Because that's a totally separate discussion. Blocking ads is about controlling what code runs on my machine, not about trying to obtain content without "paying" for it. There has been a nightmarish amount of malware served through ads and so blocking ads (and external JS content) is a security concern. After the fact, once all ads have been blocked, there can be a discussion about creators getting money for their content. In that conversation I am happy to talk about paying for Youtube Red, supporting people on Patreon, and sponsored segments in podcasts, all of which I am in favor of.
But don't try and turn a security issue into an ethics issue.
They have a way to pay and get ads 0% of the time, guaranteed. If you really cared about your security, you would both block ads and pay for the subscription to ensure you never get served the code in the first place.
And even if that weren't the case, why is it okay to just take what you want without paying just because you don't approve of the security.
Often times I don't trust a website with my credit card info, the solution is to not use that website. The solution is to not try to hack in and take what I want without paying...
Edit: i've now had threats sent to the email I had listed in my user profile about this. So i'm done talking here.
Hardly. Taking what you want? Hacking in? What in the world are you talking about? Nobody is hacking into their systems.
They are willingly serving up a page to my computer for free. This has absolutely nothing to do with payment. Whether I view the entire page, or only the part of the page I want to see, is none of their business. What scripts I allow to run on my computer, what content I allow to be downloaded to my computer, is also none of their damn business. All of this happens on my own private property.
Personal security easily trumps whatever ethics concern you have.
> They are willingly serving up a page to my computer for free. This has absolutely nothing to do with payment.
This seems self-servingly reductive. It sure would be convenient for people who don't like paying for content if the Internet was an amoral technical automaton, but in fact there are human people on the other side of that HTTP request. Your your interactions with them are subject to moral and ethical considerations just like any other, even though they are mediated by automatic mechanisms.
note: I don't think PH is a particularly sympathetic example since most of the content is probably pirated in the first place, but your argument bumped me.
> Your your interactions with them are subject to moral and ethical considerations just like any other, even though they are mediated by automatic mechanisms.
The moral and ethical considerations are simple - you sent data to me, I get to do whatever I want with it, subject to legal limits. I can view the whole site in my browser. Or half of it. Or view it in Emacs. I can run scripts. Or not run them. This is my machine, my execution environment. If you want to dictate how I consume the content, then you have the right to present me with the option and let me agree or disagree. If I disagree, don't serve me the content. Talking morality here is just trying to guilt-trip people into compliance with crappy money-making tactics.
Is it, then, also immoral to fast-forward through TV ads on your DVR? Or perhaps to change the channel when an ad is on? Or go to the bathroom / fix yourself a snack in the other room / do anything else aside from watch the ad while it's playing?
If you also believe that's immoral, then I really think this thread is going nowhere, as it's unlikely we'll find common ground. If you don't believe TV ad-skipping is immoral, then what's the difference between that and web ad blocking?
Because it's automated? Why does that magically change its morality? Does that mean a self-built DVR that automatically skips ads is immoral? You and others are arguing "just because something is technically possible, it doesn't mean it's moral"... but you can't have it both ways. The technical ease (or lack thereof) by which you do or don't avoid seeing ads should have no bearing on its morality.
It always amazes me how readily people defend ads on moral and ethical grounds, without ever considering the moral and ethical aspects of dictating how people should consume content. It's always a useful exercise to try to imagine this same business model and same practices on another medium. Every time I do, it freaks me out. Here's what it looks like:
I enjoy reading sci-fi and fantasy, but it's getting harder and harder to pick the next thing to read, because I'm getting pickier with age. It would be great if I could find a source of information about new sci-fi and fantasy books, so that I didn't have to pick my books blindly and get disappointed so often.
Fortunately, I've discovered a printed magazine being sold at a store a few blocks away from my home. The greatest thing about it is that it's free of charge! I don't have to pay for the magazine, I just have to go to the store and pick up the copy.
However, it's peppered with ads. Some are annoying because they're placed in such a way that I don't realize they're ads. Instead, I think I'm reading a book review and I don't realize my mistake until I'm almost a full paragraph into the ad. Others are clearly ads, but they're a whopping four pages and they interrupt my reading flow because I have to skip them. Others are just half a page in size, but the paper for those pages is much, much thicker than normal, which makes turning pages awkward and cumulatively adds to the weight of the magazine -- so much so that some issues weigh close to an old-school telephone book!
