Are we pirates?

[Rex Hite]

Until there's a EULA before an LMG video that I have to accept before I watch it, there's no question of "piracy". The EULA would be a joke but at least it would be something to hang a claim on.

Before the internet I would put the kettle on, go to the bathroom or just mute the TV when an ad came on. I consumed the content without seeing the ads; piracy?

I have no agreement with advertisers or creators to watch any ad, no matter how I choose to not watch it.

I'm not in the room or agreeing to anything when the money-sharing agreements between the ad sellers and ad presenters do their deal. I'm in no position to participate in that business arrangement. I'm under no obligation.

 

Or maybe I am. Maybe there is a EULA that I have agreed to. 

Is my active participation with a third-party business agreement with an advertiser part of the Social Contract? I am obligated not to steal. Is not watching an ad a violation of that?

 

I think Linus is confusing the risk that advertisers accept when they pay for ads, to being entitled to my participation in that activity. I will always "put the kettle on".

 

 

 

 

 

[tikker]

  

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

youtube is free as far as im aware and any thing any poster puts on there  is also free.  if they dont want it to be free put it behind a pay wall... simple as that.

The "paywall" you are speaking off is there: the ads. If you don't want to see them and prefer cash as a literal pay wall then you can buy a subscription to Floatplane or YouTube premium and you'll have a direct payment. Nothing can truly be free, someone needs to pay for the service they are providing to you. In this case that payment comes from watching ads. In the case of YouTube, the content is free on the condition of watching ads.

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

i may not pay money to the forms but i do try and help on the forms witch should be a from of payment...

Ah the exposure argument. As much as helping out on the forums is appreciated, that doesn't pay the bills. Such help definitely keeps the community alive, but it doesn't keep the servers running.

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

not only that spending my own money to find and test something and posting of my findings for free...

That's your choice to do so. This makes it sound like you are doing it for the "be grateful I'm spending my precious time on you" and not for the "let's just help people out with this".

1 hour ago, fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead said:

I am just curious what happens if you skip the ad by youtube enhancer does that still count as piracy

If that has the same result as blocking the ad, i.e. no income from it, then the effect is the same.

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

I think Linus' comments actually sparked an interesting debate. I wonder if it has made people rethink using an ad blocker. To the people who use ad blockers, has this made you reconsider using it or have you since whitelisted sites you wish to support?

I'm switching between it. For some channels I follow it's like 1 or 2 ads over a 30 minute video or like a few at the start which doesn't bother me. If it were 5  ads over a 10 minute video then it starts to become mildly annoying and I'll admit to enabling a blocker.

 

  

32 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Where in the YouTube terms of service is that stated?

https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

 

Again, I have no contract with YouTube that stipulates I have to watch their ads. If I were to subscribe to Netflix, I'd have a contract with them that outlines the service I receive and the payment I provide. YouTube doesn't have that. Ergo I still maintain that piracy does not apply, because I have not broken any copyright. Linus even agreed to that during the WAN show, it's the first thing that he said when Luke asked him if he were to back up that assertion "in the legal sense". So that's it, it's not piracy.

Quote

The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to:

<snip>

2. circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage, or otherwise interfere with the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that: (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content; or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;

One could argue blocking ads falls under circumventing or otherwise interfering with the Service.

 

Secondly, playing a bit of devil's advocate, since you know there are ads on the platform that play before/during the video or after watching a number of videos and noticing a bunch of ads, I can see the legal room to argue an implied contract was made, which you breach once you start using an ad blocker. Are they going to fight you in court over it? Unlikely. Could they? Possibly.

[Kilrah]

35 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

If a simple truism warrants a tweet from Linus, you have to ask yourself what the intent behind it was.

It just started as a simple answer to someone?

 

35 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Where in the YouTube terms of service is that stated?

https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

As mentioned on WAN this was never about the legality of it, but it is pretty obvious that there are 2 ways the service and creator are financed on the Youtube platform, if you accept none of them but watch anyway then you are either pirating, freeloading or whatever term floats your boat.

