Adblocking Does Not Constitute Copyright Infringement, Court Rules

[Biohazard777]

On 1/30/2022 at 3:32 AM, Kisai said:

I don't run ad blockers because I AM NOT AN IDIOT. 

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

Someone blocking all ads by default, is, yes, being a pirate, and also a petty jerk if they defend it.

I run ad-blockers because I AM NOT AN IDIOT.
Someone not blocking all ads by default is making the world a worse place to live in, and a petty jerk if they defend it.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

IT IS NOT PIRACY. It is leaching. Different words have different meanings.

Nitpicking. I see you watched Loius Rossmann's video.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_Act_1698

Quote

In addition, the statute adds additional instances, not listed in the Offences at Sea Act of 1536, which expanded the legal definition of piracy as a capital crime. The first of these includes any subject of the crown who commits any act of piracy “under colour of any commission from any foreign prince or state.” Additionally, any commander who “piratically and feloniously run away with his or their ships", anyone who may “consult, combine, or confederate” with any pirates, or “shall lay violent hands upon his commander whereby to hinder him from fighting” pirates who may be attempting to capture their vessel.

Just because the piracy act was defined as stealing a ship, does not mean that stealing any other content isn't piracy.

 

Modern piracy is the act of getting a product or service without permission. "Software piracy", or just basic Copyright Infringement.

 

 

MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd

Is the case that sets the current precedent. Where the maker of a software can not be held responsible for it's use.

Quote

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

 

So all those "free tv" android kodi boxes? "VPN" systems that promote downloading movies? That's all contributory to infringement.

 

Quote

Producers of technology who promote the ease of infringing on copyrights can be sued for inducing copyright infringement committed by their users. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded.

 

So what what makes adblock, or adblocking any different? It doesn't. What you're asking is a dangerous slippery slope of "how much can I modify the web page before it becomes copyright infringement"

 

Less y'all forget that "software cracks" are a thing and that's exactly what browser extensions are when they modify a webpage.

 

 

2 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

Piracy is by definition a criminal act. Blocking ads is not. It's not even violation of a contract, literal or social, unless you've made an agreement to watch ads in exchange for content. I certainly have not signed such an agreement with linus or ABC or google. An obligation can't be assumed to exist just because someone wants it to.

 

In online vernacular, blocking ads is leaching.  From Wiki:

 

 

Look, Rossmann's entire argument was that nobody gives a crap about if you actually watched the ad, and that's in fact wrong. His entire "commercial advance" VHS argument is wrong.

 

VCR's, which is the predecessor Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. (the betamax case), were previously sued, because the device was promoted, and used to pirate TV. It was ruled that it has substantial non-infringing uses. The Commercial skip feature itself was subject to a lawsuit on a PVR device ReplayTV.  And PVR's themselves were also subject to lawsuits. 

 

These lawsuits keep happening because the technology is not on the side of the copyright holder when they are released.  If you have a TV STB PVR today from your cable or DSL company, chances are you are permitted to record most programs on channels you subscribe to, but can not watch programs that you aren't subscribed to, can't skip the commercials on live broadcasts, and can't skip the commercials on "cloud" PVR recordings.

 

So no, the entire "would this product exist, if this feature was illegal" is a nitpick. The feature exists only on one model of VCR, sold in the US,  and required that advertisements did exactly a specific thing to skip them. Which meant that it could be defeated by not having gaps between commercials.

 

This not even remotely the same technology.

 

Blocking ads, on purpose, by default, is being a petty jerk, and I don't care what your excuse is. You have the ability to let the ads through for the content you consume, and you just don't.

 

So to use the example Linus and Rossmann both used. Is it then okay if you buy the merch but block the ads? No, but that requires evaluating the actual costs.

 

All the merch that LTT sells likely has somewhere between a 30% and a 300% markup. So a $30 water bottle probably costs $5-10 to make in China, or whatever, that price isn't important. What's important is knowing that buying that water bottle is equal to maybe 30,000 ads being viewed. LTT has 14.3m subscribers. Did all 14.3m subscribers buy a $30 water bottle? No. Chances are no more than 10,000 were made in the first place. Yet 14.3m subscribers at $3.50 CPM is $50,050 , per video. That subscriber count is how much a campaign translates to, with the assumption that all ads are viewed by all subscribers. We know that is not a thing and the average video tops out at 1.4m views, or $5000 per video. 