But hell, it's still a good source of information, so I use it and grumble, until one day one of the other readers gets so fed up, that they lock themselves in their home for a couple of months and invent a machine that can examine the magazine, cut out all the ads from it and assemble what remains into a smaller, nicer-looking magazine. So now I can go to the store, grab a new issue of the magazine, come home, feed the magazine into the ad-cutter and then enjoy reading all the information I wanted without any ad-related annoyance.
This works fine for all readers, but not so much for the ads industry. Naturally, something's got to give, so new technologies emerge. The ads industry designs new ads for the magazine to print and these ads have tiny cameras that observe what the reader is doing and tiny wireless components that report what the cameras observed. That way the magazine publisher and the ads industry can know whether I'm actually reading the ads or not. Not only that, they can also know which ads I look at longer, which ones I skip faster, which ones I come back to look at later and they can even know other things about what I do at home, including what other magazines I like to read.
Of course, I don't like that at all. It's my home, you know? Maybe during the summer I like to get up and walk to my coffee-maker clad only in an old T-shirt I slept in -- family jewels hanging freely -- and read the new issue of the magazine while sipping my morning coffee, before getting dressed. Only now I feel uncomfortable because there's a fucking camera catching glimpses of my danglies and sending them to some ad executive up there. Or maybe I'm not that gross, but I still object to intrusive shit being forced on me.
And then it gets worse: the magazine publisher starts complaining if I use my ad-cutting machine. They don't stop me from reading their magazine -- still free, mind you! -- but they send me passive-aggressive letters whenever I put an issue through the ad-cutter: "Ads pay our printing costs and allow us to pay our authors and editors. We're not charging you for any of this. Won't you reconsider reading our ads?"
Since I'm not the only reader and this magazine isn't the only one to use the ads to sustain themselves, things get complicated. Huge discussions erupt about ad-cutting: readers just want to read their stuff without annoyances and creepy surveillance, writers and editors just want to produce content and get paid for doing the stuff they love, publishers just want to retain their readership and keep making money from putting content in their hands, and the ads industry just wants its profits and the rest of us can get fucked, thank you very much.
It's clear that there's a problem with ads, though, so different magazines try different solutions. Some band together and spin off ad companies that promises to serve only "nice ads" that aren't annoying or intrusive. Others say "Fuck it, this didn't work, we're charging you from now on." Others get rid of ads and try subsisting on donations and patronage. Some others get rid of ads by forming a group that charges you a monthly submission and distributes that money based on what magazines you get more frequently from the stores. Still others decide to offer premium content that you have to pay for and don't care whether you cut their ads as much. Some even decide to give you a choice by offering a free ad-ridden edition and a paid ad-free edition for each issue. Not to mention those who go the other way and work as hard as they can on injecting their ads into content in such a way that your ad-cutter can't get rid of them easily.
How does the story end? I don't know, we're all still trapped in it. But it still boggles my mind whenever someone tells me that I have a moral and ethical obligation to leave the ads intact in the magazine that's in my hands, in my home, just because I got it for free and the publisher expects me to use it in a certain way. To me, it's not me who's at fault for "stealing content" and "getting something for nothing"; it's the publisher and the ads industry who are overstepping their boundaries and crossing several lines, just because they don't want to change their business model. Every time someone berates me for cutting ads from my magazines and telling me I can't eat my cake and have it too, I can't help but wonder why they don't think of the publishing industry and the ads industry in same terms.
They gave it to you for free on the assumption you would look at the ads. They didn't have to give it to you. You didn't have to take it. It's called freedom.
But because I have it, I have the freedom to use it how I want.
That freedom was confirmed in the EU for cars, and some other personal devices recently.
If its in your control, its yours to use.
I request a webpage, and receive back text data.
My browser parses and manipulates it into a visual form.
If I want, I can discard any piece of the data before displaying - and browsers frequently do this when syntax errors occur.
Is a browser obligated to serve the user an error if the data is incomplete?
Why is the browser then obligated to display another page in its complete form?
Especially if said complete form contains software designed to break the security of the browser?
Its just not an ethical issue. The ad industry needs to pivot. They've lost their credibility that they can be trusted.
Visiting Forbes today may be as dangerous as visiting a torrent site in the early 90s.
You don't know till you execute the code, so why not stop treating the browser like a sex partner who might just have HIV, but you're not sure, and start wearing a little protection?
