Are we pirates?

[YellowJersey]

Whoa jeez, what a shit show.

 I actually agree with Linus on this. This is why I uninstalled my adblocker years ago: to support the websites and creators who provide content that I enjoy.

 As Linus explained on the WANshow, Youtube content is not "free" per se, there is a price to be paid, ie viewing an ad. By circumventing paying that price, I can see how it would be piracy as it's not materially different from torrenting a movie; the people involved at all levels of producing that content are denied compensation.

 However, I think people are getting hung up on the negative connotation of privateering, as Luke and Linus called it (aka, piracy). Linus didn't outright condemn those who use adblock. He never said not to use adblock. I think he just wanted people to be aware that adblock does have a negative impact on creators by denying them ad revenue. Linus has been consistent in this for as long as I've been following LTT. Yeah, adblock takes a bite out of revenue, but he also seems understanding as to why people do it and doesn't condemn those who do it. He's been very understanding about how intrusive ads have become as well as the security issues that come from not blocking ads on certain sites.

 My interpretation of Linus' stance on this is: if you're going to use adblock, that's fine. There are plenty of reasons to do so. However, just be aware that, by doing so, you are denying LTT revenue. If you're ok with that, then that's fine. But, if you're getting butthurt over this, then perhaps your conscience isn't as clear as you may like to think.

[Bitter]

https://adnauseam.io

Would this make everyone happy? We don't see ads, all the ads get clicked, everyone gets money. Yes? We good now?

[Arika]

4 hours ago, jwds1978 said:

 

This is actually a really good take.

Me not using an adblocker allows content creators to get paid, sure, but it's fucking over the advertiser because they are paying for me to view something i give exactly 0 shits about, whether i walk away while it's playing, just mute my headphones until it's done or just not even pay attention to it at all.

 

LTT seems to only care about getting the ad to play, regardless of whether or not the advertiser (the one paying them) gets any actual benefit out of it.

They even admit they set up their first sponsor spot before their intro animation so you can right arrow through it without missing anything in the video...is that not a bit hypocritical Linus?

 

Also skipping the youtube ad also ends in the same result as blocking it ad

[Izineth]

2 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

It definitely made me reconsider... my SponsorBlock whitelist 

 *SNIP*

Unfortunately, it is a roku based smart tv

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, JHMW19 said:

Yeah Linus chose his wording poorly which is why there is so much backlash. 

Exactly.

And that's why it annoyed me to no end that Linus spent like the entire WAN show trying to redefine the word "piracy" and then Luke simping for him.

 

If you didn't mean piracy (the word which literally means "the illegal act of breaking copyright law") then don't use the word "piracy". Also, don't say it "literally is piracy" and tell people they are "objectively wrong" when you are using the word incorrectly.

Of course people will be upset when you repeatedly calls them criminals when they actually aren't. 

 

It really bothered me because instead of going "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have used the word piracy", Linus spent like an hour trying to redefine the word "piracy" so it fit the narrative he presented. Sorry Linus but "piracy" already has a definition. You don't get to redefine it just because you use it incorrectly. Maybe you should look up what words mean before saying something "literally is piracy" and that people saying it isn't are "objectively wrong"?

 

 

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

LTT seems to only care about getting the ad to play, regardless of whether or not the advertiser (the one paying them) gets any actual benefit out of it.

My impression of Linus is that he will always pick the side that benefits him. As long as something benefits him, he is happy.

If there was an adblocker that made sure he got paid but the advertiser got screwed over (like the ad was loaded but blocked so that the user didn't see it) then I am sure Linus would be advocating for the use of that.

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

Also skipping the youtube ad also ends in the same result as blocking it ad

He specifically said that if you press the skip and button on YouTube after 3 or 5 seconds or whatever it is, the YouTuber still get some money.

 

I agree with Linus btw.

[Arika]

13 minutes ago, Mihle said:

He specifically said that if you press the skip and button on YouTube after 3 or 5 seconds or whatever it is, the YouTuber still get some money.

 

might be channel specific, but it isn't the default. a lot of places i'm reading say that if you skip an ad as soon as you can, then the creator doesn't get paid

 

Quote

Skippable video ads (ads at the start of a video that a viewer can skip after five seconds) - you get paid if a viewer watches the whole ad (or at least 30 seconds if it’s longer). These are the most common type of YouTube ad.

Quote

 Ad Skipping Reduces Payments

The percentage of people who skip ads heavily impacts YouTubers’ revenue as YouTube does not count skipped ads as a view, advertisers don’t pay for skipped ads, and therefore creators do not get paid for viewers who skip ads. If a YouTuber has an audience made of people who always skip ads, they won’t earn as much.