 

And that's not even getting into the sponsorship ads themselves.

 

Now, what about bypassing youtube altogether? Why not just download the LTT videos and automatically skip the sponsorship ads with the exact same mechanic that VHS recorder with the commercial advance feature does? That's what youtube-dl does, if you tell it to. Remember Youtube-dl has ALSO been the subject of a legal takedown.

 

It's all splitting hairs. You all know that blocking the ads is wrong, you all know that downloading the videos is wrong. Yet y'all do it anyway, because you think you're so smart and beat the system to get the content for free. 

 

Meanwhile content creators are having to fight for smaller and smaller ad pools, and smaller creators don't even see it worthwhile to make content unless they go paywall by default and destroy their discoverability.

 

The cost of doing business on the internet is that your content will be stolen, pirated, misused, all without your permission, and you are going to have to live with it if you want to remain relevant at all. Because I'll assure you, for every content creator that gives up, because the internet can't support them, there is another one who keeps going and doesn't care about making money "from the internet", because they have multiple revenue streams and have the business sense to not rely on people being good.

 

Less you forget, LTT also has also had counterfeit merch made without permission as well.

 

Counterfeit merch isn't "piracy" either, but it still harms the creator.

 

So please stop trying to defend adblock. You're harming the creator. You know you are, and while your individual pennies may not matter, multiplied across 300,000 people, it does.

 

[leadeater]

28 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Modern piracy is the act of getting a product or service without permission. "Software piracy", or just basic Copyright Infringement.

You are aware that this is about content on free access services where they implement their own cost recovery mechanisms to recoup cost, there is no explicit service cost (very important on a legal standpoint) and you could only ever mount a legal case if in the terms of service it states you must not block the ads and that can only ever be a Civil Contract Law case not a Copyright or other Intellectual Property type.

 

Also inbuilt in to the service is that if the Ad URLs fail for whatever reason the content is still played, ability to serve the Ad is not a requirement for it to play or be accessed. Further they offer a Skip function to skip the Ad, this makes many legally defensible arguments null and void as any good lawyer will argue this situation to death.

 

Then you have corporate networks that wholesale block all Ad domains, URLs, DNS queries etc etc. This is very common so to say Ad blocking is piracy is leveling a massive global accusation that there is rampant piracy conducted by a large majority of corporations that are all seemingly liable for damages. Somehow I think not, nobody has come home to collect and don't think for a single second if it were possible it wouldn't have been done. Also all the firewall vendors would be liable too for creating the tools and fuctions to make this possible and for providing curated and pre-defined Ad lists to easily block them.

 

Being a jerk isn't piracy. Also being a jerk doesn't entitle you to require people to watch the creations of your actions (Ads). Not all Ads are horrible, obnoxious, malicious but the vast majority are so to what should be no surprise those in the know simply block everything by default.

 

I will however watch every well produced integrated in to content Ad, for example everything Donut Media does. It's possible to create Ads that I or others actually want to watch, this is important so I'll repeated it. It's possible to create Ads people want and will watch. There I have a offer of solution, do this and the problem shall go away naturally without any fighting or fuss.

[Kisai]

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You are aware that this is about content on free access services where they implement their own cost recovery mechanisms to recoup cost, there is no explicit service cost (very important on a legal standpoint) and you could only ever mount a legal case if in the terms of service it states you must not block the ads and that can only ever be a Civil Contract Law case not a Copyright or other Intellectual Property type.

Just because you paid for a membership to Costco, and go to costco every morning and eat all the samples, doesn't entitle you to go to the food court and eat other peoples food. The problem in a nutshell is that people feel entitled to an "ad-free" experience, despite the cost of admission being to allow the ads to be presented.

 

Even though we're talking about Youtube here, Twitch's ads are unskippable, and you can have up to 5 minutes of unskippable ads on twitch channels you do not subscribe to. By comparison, seeing 5 seconds of a 15 second commercial on youtube is a bargain.

 

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Also inbuilt in to the service is that if the Ad URLs fail for whatever reason the content is still played, ability to serve the Ad is not a requirement for it to play or be accessed. Further they offer a Skip function to skip the Ad, this makes many legally defensible arguments null and void as any good lawyer will argue this situation to death.