So, they have given you the magazine. You don't distribute it to anyone. You now own the physical medium, but not the rights to reproduce the content, but if you want to cut out the article and stick it on your refrigerator door should they be able to stop you from doing this?
They are willing to serve my general-purpose computer a stream of data over the wire. What I do with that stream of data is none of their business. It's as simple as that. If they want me to view that data only if some conditions are met, it's their right - but they have to enforce it before sending the data, and not retroactively complaining afterwards. There's no moral issue here, except publishers trying to guilt-trip people into viewing ads, because they're too scared of actually asking for money[0]. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
[0] - rightly so, but that's a feature of capitalism, isn't it?
Even getting entirely away from the argument that ad networks can host malicious code, it's quite simple. I send a burst of information to a server. The server sends a burst of information back. I then decode the information to reveal a set of instructions.
Demanding that I execute all these instructions without exception is like a subscription service sending me a newsletter in the mail and demanding that if I pick it up, I've somehow agreed to read the whole thing, beginning to end, out loud. Absurdity.
>No they are not. They are willing to serve you pages with ads. Not pages without ads.
This is an out-and-out lie. They are willing to serve me pages without ads, because they do it every time I browse there with an ad-blocker. I make an HTTP request, their site responds. The HTML code asks me to download an ad, and I, through my ad-blocker, decline. That doesn't stop their server from sending me the content.
If they don't like that, they're perfectly free to design their site to force me to download ads in order to view the content. They have every right to, for instance, show me a video ad, and then have me take a quiz to demonstrate that I viewed the ad and remember it, before continuing on to the rest of the site. If they don't want to do this, that's their problem, not mine.
>No ads = they don't exist = no content.
It's not my job to worry about their business model.
>My bet is that companies just find a way around ad-blocking
Well, they could just embed the ads into the page, such as by serving them from the same domain and making it non-obvious which images are ads and which are not. People have been proposing this for ages. But the ad companies don't like it because they don't trust their own clients to accurately report ad-servings. Again, not my problem. They need to fix their own business model. If they can't do that, and go out of business, that's their problem. They should have done a better job coming up with a viable business model.
This may sound greedy to you, but for you to have the absolute gall of telling people that they need to expose their computers to malware is purely asinine.
"This is an out-and-out lie. They are willing to serve me pages without ads, because they do it every time I browse there with an ad-blocker"
You people are naively deluded.
" No ads = they don't exist = no content.
It's not my job to worry about their business model."
You don't seem to grasp the realpolitik here.
No ads = no content - in the long run.
Get it?
You don't seem to grasp the math here.
If there are no ads, they, and all their peers cease to exist.
Or else they go full paywall.
I'm not even making an ideological statement - although I could very well do that, I don't need to.
Do you know the reason that there are maybe 1/3 the number of foreign correspondents for major news networks - and why there is so little coverage of Middle East etc? Because CNN now competes with click-farms like Buzzfeed. Less revenue = less product.
So it's the 'choice' consumers make.
These things don't exist in a vacuum they are real.
You don't want ads, you don't want to pay - they you are 'de facto' saying you don't want the content in the long run.
There is no argument against this - you can rant and rave as much as you want about side issues such as 'the http stream belongs to me' yada yada yada - it's totally irrelevant.
No ads (or pay, or donations) = no content.
It's as simple as that.
"This may sound greedy to you, but for you to have the absolute gall of telling people that they need to expose their computers to malware is purely asinine."
No - I am not exposing people to malware by suggesting that they 'not use ad blockers'. Because 99.9% of the world does not use adblockers and don't face such malware problems. I'm not even suggesting they 'not use ad blockers'. I'm merely pointing out the reality of the situation.
Denying reality is the only 'asinine' thing going on here.
If there are no ads, they, and all their peers cease to exist....Or else they go full paywall.
You didn't mention the other options -- publishers could get together and come up with a micropayment standard so users can pay the few cents for each view that the advertiser would have earned from ads.
I use an ad blocker, not because I am opposed to paying for content I view, but because ads are annoying and distracting, and I'd be happy to pay them the money they are earning from ads.
But what I'm not willing to do is pay "just $3.99 for unlimited access to our site!". I'm not going to pay $50/year for access to a site that I might only visit a couple times a month or less.