Quote

Pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads are also split into TrueView and Standard ad types. TrueView ads are the ones that show a skip button after about 5 seconds of watching them. These will produce NO revenue at all if they are skipped, but greater revenue if they are watched all the way through than a Standard ad that forces the viewer to watch it. This is because the company assumes the viewer must have truly been interested in the ad if they did not skip it, so they want to pay for that kind of exposure.

 

[BetteBalterZen]

On 1/28/2022 at 5:39 PM, summoned said:

Do you use adblockers?

All I can say is; 

All hail Ghostery, YouTube Vanced and STube

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Mihle said:

He specifically said that if you press the skip and button on YouTube after 3 or 5 seconds or whatever it is, the YouTuber still get some money.

 

I agree with Linus btw.

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

might be channel specific, but it isn't the default. a lot of places i'm reading say that if you skip an ad as soon as you can, then the creator doesn't get paid

Everything I can find also indicates that pressing the skip button on Youtube ads will result in the creator not getting paid.

I wasn't machoistic enough to watch the entire WAN show last week so I don't know for sure, but these seems to be the only explanations I can think of:

 

1) Linus was talking about in-video sponsors and not the Youtube AdSense ads. If you skip ~30 seconds in a video the Youtuber still gets paid, but if you skip the pre-roll ads they don't get paid. It might be that the type of ad Linus talked about, and the type of ad Arika is talking about, are two different types of ads.

 

2) Linus doesn't know that skipping pre-roll ads results in them not getting paid and incorrectly assumes it does. Wouldn't be the first time Linus assumes something to be true, says it is true in his videos, and then it turns out he was completely wrong.

 

3) All the sources Arika and I are finding are wrong. Either they were wrong at one point in time but that has changed, or everyone has just been wrong all along.

 

 

My guess is the first one. If Linus was talking about pre-roll ads when he said skipping them still results in the creator getting paid then my guess is on the second option.

 

[IPD]

8 hours ago, TankBall said:

linus my guy your takes have been realy bad the past weeks. i will ALWAYS use adblock, u r being mundanematt with your shat takes on adblock. im not even going to get into the coof takes he had oof

Louis 100% gets it.

 

Conflating legal with illegal activities, trying to ethically shame consumers of your product--and then refusing to renege or concede your own fallacious argument and vain moral superiority?  That's how you know a content provider has gotten too big for their own britches.

[IPD]

9 hours ago, MultiGamerClub said:

Same.. All tho ive heard norwegian ad rates are good for youtubers apparantly.. Not that ublock helps any of that when ads are non-skip able and their now 2-3 of them..

 

CEO of youtube must love to sit through 90 seconds or.. 5 to 8 minutes without being able to skip.. Fucked system.

I would be ok with requiring their cars to delay staring for 90 seconds while ads play.

[IPD]

8 hours ago, Kawaii_Desu said:

My smart TV doesn't have adblock (I wish it did).  But when you start putting the same shitty ad 10 times in a row and it's something I don't care about, and I can't skip it you bet it makes me irritated.  And don't even get me started on the infomercial style ads that are literally an hour long.

That's the #1 reason why I recommend HTPC, rather than using a smart TV's features.  Better interface, and you can block out all that crap that the MFG's really want you to use (as it's the primary reason why TV costs have cratered). 

[IPD]

6 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

Whoa jeez, what a shit show.

 I actually agree with Linus on this. This is why I uninstalled my adblocker years ago: to support the websites and creators who provide content that I enjoy.

 As Linus explained on the WANshow, Youtube content is not "free" per se, there is a price to be paid, ie viewing an ad. By circumventing paying that price, I can see how it would be piracy as it's not materially different from torrenting a movie; the people involved at all levels of producing that content are denied compensation.

 However, I think people are getting hung up on the negative connotation of privateering, as Luke and Linus called it (aka, piracy). Linus didn't outright condemn those who use adblock. He never said not to use adblock. I think he just wanted people to be aware that adblock does have a negative impact on creators by denying them ad revenue. Linus has been consistent in this for as long as I've been following LTT. Yeah, adblock takes a bite out of revenue, but he also seems understanding as to why people do it and doesn't condemn those who do it. He's been very understanding about how intrusive ads have become as well as the security issues that come from not blocking ads on certain sites.

 My interpretation of Linus' stance on this is: if you're going to use adblock, that's fine. There are plenty of reasons to do so. However, just be aware that, by doing so, you are denying LTT revenue. If you're ok with that, then that's fine. But, if you're getting butthurt over this, then perhaps your conscience isn't as clear as you may like to think.

There is no two ways of interpreting the word "piracy" in the digital sense.  If you feel that there are--you are simply wrong.