That's not how it works and you know it. Adblock changes the code on the page so that the url's are not presented in the first place. "hosts files" is what blocks the urls. Adblock operates entirely from using css rules that can be appended to the page. So the comparison to a "software crack" is correct.

 

BTW, the most common ad I get on LTT videos is "adblock"

 

 

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Then you have corporate networks that wholesale block all Ad domains, URLs, DNS queries etc etc. This is very common so to say Ad blocking is piracy is leveling a massive global accusation that there is rampant piracy conducted by a large majority of corporations that are all seemingly liable for damages. Somehow I think not, nobody has come home to collect and don't think for a single second if it were possible it wouldn't have been done. Also all the firewall vendors would be liable too for creating the tools and fuctions to make this possible and for providing curated and pre-defined Ad lists to easily block them.

 

They do so because you're not supposed to be watching youtube using the corporate bandwidth in the first place. You know this. If a site is not whitelisted, you don't see it. So if business needs zoom and youtube for some reason, they will permit the main domains to work, but they will forget to unblock the edge servers, so the performance still results in 480p videos pulled from wherever the corporate firewall is located.

 

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Being a jerk isn't piracy. Also being a jerk doesn't entitle you to require people to watch the creations of your actions (Ads). Not all Ads are horrible, obnoxious, malicious but the vast majority are so to what should be no surprise those in the know simply block everything by default.

 

Time and time again, people will "justify" their ad blocking by saying "ads do (thing they don't like) ", and most of these excuses are just deflections from the fact that they are doing something wrong in the first place to have had a bad ad. Maybe they were looking at porn, maybe they were looking at a pirate tv show site, who cares. You know these sites are full of malicious code, and the users who claim they experienced bad ads, won't tell you what they were up to when they show up.

 

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I will however watch every well produced integrated in to content Ad, for example everything Donut Media does. It's possible to create Ads that I or others actually want to watch, this is important so I'll repeated it. It's possible to create Ads people want and will watch. There I have a offer of solution, do this and the problem shall go away naturally without any fighting or fuss.

That I agree with. But then you have tools like youtube dl that lets you hack those ads out of the video and watch youtube videos in VLC because you don't want to watch it on the website at all.

 

It's just a slippery slope of where do you draw the line between protecting yourself, and stabbing the content creator in the back. To me, everyone who uses adblock to block all ads, are being petty jerks about their internet use, but they are also a very very small minority of nerds on the internet who feel they are owed an ad-free experience. People outside the US and people inside the US experience a completely different internet, with most of us outside the US usually getting low-quality ads on all websites that don't do their own first-party advertisements. Inside the US however, you are usually shown hyper-targeted ads, right down to the creepy "amazon-knows-you-are-pregnant" kind of tracking. It's that kind of tracking that software like adblock has gone and went "block creepy ads"

 

And that of course works. Ad tech companies have nobody to blame but themselves for fostering an environment where nobody cares about the content of the ads, when the adtech has created profiles on users that creep them out. 

 

If we go back to the mid 2000's, people were complaining about ads then as well (remember the notorious x10 ads?) and ultimately the popup blocking happened because of the abuse of it. All those ad popups, the originating site didn't get paid for, so the right thing to do was to break the ability for a site to popup ads. However adtech still does popunders and interstitials that the originating website doesn't get paid for, and that is stuff that should be blocked.

 

[leadeater]

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Just because you paid for a membership to Costco, and go to costco every morning and eat all the samples, doesn't entitle you to go to the food court and eat other peoples food.

This is a horrible premise, please don't.

 

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Twitch's ads are unskippable

If you block them at the network it'll fail to load them and then let you watch. I don't think that has changed. [Edit] That said Twitch is probably serving them directly so network block wouldn't stop those. Still just pointing out that integrating in a 3rd party external service in to your platform is very rarely done in a way that if they can't be access then everything breaks [/Edit]

 

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

That's not how it works and you know it. Adblock changes the code on the page so that the url's are not presented in the first place. "hosts files" is what blocks the urls. Adblock operates entirely from using css rules that can be appended to the page. So the comparison to a "software crack" is correct.

I'm not talking about Adblock, I'm talking about the service and how it works and also about blocking Ads in general. Talking about the application Adblock is just one way to block Ads, it's not the only way.

 

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

They do so because you're not supposed to be watching youtube using the corporate bandwidth in the first place.