But let me fund $10 a month into a micropayment account, and then dole out payment for each page view, and I'll gladly sign up -- as long as it's an open standard so with one funding account I can visit pretty much any micropayment site.
If it was just paying publishers a portion per page that would be okay. I don't like this setup of trying and sometimes failing to outbid ads at whatever price that keyword is this second.
> What makes you think they're bidding against ads?
"Here’s how it works: when Contributor users visit a site in Google’s network, their monthly contribution is used to bid on their behalf in the ad auction—so they, rather than an advertiser, end up buying the ad slot."
> It allows you to do what you described as wanting for most sites, and you're not going to use it because it's not perfect? You should try it.
Someone being able to pay extra to get past my ad blocking is not what I want. Nor do I like the way money is allocated from such a system. But beyond that, being adsense-only means it doesn't affect the worst quarter of ads, and I can't even lobby those sites or ad networks to join the micropayment system. Also the system I want has a "this site tricked me, don't give them money" button.
If it could merge with flattr and invite other companies, then it would have a real path forward toward an ad-free landscape and I would be much more willing to use it.
> Realpolitik will very quickly trump any ideological arguments.
Waiting for it. Because I predict that with ads gone, the content that will be gone is the worthless kind. People are fine with sharing stuff for free out of the goodness of their heart, and they're also fine with asking for money for their services.
The problem with ads is that ad-driven sites serve content created only to support their ad-driven business model.
I always think it's funny when people point out that all the ad-driven content would be gone if nobody viewed ads. So what? I'd pay for the few things that were really worth it, and the rest would be provided by people who just wanted to share. That would be amazing.
Meh. Some of this "content" doesn't really qualify as content, though. I suspect a lot of sites on the bubble of being eliminated by ad blocking are just derivative, reposting sites, and should probably be culled from the herd anyway. For example, how many "Apple news" sites do we really need, posting and reposting the same dubious rumor eleventy-seven times?
It seems fairly easy. Even when ads are being blocked, images on the page are not blocked. So the content creators will need to dump the ad networks and host the ad images on their own servers. If it is impossible for the ad blocker to tell the difference between a content image and an ad image it can't block the ads without blocking all the images. Of course I realize that this is far from ideal. Now there is no ad tracking. And each content creator has to roll their own ad image system (including hiring sales people to get companies to purchase ad space, handling the payment system, etc.). And so forth.
>My bet is that companies just find a way around ad-blocking.
No they won't. The entire way the web works gives far more control to the client with regards to what they do and don't see. There will never be a way around ad blocking.
To repeat: It is not about paying. I do pay for a number of services that do me right (Steam games, Google Play music, Netflix, others) and would pay for services if i could (Youtube Red). Personally i have no stake in pornhub since i don't use it.
It's still, and entirely separately from payments, a very important issue.
The real context here is:
Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines.
Even if the internet had no ads and no tracking code and no malware anywhere whatsoever, there would still be a need for the technology to block and change the way in which my computer handles the things sent to it by other computers before showing them to me. I have a myriad blocks and css modifications and even site additions and other things set up that have absolutely nothing to do with ads, and being able to do that reliably is important.
Totally agree, and I try to explain this whenever possible. I am not blocking ads. I am blocking 3rd party content. I wish publishers would change their nag message from "we see you are blocking ads" to "we see that you are blocking third party content and scripts". Perhaps if they did, they would realize how absurd is their proposition.
> Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines.
"receives from other people's machines" makes it sound like PornHub is seeking you out and sending you stuff you didn't ask for. If you visited their site, you and your computer asked for whatever they sent. If you don't want parts of what they send, they offer you a convenient way of stopping that by paying for their content.
Similarly, if they don't want me viewing their content without paying, they can setup a pay wall.
In today's world, running a business on an ad model is just one step above asking for donations. If you want people to pay, make them pay. It really is that simple.
I've never seen an art gallery that required you to pay for entry.
I have seen museums, however, that require a paid ticket to see their artwork.
You're not going to sell a lot of wares of any kind if you require potential customers to pay just to come in and look. Even "membership club" places like Costco let people come in and look for free, though they have to ask permission.
I may have asked for content, but that doesn't guarantee to them how I render it or what requests I make or don't make because of it. Because I get to render it with my hardware, and I own that hardware and I exert control over it.
There's an even more convenient and much cheaper way called an ad blocker. It also works on just about every site around. Show some control.
