the content is to watch the ad.  It's basically an honesty box at the farm gates.    What makes it harder is the inability to allow ads for specific channels on youtube.  If you could do that I and content creators could have more say over what ads are placed, I am sure more people would disable AB's for content they enjoy. 

 

When content creators lecture viewers it doesn't look good, when viewers ad block internet content they repeatedly use it is a selfish act. 

 

 

 

 

[RoseLuck462]

Good to hear, ad block for life!

[darknessblade]

The only reason they call it copyright infringement is that they hope they can scare people enough with Potential fines, that they would stop using adblockers.

 

i am still eagerly awaiting a letter about a lawsuit for my 10+ years of using a adblocker by said ad companies.

 

[Kroon]

On 1/28/2022 at 10:41 PM, LAwLz said:

Linus is on Twitter having a meltdown that people use adblock to watch his videos, saying it's piracy.

 

Even worse is that Linus kind of hypocrite. When he speaks about the media he is active in, video, it's piracy but once it's ads on a website he more or less advocate the use of blockers.  For me this cuts both ways, you can't single out one media over another like that.

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Kroon said:

 

Even worse is that Linus kind of hypocrite. When he speaks about the media he is active in, video, it's piracy but once it's ads on a website he more or less advocate the use of blockers.  For me this cuts both ways, you can't single out one media over another like that.

It's the same argument with the removal of the dislike button. You can not advocate for a browser extension that changes the website experience without permitting all extensions that change the website experience, even to your detriment.

 

I don't run ad blockers because I AM NOT AN IDIOT. The people that do, likely had some bad experience in the past, probably from they themselves pirating crap and getting tricked, but it's entirely for selfish reasons they block all ads by default, because they will often say crap like "I hate X on site, so I use adblock."

 

And believe me, if sites didn't want you to use adblock at all, they absolutely can force you to disable it. They just don't because that paints them as shitty sites.

[Bitter]

36 minutes ago, Kisai said:

It's the same argument with the removal of the dislike button. You can not advocate for a browser extension that changes the website experience without permitting all extensions that change the website experience, even to your detriment.

 

I don't run ad blockers because I AM NOT AN IDIOT. The people that do, likely had some bad experience in the past, probably from they themselves pirating crap and getting tricked, but it's entirely for selfish reasons they block all ads by default, because they will often say crap like "I hate X on site, so I use adblock."

 

And believe me, if sites didn't want you to use adblock at all, they absolutely can force you to disable it. They just don't because that paints them as shitty sites.

I got burned by some ads with malicious code years and years ago and started blocking domains with a hosts file to prevent that from happening again. I've simply maintained that extra onion skin layer of 'security' over the years by using ad blockers once they became a thing. If someone could guarantee 100% I wasn't going to be maliciously attacked and tracked then I might consider removing that layer of defense but no one can guarantee that so I'll keep on blocking. I'm not sitting here rubbing my hands together and twisting my mustache imagining the ruin I'm raining down upon people because they're not getting their .000003 cents from my passive ad view.

[MultiGamerClub]

I dont block ads on websites i trust.. or i THINK isnt completely evil.

 

Like this forum lol.

 

Youtube or face.. oh nono.

[Kisai]

51 minutes ago, Bitter said:

. I'm not sitting here rubbing my hands together and twisting my mustache imagining the ruin I'm raining down upon people because they're not getting their .000003 cents from my passive ad view.

My opinion here is that not all damage is the same. Twitch ads are like $3.50cpm, and they're video ads. Most websites are more like $0.10 to $0.65cpm. So 0.0065 cents per ad view for a website and 3.5 cents per video ad. Multiply that across several ad units on a website or consecutive video ads. Each visit, might net the website at most, $0.25

 

At any rate, your individual loss to the content creator, adds over time adds up. To which Linus is completely right. It's theft, but it's theft on the scale of sampling the bulk foods in the grocery store.

I don't personally care if you sampled(stole) two grapes, but if you do that every day, you're taking advantage of me, and I may decide to put the grapes in bags that you can't sample, thus wasting my time, adding staff costs to put the grapes in bags, and having to purchase the bags in the first place. 

 

The reality of this is, that many "stealing two grapes" does in fact result in changes behind the scenes in an ad context. If I wrap the entire content inside a div container called .ad you'll not see the page at all unless the ad blocker is off. But the result is that you'll just stop visiting the site, and claim it's broken, thus potentially incurring support costs to me. But now I know YOU are blocking the ads.

 

One point I will disagree with Linus on is the correlation between "but I purchased the merch". In many cases free content creators would RATHER you subscribe (eg patreon) and then view the content early, ad-free. Merch costs money to make, and thus unless they regularly sell out merch in one day, they don't want you buying merch with the assumption this gives you a ticket to their content. No, you buy the merch because you like the creator. You don't block the ads so the creator can pay for the hosting. You subscribe to the creator to support the creator directly. Very few creators make anything from "pay what you want" type of tip systems, which is what we had before patreon came along.

 

Plus in many cases, buying merch adds to waste/e-waste if you don't actually have a need for the product. Which is why sometimes the kind of merch creators have makes me eye-roll. 

 

And before I close this comment, I want to point you to how well Linus is known:

https://clips.twitch.tv/TastyObeseGaurCoolStoryBob-hFYaCfX1JiQeBGsx?tt_content=url&tt_medium=clips_api