Irrelevant, it's either illegal or it's not. So what is your claim? And no I've always blocked them for network security reasons, I don't block YouTube I block Ads. If we aren't blocking YouTube then how could the reason be YouTube uses bandwidth and wastes time? Wouldn't we be blocking YouTube and not the Ad category?

 

There's some worrying logic here.

 

26 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Time and time again, people will "justify" their ad blocking by saying "ads do (thing they don't like) ", and most of these excuses are just deflections from the fact that they are doing something wrong in the first place to have had a bad ad. Maybe they were looking at porn, maybe they were looking at a pirate tv show site, who cares. You know these sites are full of malicious code, and the users who claim they experienced bad ads, won't tell you what they were up to when they show up

Everything has a justification, serving Ads has a justification. What is your point? You know what is best, a good justification and block ads has many very good ones. Don't go trying to deflect away those. Advertisers are not innocent by any stretch, not even close.

[leadeater]

@Kisai And FYI Ajax Spray and Wipe Ads highly offend me and I will do anything to purge their existence and ensure I shall NEVER seem them. There are many Ads that are like this and I do not care where they are, who serves them, what platform they appear on if you serve Ads like this then your ability to show me Ads ends, period.

 

If you try and make me see these then you are EVIL!!!!!!

[Kisai]

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

This is a horrible premise, please don't.

What is it then? did I hit the right nerve? You know this is only about people feeling entitled to an experience they don't want to pay for and nothing more. Why not just have Linus put everything on Floatplane for a week before putting the videos on youtube. Destroys discoverability and ability to have relevant news videos, but that's an option.

 

The reason they don't is because those occasional entitled nerds aren't the majority.

 

Look, I manage websites, and people will pirate things they can get for free out of a petty sense of entitlement to an ad-free experience. 

 

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

If you block them at the network it'll fail to load them and then let you watch. I don't think that has changed.

It throttles your download rate if you do.

 

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I'm not talking about Adblock, I'm talking about the service and how it works and also about blocking Ads in general. Talking about the application Adblock is just one way to block Ads, it's not the only way.

 

Irrelevant, it's either illegal or it's not. So what is your claim? And no I've always blocked them for network security reasons, I don't block YouTube I block Ads. If we aren't blocking YouTube then how could the reason be YouTube uses bandwidth and wastes time? Wouldn't we be blocking YouTube and not the Ad category?

Look, I've been on the receiving end of people asking why they can't watch video at work, and it comes back to the fact that the building is only connected by 100mbit, and when the office is full, it impairs all the cloud shit. Watch videos at home.

 

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

There's some worrying logic here.

 

Everything has a justification, serving Ads has a justification. What is your point? You know what is best, a good justification and block ads has many very good ones. Don't go trying to deflect away those. Advertisers are not innocent by any stretch, not even close.

 

No, they're not innocent all the time, but what people feel entitled to and demand is some absurd reality where advertisers are all first-party, where Coca Cola and Pepsi go to every website individually and personalize their advertisements for that site. That is not reality, that is wishful thinking. Coca Cola and Pepsi, pay some third party to find them some websites to advertise on, give them a budget, and expect some return on it. If they waste a million dollars on LTT and don't see 2 million in sales, then they're not going to advertise again. That's why these companies are not going to do individual sponsorships on content.

 

Meanwhile, over in twitch land, many twitch streamers are sponsored by gfuel, gamersupps, advancedgg, etc, and they get paid for occasionally namedropping or posting the link to the site in their chat or twitch page. I'm not privy to those contracts, but you can find criticism about them on youtube. It's not worth the effort of a large corporation to sponsor small streamers and content creators because the amount of money they spend will not translate to anything.

 

Go on youtube and look at artists who were paid to unbox graphics tablets. They were also told to do dishonest things with amazon in order to get the tablet in the first place. These companies tried to build some credibility with popular youtubers who would use their product, but instead the content creators were actually victims of a feedback farming scheme on amazon.

 

Why would any content creator accept a sponsorship ever again after that experience?

 

9 minutes ago, leadeater said:

@Kisai And FYI Ajax Spray and Wipe Ads highly offend me and I will do anything to purge their existence and ensure I shall NEVER seem them. There any many Ads that are like this and I do not care where they are, who serves them, what platform they appear on if you serve Ads like this then your ability to show me Ads ends, period.