I understand you were in a hurry to get your incredible iceburn in, but did that really preclude you from reading the part where i mentioned i don't use it?
"Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines.
Even if the internet had no ads and no tracking code and no malware anywhere whatsoever, there would still be a need for the technology to block and change the way in which my computer handles the things sent to it by other computers before showing them to me. "
This is not true at all.
You see ads all the time in apps you have on your mobile device (i.e. non browser) - and there is nothing you can do about it. Is the world freaking out over the consumers ability to 'control which ads come up in a specific app'? Not really.
> Is the world freaking out over the consumers ability to 'control which ads come up in a specific app'?
They should be. Unfortunately, most people don't understand what a Turing machine is, and so it is difficult to explain why it is important to fight back against the people - like you - who are waging a War On General Purpose Computers[1].
I'm sorry if your business model relies upon most people not using all of the capabilities of their General Purpose Computer. I suggest updating to a business model that is more compatible with modern technology, because trying to prevent people from controlling their own devices is a civil war[2] that will cause increasingly worse problems into the future.
> If you don't want ads - then you have to pay for the apps.
Some apps don't even offer an ad-free option. I'll pay if they provide me value, I won't pay if they don't, simple as that. This used to be a more standard model called shareware, but it kind of died out in the mobile app decade.
> No pay / No ads = no content.
> None of you teenagers have been able to counter that point yet.
Why can't I pay them just as much as the ad-revenue they'd earn from me? It'd be fractions of a penny per page, nothing like the cost of most of these sites paid models.
If they offered a reasonable payment model, I'd be much more open to it. But until they're willing to accept their real value per page view, I'm not interested in paying $10/mo for everything I use, when I wouldn't even provide them with $0.10/mo in ad revenue.
For now, blocking ads is the only option if you want to get a full internet experience without the ads, if enough people block ads that advertising is no longer a viable model and more viable models become available, I'm more than open to them. But we have to get the industry to that point where they're at the consumer's whim and not like it is currently where the consumer is at the advertiser's whim. The advertisers having all the power is not a good solution here.
No, if I want to support the creators i'll pay for the app. If I don't want to see ads, I'll block ads. It's a false equivalency to conflate support with willingly subjecting yourself to ads when other options exist, and as you can see here most people are rejecting it
This is incorrect. A primary motivation I have for asserting ownership of my mobile (aka rooting) is system level adblocking. Adaway is what I use for this BTW.
Apps are free to work or not if I kill ads. I just shrug and either buy the app or use something else. I absolutely do not put up with the interface of my mobile looking like the Vegas Strip.
Even if the internet had no ads and no tracking code and no malware anywhere whatsoever, there would still be a need for the technology to block and change the way in which my computer handles the things sent to it by other computers before showing them to me. I have a myriad blocks and css modifications and even site additions and other things set up that have absolutely nothing to do with ads, and being able to do that reliably is important.
That is why this matters:
Controlling what my own mechanical device does with the information it receives from other people's machines.
Besides, as i said, i don't even use pornhub.
Heck, a number of sites i use this stuff on are sites where i pay profusely. My steam expenses are 6000$ at this point, and i block a lot of things there, primarily because they actually make it more difficult for me to find the things i want to spend money on.
If sites made it clear that your patronage while stripping out ads was unwelcome, would you voluntarily stop using all those websites...? Or would you hide behind the "running on my machine" argument while gleefully skimming their content?
I stop visiting websites that prevent me from seeing any content if I'm using an ad blocker. Wired, for example. I was never an avid reader of Wired but they do publish some interesting content and I would find myself reading maybe three or four articles a month. Since they made it clear that people blocking ads are no longer welcome on their site I stopped clicking on Wired links.
I know there are ways around such blocks but I don't bother using them. If a site prevents me from seeing its content if im blocking ads I close the page and make a mental note to not click on links to that site anymore.
I'm not "hiding" behind anything, and trying to imply I am doesn't help your argument.
I probably would stop using that site, I think it's important to support sites that make meaningful progress possible. But again, that doesn't really have any impact on my decision to make sure foreign code doesn't run on my machine.
If sites make it clear, i stay out or pursue alternatives they offer. For example i don't use bild.de. And for other sites i've started contributing to payment schemes like Patreon. Mobile apps i often by the upgrade to remove ads, even though i can just block them altogether.