 

Obfuscating an argument via muddling the nomenclature and conflating what words mean--that's standard fare for people whose rationale is tepid at best.  It's also the modus operandi of those whose platform is distinctly unethical, and thus intend to project evil onto opposing views by "softening" their own stance, coupled with flagrant, baseless accusations against those they disagree with.

 

"Privateering" isn't even a thing online.  Digital privateering would be like Sony giving you a letter of marque to illegally copy and resell albums published by Virgin.  The preposterousness of this should surprise no one, as this would immediately put Sony in legal hot-water.

 

If the going rate for adsense is $00.001 per ad, then for a content creator to make a modest income of $50,000 annually--it would take FIFTY MILLION ad views to get there.  This isn't a "sustaining" form of income--nor should it be construed as thus.

 

The people getting "Butthurt" over this--as you describe--some of us aren't even taking offense at the accusatory tone of the entitled.  Rather we're sick and tired of the entitled redefining nomenclature to try and paint ordinary people as denizens of the 9th circle.  I'm going to call a spade a spade.

[IPD]

6 hours ago, Bitter said:

https://adnauseam.io

Would this make everyone happy? We don't see ads, all the ads get clicked, everyone gets money. Yes? We good now?

Great in theory.  Wait until it goes mainstream and Linus starts complaining about how ad revenue has gone from $00.001 to $00.000000001.

[joaopt]

Can anyone give and example of a legal pirate? maybe someone dressed as a pirate in halloween. There is no such thing as a legal pirate, that doesn't exist. Words have meaning, that's what dictionaries are for. You can't use a word and say you don't mean what the word actually means, especially when he said "literally piracy". Piracy is illegal by definition.

 

As to the adblocks, people have been skipping ads for decades when they watch tv, all you have to do is change the channel. And yet that's how OG TV got funded, by us watching the ads. There is no contract for me to have to watch ads either on tv or YT.

 

Linus was insanely wrong on this one, and instead of backtracking that it's "legal pirates" we should just have retracted what he said because it's just idiotic and wrong.

[Spindel]

6 hours ago, Arika S said:

*snip*...but it's fucking over the advertiser because they are paying for me to view something i give exactly 0 shits about, whether i walk away while it's playing, just mute my headphones until it's done or just not even pay attention to it at all.

You are subconsciously effected by the ad no matter if you want to admit it nor not. Only time you will not be effected by it is if you manage to walk away without seeing or hearing anything. As soon as you either get some visual or audio for an ad it starts doing it's job. 

Suggestive ads that only flash an image of a brand for 1/10th of a second works. This is so fast you consciously don't even have time to register it but subconsciously it effects you.    

 

This is a hard thing for a lot of people to admit, because a lot of people like to think they have more control than they do, but we are easily influenced by images and sound.

 

Only way to not be influenced by an ad is to not watch/hear it.

[Kilrah]

48 minutes ago, IPD said:

There is no two ways of interpreting the word "piracy" in the digital sense.

As demonstrated earlier, digital piracy = copyright infringement. Copyright infringement = using content without following the rules the content provider has established for using it.

The Youtube TOS forbid you from "interfering with the service as it's intended to be shown to you" while using Youtube.

 

Law is complex, vague, subject to interpretation etc, but if Youtube's TOS have any legal value then there is a case that using an adblocker on Youtube is illegal.

 

As Linus said he doesn't care whether you agree or not and act accordingly or not, you do what you feel is right, but the one thing is you can't deny that there is technically a case for it. A case that obviously could be either judged as right or wrong if challenged, but it's there. 

[joaopt]

7 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

As demonstrated earlier, digital piracy = copyright infringement. Copyright infringement = using content without following the rules the content provider has established for using it.

The Youtube TOS forbid you from "interfering with the service as it's intended to be shown to you" while using Youtube.

 

Law is complex, vague, subject to interpretation etc, but if Youtube's TOS have any legal value then there is a case that using an adblocker on Youtube is illegal.

 

As Linus said he doesn't care whether you agree or not and act accordingly or not, you do what you feel is right, but the one thing is you can't deny that there is technically a case for it. 

 

that's an enourmous overreach to say breaking a ToS is copyright infringement, that's not at all copyright infringement, or even copyright infringement adjacent. And ToS are just corporate bla bla bla, most have clauses that are illegal in some countries.

 

ToS can get you banned or sactioned by the service, but in legal terms you just have to follow the law of the land. Ignoring, skipping ads is not illegal period, people have been doing it for decades on tv

[Alpha-Toxic]

I didn't read all of the comments in the thread before me, so I may be repeating something that was already said...

 

Linus is categorically and totally wrong that adblock is the same as piracy.

Quite the opposite actually.