 

If you try and make me see these then you are EVIL!!!!!!

Look, if you don't like a specific ad, I will not begrudge you blocking the specific ad, but that's not the reality, and people are just looking for excuses for their own bad behavior.

 

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, Kisai said:

What is it then? did I hit the right nerve?

No, it was just really, really bad.

 

19 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Look, I manage websites, and people will pirate things they can get for free out of a petty sense of entitlement to an ad-free experience.

Well I mean essentially so do I, but nothing I do requires Ads because it's all paid for by tuition costs and government funding.

 

19 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Look, I've been on the receiving end of people asking why they can't watch video at work, and it comes back to the fact that the building is only connected by 100mbit, and when the office is full, it impairs all the cloud shit. Watch videos at home.

Still not relevant to blocking the Ads category at the firewall. This is either piracy and illegal or it's not, based on evidence I'm going with not illegal.

 

19 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Look, if you don't like a specific ad

I dislike every single Ad like that, I'm sure you can think of many similar if you have seen it or go watch it. Having watched years and years of free to air TV if you want a million examples of offensive and abusive ads I'll be happy to provide a list in PM. You vastly underestimate just how much Ads are hated, by those that block and do not block. That hate is earned and deserved, really is that simple.

 

I am also happy to provide examples of Ads on TV I actually like.

[Mihle]

No matter if you call it piracy or not, (doesn't really matter), if you watch something on YouTube for example, and block ads, you are taking something while breaking the trade deal the creator have given you.

[Kisai]

55 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Still not relevant to blocking the Ads category at the firewall. This is either piracy and illegal or it's not, based on evidence I'm going with not illegal.

 

Perhaps you're not privy to much earlier attempts pre-adblock. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron

 

If you block specific domains, at the firewall, then the ad logic just goes down the list to the next advertiser. So yes, you can in fact block ads from specific advertisers, or specific advertisements, but the effort to do so requires using braincells that people who block all ads do not want to use.

 

 

55 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I dislike every single Ad like that, I'm sure you can think of many similar if you have seen it or go watch it. Having watched years and years of free to air TV if you want a million examples of offensive and abusive ads I'll be happy to provide a list in PM. You vastly underestimate just how much Ads are hated, by those that block and do not block. That hate is earned and deserved, really is that simple.

 

I'm not underestimating it at all. I'm just telling you that the reality is that that most of the content you consume is supported by advertisements or by subscriptions or both. In the comic world, everyone learned that the best way to be relevant is to make a physical book, an ebook for digital market places, release the new pages on Patreon, and then put the entire book, 1 page at a time on their own website under a domain they own. On top of that sell some merch if you're popular enough to justify making 1000 units that you can store in your basement for the next 10 years.

 

Video content doesn't have the luxury of releasing every video on a physical disc. And one of the stupid things that LTT did with their backup systems is not making some kind of physical (eg tape, disc, usb stick) copy of every video. I'm sure they could justify making a BD-XL disc of every video and making a few copies for people who want to own a specific episode, but it would not be justified making them automatically for the small amount of people who have rubbish internet and can wait the 2-8 weeks for delivery.

 

 

55 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I am also happy to provide examples of Ads on TV I actually like.

The ads people are most fond of tend to be the US Superbowl ads, but then you have ads from foreign countries that are popular outside the country because of quirky things.

 

 

And then you have some of the worst stuff for mobile games, which I'm not going to link since people tend to have split reactions on if the ads are just horribly misrepresenting the games, or if the ads are the only thing interesting about the game.

 

 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

If you block specific domains, at the firewall, then the ad logic just goes down the list to the next advertiser. So yes, you can in fact block ads from specific advertisers, or specific advertisements, but the effort to do so requires using braincells that people who block all ads do not want to use.

Every firewall vendor makes this very easy, they maintain the Category Lists and I just choose which ones to block. Ads category being one of them. Remember this doesn't block any first party delivered Ads and pretty much only blocks predatory and malicious Ad providers, put it this way I don't think it blocks Google Ads.

 

The issue at heart here is that if blocking Ads actually were in any way illegal then none of the firewall vendors would be creating this category and maintaining it so their customers can use it. No legitimate business is going to be knowingly and persistent breaking the law and doing something illegal like that. This is so completely transparent that it is happening that there simply is no valid counter argument to it.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

I'm not underestimating it at all. I'm just telling you that the reality is that that most of the content you consume is supported by advertisements or by subscriptions or both

You understood it just fine the first time. Nothing changes, Ads like that do not deserve to exist, period. If people like myself dislike so much that they cause such a drastic collateral blocking then they are they problem, not me, not others, only themselves.