That's good for you! The truth is that most people don't do that at all. I feel that either we need to pay for content or ad companies need to sponsor us for the content. If some sites have terrible ads it's really not that hard to just not go there.
I think that'll come over time. Right now the problem is that the "value" of a page view is far below a single dollar, and paying so little in a way that isn't negated by the costs is very hard to solve still. At the same time full-on subscriptions often don't make sense if you're just gonna look at a certain site a handful of times per year.
Patreon is a big step towards fixing that, since it allows me to pay small amounts to people whose work i enjoy very occasionally. It is however not the end game yet, and i think if that path is pursued further, ads can become a part of the past.
Also the "just don't go there" thing is hard to do in reality. If only because to find out that a site is bad, you need to first go there. Then there's the cost of remembering in the future that the site is bad. Then there's the social cost of getting linked to a thing. etc. etc. etc.
Am I supposed to find every single website I might ever visit in the future and preemptively pay for their no-ads plan? How is that the answer? What about sites which don't offer such a plan?
And why should people who can't afford to pay, or wish to not have their money benefit someone, be forced to be opened up to security exploits?
"Am I supposed to find every single website I might ever visit in the future and preemptively pay for their no-ads plan? How is that the answer? What about sites which don't offer such a plan?"
Honestly this really is the problem and honestly when I first read it I thought you were arguing against ad blockers. Having to have subscriptions is ridiculous, which is why ad supported really is the only currently realistic model for the majority of the internet. Everyone seems to be so concerned with security so instead of reaching for the nuclear option of just not paying people who provide us content why don't we actually think about how to make them safer? What would an ad network have to do to make you allow them through an ad blocker?
> What would an ad network have to do to make you allow them through an ad blocker?
There's absolutely nothing they can do. If I can hide ads by any means, I will do so. I absolutely hate them. They slow down page loading and rendering, they slow down my browser, and they're tacky and distracting. I a few options:
1. A system of micropayments so I can pay cents or fractions of a cent for page views, ad-free.
2. Blocking content as well if an ad blocker is detected. I'm fine with this; my stance is that if you send me data in response to a GET request, I can do anything I want with that data, including stripping out portions I don't want to see. If you block the content when detecting I'm blocking ads, that's fine; I'll accept that and not try to circumvent it (and will likely just do without your content).
3. A general (monthly-subscription-type) paywall. I'm unlikely to pay for this, as there are few (no?) sites I read often to justify the expense, so I'd again just do without.
And I think that's the thing: there are enough people who don't block ads that they're apparently still profitable enough that sites that would prefer to charge for content can't see doing so as a viable business model. I look forward to the day when selling advertising is no longer viable, and something like my #1 idea takes hold.
Suggesting that it's immoral or unethical to block ads is just hogwash.
Stop trying to make "allowing ads" equivalent to "paying creators". It's not in any way the same thing, and it's just an attempt to paint everyone who disagrees with you with a big brush of "asshole".
Google Contributer lets you do that given they handle the micro payments on your behalf to publishers. I would definitely subscribe to it and at least not block double click': network if you are annoyed by ads like I am.
I don't remembering mentioning forcing people to visit particular sites, I remember talking about telling people they weren't allowed to ever block ads. I also don't remember saying this was unique to pornhub, or mentioning pornhub in any way.
> But it is an ethics issue.[...]And even if that weren't the case, why is it okay to just take what you want without paying just because you don't approve of the security.
You're off track. A server sends your browser what it would like you to display. It's not required to be displayed in any sense. Why is not displaying all of it stealing / not ethical? The way advertising is typically constructed gives all of the power to the client.
Not sure why you're getting threats over email for this comment though. I love HN for its comments but sometimes discourse can break down hard for issues people are passionated about.
What if you allow ads but dont click on them and dont buy their products ? Then you're doubly cheating, because the poor advertiser paid for those ads when you know very well you will not give any business in return. At least with the ads blocked, the advertiser can pay less for the service (ads), which more accurately reflect their true value.
That's an incredibly strange viewpoint. Would you get mad at me if we were watching TV and I muted it when a commercial break came on? Would you demand that I watch closely?
I dont think anyone is saying you need to watch closely or even look at the ads?? Somehow a lot of people have come to attack a straw man regarding control of your eyeballs/behavior. Dont look at the ads if you dont want.