 

But in those terms I would expect this to apply:

Quote

The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to:

2. circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage, or otherwise interfere with the Service (or attempt to do any of these things)

IANAL but I would interpret that to mean that you can load the page in a standard browser and interact with it as it is provided to you, an adblocker is "interfering with the service" as it can't do what it was supposed to i.e. show you an ad.

[Lightwreather]

Jeez, I'm just realising this thread has been up only for 18hrs and has now made 5 pages.....

Any bets on when it'll reach 20?

[Avocado Diaboli]

43 minutes ago, tikker said:

One could argue blocking ads falls under circumventing or otherwise interfering with the Service.

26 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

IANAL but I would interpret that to mean that you can load the page in a standard browser and interact with it as it is provided to you, an adblocker is "interfering with the service" as it can't do what it was supposed to i.e. show you an ad.

 

You should really quote the entire sentence. You don't just get to cherry pick the words that seem to support your claim. Here's the full thing:

Quote

circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage, or otherwise interfere with the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that: (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content; or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content

 

Blocking ads does not circumvent security related features, it does not facilitate copying or other use of content and it doesn't limit the use of the service or the content. The service works just fine without ads, hence why blocking it doesn't interfere with it. You are really grasping at straws here.

[DarkSwordsman]

There's three main things, I think, that Linus was trying to get across:

1. Ethical piracy is still piracy
2. You should support YouTube creators (i.e: "Think about the implications")
3. Adblock is Piracy

My thoughts are:

 

For point one: Yeah, sure. That's fair.

 

For point two: I do agree that YouTube creators should be supported. However, at the end of the day, their income is pretty much donations (besides any deals they sign with sponsors).

 

No one has an obligation to pay for their content. If there was, they would put their content on a paid platform, like Floatplane or Patreon. They are taking a risk by making a YouTube channel, especially with content-id failures and demonetization.

 

For point three: Adblock is not piracy. Piracy requires the content to be locked behind some authorization. However, the fact that you can just block ads via PiHole and still watch videos proves that there is no authorization required to watch these videos. It's identical if the ad videos fail to load for some reason.

 

As such, we are not pirating YouTube videos since we are not circumventing any sort of DRM. YouTube could very easily prevent users from watching videos if they have an Adblock, but they don't.

 

I want to believe that Linus' main point was pretty much that, "Adblock prevents creators from getting revenue, so you should think about whether you want to use it or not." I think that is a completely fair take. However, him doubling down and using impressive mental gymnastics to try to prove that Adblock is Piracy is just awful. It makes no sense.

 

Piracy in the online world is very strictly coupled with "illegally obtaining copyrighted materials". Often that is someone ripping BDs and uploading them to a torrent, or someone circumventing a DRM, like breaking Netflix's Widevine for example.

 

Linus claimed, "It's piracy because you circumvented a digital protection to access content without paying (either in the form of money or time)." This is false. Advertisements on YouTube are not a form of Digital Rights Management, or DRM. If they were, they would be much, much harder to circumvent.

 

Trying to equate Adblock to Piracy is disingenuous. Linus tried to push his opinion as if it was fact, going as far as to say, "You're just objectively wrong," to someone that disagreed with him. To me that is just incredibly arrogant.

[SimplyChunk]

The way i see it is if you don't want your content viewed for free (regardless of the revenue stream) then don't put it somewhere where accessibilty to that content is free. 

 

Adsense only works because you have volume of traffic to your vids on Youtube.  It is however, just a 'nice to have' rather than a viable and reliable source of income.  You start Youtube in the 'hope' that people will watch your videos.  It is a gamble whether it takes off and you start to make money on it or not. 

 

It's traffic that ultimately decides how much money you make in any walk of life.  You have to just pray you can take the knocks that come with the diversion of the types of people vast traffic brings.  On a side note, you think LMG would still get the sponsorship deals if they were just posting to their floatplane members instead of Youtube?

[DarkSwordsman]

31 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

IANAL but I would interpret that to mean that you can load the page in a standard browser and interact with it as it is provided to you, an adblocker is "interfering with the service" as it can't do what it was supposed to i.e. show you an ad.