 

The whole situation is extremely and painfully obvious to the point you have already agreed with it, create Ads that people want to actually see or failing that because not everything can be made interesting and entertaining then be not annoying and do no infringe of the usability of the service.

 

Straight up sorry if you run a site that economically cannot exist without this style of advertising then you should not exist. Reality sucks but not everything succeeds, can or should. It's on the owner to create something that people want and to make that able to support itself. If you can't do that then either you had a bad product or service or a bad business plan, that includes realizing that financially it wouldn't have been able to support itself.

 

Adapt and create a better product, this applies to the Ad industry. If shoving Ads all over sites, putting them at the start, middle and end of videos etc isn't working then figure out why and change. People have been able to figure this out already such as my Donut Media example. They only recently changed to high production value actually entraining Ads in their videos and they still provide a yellow timeline bar at the bottom of the video so you can easily skip forward through it, however I actually want to watch it.

 

Ads are not the issue, bad Ads are the issue. Sooner they go away the sooner Adblock goes away with it.

 

Subscriptions have no place in this discussion, unless the subscription does not also remove Ads then it's likely a rather worthless subscription to begin with.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

The ads people are most fond of tend to be the US Superbowl ads, but then you have ads from foreign countries that are popular outside the country because of quirky things.

I am not in the US so I rarely watch those and many of them I don't think are that good, plus these are limited time period run. I'm talking about locally produced Ads that regularly ran on our TV channels. Ones such as 'Mitre 10 You're Dreaming', 'Toyota Bugger', 'Lift Plus Sharpen Up!' or 'Tui Brewery', or even our Government Road Safety Ads. There is a great deal of excellent Ads created and screen on our TV but the ones that make us all immediately mute the TV or change channel were what we call "The American style" Ads with Ajax Spray and Wipe being an example of that.

 

Tourists literally comment on how much better the Ads on our TV is compared to where they come from or other places they have been. Fair Go, a consumer advocacy program, has an Ad Awards special they do every year and this gets very high viewership and we as a country like to vote on it and the competition is always strong every year, for Best Ad and also Worst Ad.

 

So again comes right back to the issue of if you can't make something people want to see then do not try and force it because not only should it not even exist you'll get an even worse reaction than apathy.

 

Root cause of this entire thing is bad Ads suck, get better or get out.

[Forbidden Wafer]

On 1/19/2022 at 5:15 AM, leadeater said:

If I were driving and had to see this

 

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

 

[Kroon]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

If you block specific domains, at the firewall, then the ad logic just goes down the list to the next advertiser. So yes, you can in fact block ads from specific advertisers, or specific advertisements, but the effort to do so requires using braincells that people who block all ads do not want to use.

 

First of all a lot of ISP have that service for free, at least where I live.  Secondly there is a lot of firewalls with that auto-update block lists so it's not hard to use.

 

Is skipping ads morally wrong?  Perhaps, that is up the individual user.  But it's not illegal!  Not only have courts said so but ISP would not implement free services that was illegal.  EU are actually looking at the sites that tries to bypass adblockers, this might actually be illegal to read what software I have installed on my computer without my consent. 

 

 

 

[Rex Hite]

The notion that there is some obligation by the consumer to pay attention to ads seems quite recent to me. Ads were sent out into the marketplace with the understanding that it was a risk if anyone bothered to pay attention, and that risk was borne by the people paying for the ads. That's how the Don Drapers of the world could make big bucks when they could demonstrate how to minimise that risk by being creative, etc.

New technological abilities for ad viewership to be tracked does not change the ethics and somehow make ad viewership a moral requirement. It just means better metrics.

 

If creators like LMG really insist that their product has value and needs to be supported by viewers then they can employ ad-block-blocks to prevent ad-blocked views. Or maybe they could use a video stream system that eliminates a timeline status bar, (no scubbing). Or they could put their valuable product behind a pay-wall. That would all be fair. No one is entitled to ad-free views of LMG videos. But ability is not entitlement, and that goes both ways.