The issue here is payment to the content creators. If you mute your tv, the actors/writers/producers/camerapersons/tv station employees/etc get paid. If you block ads on the internet, then the writers/journalists/photographers/sysadmins/etc dont get paid, even though they made you happy, or provided something you obviously valued. I mean, you spent your valuable time consuming it, it must be worth something.
So it's the automation itself that bothers you? If I kept uBlock origin installed but told it to block nothing by default and then went through and manually clicked block on every ad on a new page you'd be okay?
a while back I had an idea for an "auto-muter", which would look up audio fingerprints for commercials like shazam does for music. When it identifies a commercial, it emits the MUTE button from an IR transmitter for the prescribed duration of the commercial. Like a poor-mans TIVO. I never built it but all the pieces are already out there.
That's the thing I don't get. Automating an action does not in any way take a previously moral action and make it immoral. That's not how ethics and morals work.
I get that you _feel_ differently about it, and that's totally ok, but the idea that you feel the need to suggest that those feelings are "right" for others baffles me.
This is admittedly an extremist view point on my part but If I even detect a hint of advertising, I am extremely unlikely to ever consider a product. I detest advertising in any form. So in cases like mine, the advertiser is better off not showing me any ads.
Looking away from ads, or hitting mute, or fast forwarding through them all require effort and time on the viewer's part. A small effort, but effort nonetheless.
As an advertiser, I can grudgingly accept my ad being skipped, because I know its costing the viewer to skip them. Since its not free to them, I can assume that one day, or every so often, they'll end up watching my ad because they can't be bothered to skip it.
I experience this myself. Much of what we watch is free to air recorded on the tivo. Sometimes (not often), if the couch is comfortable and the kids have moved the remote out of arm's reach, I just can't be bothered skipping ads.
But ad blockers remove the small effort I must make to skip the ads. The automation they provide makes it effectively free, so there's no reason why I would ever watch an ad again.
I feel that's one aspect of why looking away or muting feels OK but ad blockers are not.
Nah, the problem is elsewhere. Not looking at an ad on tv doesn't result in anyone not getting paid, because that stuff isn't tracked. It's all based on incidental measurements after the fact, and selective sampling.
Now on websites EVERYTHING is tracked, and advertisers are seeing it in their face every single day how many people skip their stuff, so they get upset.
> As an advertiser, I can grudgingly accept my ad being skipped, because I know its costing the viewer to skip them.
Nope, I don't buy it. The publisher doesn't get anything by causing you to do work to avoid the ad (as in, you doing work vs. not doing work to avoid the ad is exactly the same from the publisher's standpoint, financially). Ethics and morality are not about whether or not you "paid" with inconvenience or effort. This is just you feeling like you should be watching every ad put in front of you and assuaging your guilt in different ways depending on the medium.
"I don't really have an answer why it's okay to do something like look away from ads, but it's not okay to block them"
Payment for services provided. If you dont look at the ads, everyone still gets paid. If you block them, then the people making something you like dont get paid.
No, they strongly desire that I make the requests, because that's as much as they can do. The legal fiction they attempt to impose is trivial to ignore, and so the obligation is also fictional.
You're the one who introduced obligation as a premise. Copyright law is not fictional.
Websites are copyrighted works of art, and you are not obligated to use them copyright free. If the copyright holder intends for their content to be consumed with ads, that means you are obligated to consume it with ads.
>If the copyright holder intends for their content to be consumed with ads, that means you are obligated to consume it with ads.
Citation needed, because I think the caselaw disagrees with you. See the ruling in Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. or ClearPlay's exemption in the summary judgement in Huntsman v. Soderbergh.
In short, so long as you're not making a permanent derivative work out of the material, but instead changing the way by which you view it, then it's not copyright infringement.
Those cases you cited don't apply for specific reasons:
- For Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., it was premised with consumers having already paid for their game, giving Nintendo a fair return for the copyrighted content. This was clearly stipulated by the judge in her ruling. With websites, you haven't paid a fair return for the content you're consuming so the case isn't relevant.
- Clearplay was only exempt in Huntsman v. Soderbergh because they were purchasing a 1:1 copy of every DVD that they were modifying. This isn't relevant because, for example, Adblockers are not paying publishers for every piece of content that they filter on.
Was not copyright law intended to protect publishers from unauthorised redistribution of their work? How blocking an advertisement can be a redistribution? That is just restricting the rights of a consumer that has paid for content (either with money or with time).