He was saying on the WAN show that there is an implicit contract of sort, a tit for tat, we get content for the price of watching ads.

But this is not the case.

There is no contract. There was no "price tag" shown to me when I opened Youtube. I was not asked if I agree to that transaction. I was not in any way presented with the parameters of the deal.

In fact, when you go to the app store to install youtube, it literally says it is "Free, Offers In-App Purchases". Nothing about ads as the price of admission.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-stream/id544007664

The website doesn't tell me that ads are the price of the content wither.

(admittedly, the one on the play store does say "Contains Ads")

It is youtube that is trying to sneakily insert the ads without asking any sort of confirmation first. It is them that are stealing my time from me. Not the other way around.

 

And the other fundamental thing about the internet - it's a pull model. I decide what I download to my computer.

All I did was find a way to prevent youtube's sneaky unsolicited tactics and not let it steal my time.

They literally put it out there in the open, both the real content and the ads. I simply chose to download only what I need and not waste my time with the rest. I did not enter any contract, so I broke no contract. No content infringement or piracy happened here in any way.

 

If you want to complain about contracts, first make it explicit. Otherwise it's nothing but a wish.

 

I'm using youtube premium myself, a much cleaner transaction. I pay the explicitly stated in advance price and I get what I pay for.

 

NOTE: you don't actually need to agree to any ToS to open youtube and watch stuff. They only want you to agree to their cookies.

If agreeing to the ToS was so important to them or mattered in any way, they would have put it front and center and not let you use the site before agreeing.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

22 minutes ago, Alpha-Toxic said:

There is no contract.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/implied_contract.asp

[Alpha-Toxic]

1 minute ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/implied_contract.asp

So if I may turns this around, when Youtube says that the content is free, and then try to extract payment in the form of ads without notification after the fact, they are actually breaking their own implied contact? Got it, they are breaking the law...

It goes both ways. The implied contract can't be just what suits you and if there was NOTHING between us, then there is no contract, not even an implied one.

[woodman_victory]

38 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

As demonstrated earlier, digital piracy = copyright infringement. Copyright infringement = using content without following the rules the content provider has established for using it.

The Youtube TOS forbid you from "interfering with the service as it's intended to be shown to you" while using Youtube.

 

Law is complex, vague, subject to interpretation etc, but if Youtube's TOS have any legal value then there is a case that using an adblocker on Youtube is illegal.

 

As Linus said he doesn't care whether you agree or not and act accordingly or not, you do what you feel is right, but the one thing is you can't deny that there is technically a case for it. A case that obviously could be either judged as right or wrong if challenged, but it's there. 

If using adblock was illegal then why do they not sue or go after adblock services and the users who use them with lawsuits? It *may* be against TOS/EULA but it isnt illegal or atleast not illegal in the same way actual piracy is and if they really wanted to stop it they would just make it so adblock breaks the site. 

[joaopt]

5 minutes ago, Hairless Monkey Boy said:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/implied_contract.asp

There is no such contract, not even an implied one. Skiping the video is the exact same thing as letting it run and go to the bathroom and not watch it. You are in no way contracted to watch the ads.

And if you say that's ok, it's not, that would be cheating the ones paying, the companies that pay for the ads. I'm sure they prefer you skipping it then falsely watching it and paying for nothing. I'm also sure Linus would be against cheating the companies paying for the ads of their money for his profit.

[Kilrah]

Just now, woodman_victory said:

If using adblock was illegal then why do they not sue or go after adblock services and the users who use them with lawsuits?

Simply because it's not in their interest at this point in time, but that does not make it legal, only unchallenged. If at some point they did decide to go after someone legally on that basis, a court could judge that yes, the user did violate its contract with youtube. Or not.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

11 minutes ago, woodman_victory said:

If using adblock was illegal then why do they not sue

Cost/benefit analysis.

11 minutes ago, woodman_victory said:

if they really wanted to stop it they would just make it so adblock breaks the site.

They'd probably just blacklist their list of adblock users. But again, there is a cost/benefit analysis there. (and they do have a list)

 

Just because they allow you to use the service while blocking ads doesn't make what you are doing amoral or right.

 

7 minutes ago, joaopt said:

kiping the video is the exact same thing as letting it run and go to the bathroom and not watch it. You are in no way contracted to watch the ads.

And if you say that's ok, it's not, that would be cheating the ones paying, the companies that pay for the ads.

The companies running ads are fully informed about what they are paying for. They know full well the viewership and click-through rates for the ads that they run. They aren't being cheated, because they get exactly what they pay for.

 

I block ads because I f*****g hate that s**t. But I'm not deluded enough to think that what I am doing has no harm, or is justified, or is moral.

 

I don't understand how it's impossible for others to simply acknowledge this simple truth...