 

Maybe they really should just play the 100 year old ad-funded game and be happy for what they can get. The whining is off-putting.

 

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, Rex Hite said:

The notion that there is some obligation by the consumer to pay attention to ads seems quite recent to me. Ads were sent out into the marketplace with the understanding that it was a risk if anyone bothered to pay attention, and that risk was borne by the people paying for the ads. That's how the Don Drapers of the world could make big bucks when they could demonstrate how to minimise that risk by being creative, etc.

New technological abilities for ad viewership to be tracked does not change the ethics and somehow make ad viewership a moral requirement. It just means better metrics.

 

If creators like LMG really insist that their product has value and needs to be supported by viewers then they can employ ad-block-blocks to prevent ad-blocked views. Or maybe they could use a video stream system that eliminates a timeline status bar, (no scubbing). Or they could put their valuable product behind a pay-wall. That would all be fair. No one is entitled to ad-free views of LMG videos. But ability is not entitlement, and that goes both ways.

 

Maybe they really should just play the 100 year old ad-funded game and be happy for what they can get. The whining is off-putting.

 

To be fair, another important thing has changed from that 100-year-old game. In the past, the content producer was paid for the ads whether people paid attention to them or not. Now, they only get paid if people view them and click.

[Rex Hite]

41 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

To be fair, another important thing has changed from that 100-year-old game. In the past, the content producer was paid for the ads whether people paid attention to them or not. Now, they only get paid if people view them and click.

Sure. But that's, literally, their business. Their expectations, their content, their ads, their money, and their risk. It's a 'they' problem, not a 'me' problem. Inasmuch as there even is a problem, which I'm not even convinced there is.

 

 

 

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

 

The issue at heart here is that if blocking Ads actually were in any way illegal then none of the firewall vendors would be creating this category and maintaining it so their customers can use it. No legitimate business is going to be knowingly and persistent breaking the law and doing something illegal like that. This is so completely transparent that it is happening that there simply is no valid counter argument to it.

 

 

No, the issue is that "Linus said it's piracy" and then the nerds came out and nitpicked the definition of piracy to deflect away from the fact they are watching the content without paying for it. IT DOES NOT MATTER. YOU DIDN'T PAY THE PRICE OF ADMISSION. The 7-11 calls the cops when you shop lift. The movie theatre calls the cops if you sneak in the back door, or bring out a camcorder. In both of these cases you can be prosecuted for trespassing (not having permission to be there) regardless if you stole anything.

 

There are at least 10 or so correct analogies to "blocking ads":

1. Stealing cable by removing the 10 cent filter. The only reason you can't see the channels is because the cable company put a lock on their box. There is nothing stopping you from picking the lock on the box, or just ripping it off the side of the house and splicing the cable. Yet people on this forum would nitpick that it's not stealing because they already have the cable run to their house, that the cable company should pay them for trespassing.

2. Stealing Satellite TV/Radio by cloning the descrambler/modchips. I don't even know if this is still a thing, but see 1.  People justified this by saying "well if they didn't want it watched, they wouldn't send it to me"

3. Stealing video games, and burning them to disk/flash carts with modified game consoles.

4. Stealing videos from behind patreon, or floatplane by using the login from a password sharing site

5. Walking into a convention, theatre, movie, concert, amusement park without paying for the entrance fee. Better hope they're not checking for badges/tickets, because you're trespassing. Tickets often have their own terms and conditions about how you may use it.

6. Cracking software so you don't have to pay for the license. The software is already on your PC. Justify that the software doesn't work properly.

7. Subscribing to periodicals, newspapers, etc and then not paying for it. 

8. Purchasing anything on a credit card and then charging it back, while keeping the item.

9. Buying things on eBay and then claiming you never got it, even when you did.

10. Sharing the login to Netflix, HBO+, Disney, etc with people outside your family.

 

Pretty much everything is a theft analogy, be it theft of product or theft of services. Quit trying to justify the theft by deflecting it as "well ads shouldn't be bad then"

 

That's exactly the same as "trial software shouldn't be trial then, I'm just going to modify it so I get the full program" when you modify the webpage to not have ads on it.

 

 

4 hours ago, Kroon said:

Is skipping ads morally wrong?  Perhaps, that is up the individual user.  But it's not illegal!  Not only have courts said so but ISP would not implement free services that was illegal.  EU are actually looking at the sites that tries to bypass adblockers, this might actually be illegal to read what software I have installed on my computer without my consent. 