By this same logic, using DarkReader or Stylus to modify the CSS for a better viewing experience is also "interfering with the service" and should be illegal. No?

[Kilrah]

30 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

You should really quote the entire sentence. You don't just get to cherry pick the words that seem to support your claim. Here's the full thing:

I picked the relevant bit, because as you mention an adblocker isn't about security etc, but that sentence says "including security-related features or features", i.e. there is an emphasis on those but anything else that interferes with the service is also dealt with by the part I quoted.

 

I.e... you don't get to pick the bit of the sentence that supports your claim while ignoring that the subject is already dealt with very clearly... you can't say that only what's emphasised applies.

 

25 minutes ago, DarkSwordsman said:

By this same logic, using DarkReader or Stylus to modify the CSS for a better viewing experience is also "interfering with the service" and should be illegal. No?

Yes probably. That doesn't mean they have to be going after it, like they don't go after people for using ad blockers even when that's obviously more "damaging" to the platform - but should they choose to they would technically have a case about the user violating the terms of service. 

[lewdicrous]

1 hour ago, Spotty said:

To the people who use ad blockers, has this made you reconsider using it or have you since whitelisted sites you wish to support?

Sites like this forum, maybe, but not YouTube.

From my understanding, the creators don't get paid if you skip an ad before a set period of time has passed. If I were to stop using an adblocker, I'd just go back to skipping ads as soon as I can, which wouldn't make a difference if what I mentioned was true, so I'd rather not get them in the first place.

 

In the past, I've opted to supporting the forum directly, through paying as a contributor, but stopped after a year or so. Did the same with YouTube Premium.

If YouTube brings out a Premium Lite, that excludes YouTube Music, then I might consider subscribing to that and supporting creators that way.

[R1TTER]

Yes you are a pirate /endthread 

[SimplyChunk]

45 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Jeez, I'm just realising this thread has been up only for 18hrs and has now made 5 pages.....

Any bets on when it'll reach 20?

Wednesday

[tikker]

35 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

 

You should really quote the entire sentence. You don't just get to cherry pick the words that seem to support your claim. Here's the full thing:

 

Blocking ads does not circumvent security related features, it does not facilitate copying or other use of content and it doesn't limit the use of the service or the content. The service works just fine without ads, hence why blocking it doesn't interfere with it. You are really grasping at straws here.

I did quote the entire sentence. I also never said blocking ads circumvents security related features (including does not mean limited to) nor did I say it facilitates copying or other use of the content. Interfering with it also doesn't mean breaking it. Without ads the service works fine for you, but not for the creators as they miss out on income from those ads, so yes you do "interfere with the service" from the point of view of creators and YouTube.

  

20 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Sites like this forum, maybe, but not YouTube.

From my understanding, the creators don't get paid if you skip an ad before a set period of time has passed. If I were to stop using an adblocker, I'd just go back to skipping ads as soon as I can, which wouldn't make a difference if what I mentioned was true, so I'd rather not get them in the first place.

 

In the past, I've opted to supporting the forum directly, through paying as a contributor, but stopped after a year or so. Did the same with YouTube Premium.

If YouTube brings out a Premium Lite, that excludes YouTube Music, then I might consider subscribing to that and supporting creators that way.

Wasn't this "solved" by unskippable short ones and the "you can skip in <countdown> s" button for longer ones?

[LAwLz]

Linus is objectively wrong. 

He would have a point if he stopped after he said that they make less money when people block ads, but since he kept digging his own grave saying things like "it's piracy" (it literally isn't, and a court has ruled on this) and then likened it to sneaking in to a circus. 

 

He then tried to backtrack by saying "I never said it was illegal" even though he called it piracy, which is illegal. 

 

There are some valid points in his posts but he undermined them by getting things wrong and exaggerating. 

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

You may argue: "just leave the ads running on the trusted websites (YouTube, ect...) like Luke said"

ASsk MSN some years ago how well that worked. Malware authors managed to slip in, well, malware, into the ads MSN ran, causing untold headaches and issues before it got locked down.

 

Surely MSN is trusted, right?

All it takes is one time....

No thanks, that's a level of trust I cannot afford to give to anyone.