 

Yes it's morally wrong, and every time someone tries to justify blocking it, it's always selfish reasons. They don't care if they are harming the creator, or the platform. Most people stop giving a care about the platform once ads are introduced. The ads are the necessary evil that makes that content available. If the bottom fell out of ad revenue overnight, a lot of content on Youtube would just disappear in a flash. It would just not be worth doing. Youtube Premium or GTFO.

 

And that's the problem when people block ads. You may not like ads. I don't like ads. But I don't pretend to justify their poor quality. I'd love it if every ad could be vetted first party ads. This will never happen short of GDPR-like requirements that pretty much ban all third party advertisements containing script.

 

[Video Beagle]

On 2/4/2022 at 5:56 AM, Kisai said:

Nitpicking. I see you watched Loius Rossmann's video.

 

 

I've been accused of MANY MANY dirty things in my time...BUT NEVER, and I MEAN NEVER, have I been accused of something as low and base as watching a Louis Rossmann video.  How dare you, Sir or Madame, HOW DARE YOU?

 

If this was piracy, WHICH IT IS NOT, I'd challenge you to a duel. But as this is leeching or mooching..I can't.

 

Also, wanting correct words to be used isn't "Nitpicking". It's saying "words have meanings and just because you're too lazy to learn the right ones, doesn't change you're using the wrong ones."

 

On 2/4/2022 at 5:56 AM, Kisai said:

So please stop trying to defend adblock. You're harming the creator. You know you are, and while your individual pennies may not matter, multiplied across 300,000 people, it does.

 

 

You'll kindly point to where I defended adblock? No. I said it's the wrong word, It's also the wrong concept. No where in this thread have I expressed my personal position on blocking ads or not (though you can probably infer from the post I just made in General about getting youtube ads during THE MIDDLE of the LMG baked in ad in today's short circuit).

 

 

 

 

[BabaGanuche]

23 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

No, the issue is that "Linus said it's piracy" and then the nerds came out and nitpicked the definition of piracy to deflect away from the fact they are watching the content without paying for it. IT DOES NOT MATTER. YOU DIDN'T PAY THE PRICE OF ADMISSION.

 

How can not downloading something be piracy? That all ad blockers do. I do not have to watch commercials on TV and using a DVR to strip them out is legal. How is that different?

[Elijah Kamski]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:43 AM, Mihle said:

No matter if you call it piracy or not, (doesn't really matter), if you watch something on YouTube for example, and block ads, you are taking something while breaking the trade deal the creator have given you.

You all watched my stream.

You all owe my $5!

XD

This is what this whole long as argument reminds me off tbh.

The $5 twitch girl.

[Elijah Kamski]

2 hours ago, BabaGanuche said:

How can not downloading something be piracy? That all ad blockers do. I do not have to watch commercials on TV and using a DVR to strip them out is legal. How is that different?

Because you are pirating the ads away from the original ship (the show or movie, basically whatever content is being given) of course XD

[Elijah Kamski]

On 1/19/2022 at 7:15 PM, leadeater said:

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.

*Gets pulled over*

Sir, did you know it's illegal to stop your car and not watch ads as you drive?

That's a $100 fine.

[Elijah Kamski]

On 2/5/2022 at 1:19 AM, Kisai said:

You know this is only about people feeling entitled to an experience they don't want to pay for and nothing more

Please pay me $5 for watching my twitch stream.

If you don't have $5 to watch a free twitch stream, you are a pirate.

XD

[Elijah Kamski]

On 1/30/2022 at 1:32 PM, Kisai said:

I don't run ad blockers because I AM NOT AN IDIOT.

I don't understand how saving your time, your eyes and your mind from soul crushing depriving and time wasting ads improve your intelligence.

 

Why would you not want to get rid of a nuisance to your quality of life?

Next you'll say SponsorBlock is dumb as it saves your time, and improves quality of life by automatically skipping video segments XD

[Elijah Kamski]

On 1/29/2022 at 9:53 AM, LAwLz said:

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. 

Imagine now if YT removed the skip button, and you were given a 5 hour long ad to watch a 10 minute long video because creators complained about not getting paid for ad revenue, and YT were forced to remove the skip button XD

Can't wait for it! XD

Gonna be fun!