[AkIonSight]

Im not against Ads, Im against tracking ads. I will happily watch the sponsored segment of the video but I cant tolerate, google ads

[Nord1ing]

"In Soviet Russia YouTube pirate You!":

That especially true for guide videos, there is tones of garbage content on youtube, and it is not possible to retract ad-views after understanding what I just watched a useless or misleading content.

That discussion should be both ways

[lewdicrous]

52 minutes ago, tikker said:

Wasn't this "solved" by unskippable short ones and the "you can skip in <countdown> s" button for longer ones?

From what I read, you need to watch at 30 seconds for it to count.

Last I remember, you could skip the ad after just 5 seconds, unles they changed it.

[Arika]

28 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

No thanks, that's a level of trust I cannot afford to give to anyone.

and sure as hell not Google of all companies.

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

From what I read, you need to watch at 30 seconds for it to count.

Last I remember, you could skip the ad after just 5 seconds, unles they changed it.

Oddly, I've seen it both ways on my phone, some ads can be skipped after 5sec, others have no option at all.

Dunno what's going on behind the scenes.

They really ought to make them relevant to the video I"m about to watch,

If it's tech related, showing me an ad for swimwear won't hold my interest. An ad about VR might.

[Radium_Angel]

11 minutes ago, Nord1ing said:

That especially true for guide videos, there is tones of garbage content on youtube, and it is not possible to retract ad-views after understanding what I just watched a useless or misleading content.

Especially after they've pulled the downvoting button, which makes it harder to determine if the video is worth your time

[Kilrah]

7 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Oddly, I've seen it both ways on my phone, some ads can be skipped after 5sec, others have no option at all.

Dunno what's going on behind the scenes.

Creator decides AFAIK.

[GTrash81]

Saw the Twitter message on r/pcmasterrace and wondered what was happening.

Now I know and....well, adblock is selfdefense nowadays.

I understand that costs needs to be somehow paid, but without deep

regulations how ads shall look like, adblock stays active.

 

You get popups while loading, popups after the first scroll, you need to click

on a spoiler tag for the text and suddenly 1ns before the click an ad popups which

forwards you to another site.

 

And if videos get into the mix, the hell starts to open up.

You get on some sites unskippable-whole-page-ads, bad, but some sort of okay.

But ads that start automatically play are bad.

The dead end is, if ads are obnoxiously loud and I mean really loud.

Normal Realtek onboad soundchip, sound level at around 15% and quite

a lot of ads had been so loud, that it outright scared me.

If I would get from every page 1000 bucks for each scare, I think I would

pretty fast own half of New York.

 

Until ads get heavily regulated, adblock will be selfdefense.

 

Youtube now has a special place: it is too much.

Watched some time ago some videos, which I thought

would be interesting.

They were around 7 minutes long.

I got 8 double-ad-sections, unskippable and longer than

10 seconds. It expanded the watch time of the video to 10 minutes or so.

Years later, Youtube Premium got a thing and checked how it works, payment

options etc.

Well, Youtube is big, okay. Those datacenter costs, okay. But 12 bucks a month is

too pricey, for the fact that I don't watch like 90% of the available content.

6 bucks would be more reasonable, at least I think so.

 

 

But here comes the weird part: this behavior of Youtube only exists on the website.
Watching with the official Youtube-App, the ads are not as bad.

So maybe Alphabet has just to redesign a bit of their configuration for the website,

but until that happens, adblock is selfdefense.

 

For the rest of the world: heavy regulation needs to happen, especially against autoplay

and those high differences in sound level.
Sitting in silence and having blasting very loud noises out of nowhere is no fun.

 

[RageTester]

It's harder to block ads on android... Even using brave browser, pop-ups are killing me.

[ToboRobot]

I use pytube to rip long videos of YouTube and watch them.  Ads ruin a long form conversation.  

I get that I am not monetizing the content as I am expected, but I feel like content should be monetized in way that works for consumers.  And I am totally content to steal from large corporations.  

My financial opinions are also based on my economic reality that involves food/rent taking up almost my entire income, and would happily pay for YouTube Premium if I could afford it.