Using AdBlock is more like turning off a TV on commercials break. But I won't be surprised if copyright and ad companies would push some kind of law against it after they have adopted DMCA. Unlike consumers they have money and lobbyists.
> With websites, you haven't paid a fair return for the content you're consuming so the case isn't relevant.
One pays with his attention: he could spend time browsing any other of millions of websites. If the publisher doesn't like users with adblock he might not serve pages to them. Or require a payment. Or he might not use the Web at all.
First of all, I disagree with your assessment of these cases, especially Clearplay in Huntsman. The reason why they were excluded was not because they were purchasing copies of DVDs 1:1, Clear View required this as well. The difference between Clear View and Clearplay was that Clear View created new DVD-Rs as an output product and thus was creating derivative works without permission, as did nearly all other named defendants. Clearplay did not produce any derivative works by it's operation, which was entirely in memory in the player as an edit list. This is why it was specifically dismissed as a defendant.
The Clearplay technology was almost identical in function, implementation, and spirit to an ad-blocker. The same could be said in less specificity to the Game Genie in Lewis Galoob.
Now I understand the underlying frustration expressed in what you are saying, but you are assuming that there is some sort of contract (explicit via TOS or implicit) between the content consumer and the content provider that stipulates that you are receiving the content for free in exchange for also viewing it with advertisements inline.
I have not seen such TOS before and I don't think they are enforceable. At least it hasn't been tested in court in the states.
This is complicated by the fact that most websites do not host ads but merely provide a mechanism by which 3rd party networks' content alongside, and the only concrete business relationship exists between the website and the ad network, where the profitability of it is reflected in the ad network's perception of performance.
It is the responsibility of the ad networks and the content providers to use psychology, technology, tricks, etc. to increase the performance of the placed ads; the consumer has no obligation here. The ability for a consumer to ignore or block an ad must be factored into the numbers or the strategy.
One method that can bypass all of this is to use ad-block detectors that annoy or block viewers not seeing ads, or to self-host adnetwork content and adjust TOS accordingly. This is not popular, more complicated, and reduces overall impressions, but I think it's the right way to go if you want to lean on an interpretation of copyright law.
I still don't think people are violating copyright law if they choose to use technological mechanisms to try to suppress what they don't want to see, but it's a lot harder to implement in that case since you can quite easily change it in ways to increase impression rates.
how is blocking a part of a copyrighted work (ad blocking) *copying" it ? It's still their IP, I'm just only interested in a particular fraction of it.
That is completely incorrect; copyright has nothing to do with payment.
Copyright is about distribution and nothing else. It allows a copyright holder to decide if, when, and how his/her work is distributed (which might be payment-free!). It does not govern what you do with the work once you've obtained it, as long as you do not try to redistribute.
Copyright governs distribution. Once you have something in your possession, you may do whatever you want with it as long as you don't distribute the result.
The DMCA and similar laws attempt to get around that allowance by making it a crime to distribute tools for circumventing copyright protections. It's telling that no one has succeeded in a DMCA complaint against ad blocking software.
I requested the page, I got the page. How I render it is a completely separate issue. If I choose not to render some of the data, or not execute some of the code on my machine, that's up to me.
>What if you allow ads but dont click on them and dont buy their products ?
Irrelevant. That's like saying you can't click on a billboard so what's the point?
Not all ads are direct response. Many display and programmatic ads are awareness plays, which pay publishers by the impression or thousands of impressions.
They offer the content for free, I choose not to show the ads that come with it on my machine. It's not up to me to make sure their business model works.
The other day, on my phone, I used an ad-supported app and I got malware on my phone (5x, latest Android 7.0). I went to the Play page for that app and many other people complained of the same thing.
So, it's not just an ethics issue.
I chose, when I got this phone, not to root and run software that prevented ads from being shown. I'm wishing I had done that, because my likely course of action will be to reset my phone and spend many hours getting it setup like it was before the malware.
Can you please provide me a list of malware-free sites ? Or is this a thinly-veiled "blame the victim" attack because its funny to shame people who watch porn ? I've heard that sophomoric attack so many times when talking about malware: "oh, malware ? I've never had any. I'm not the kind of person who goes on __THOSE__ sites, hurr hurr!"
My point was not about porn at all. The discussion was opened up to a wider context about all websites with ads. Purposefully misconstruing what I said to make it sound like I'm "blaming" someone is quite dishonest of you.
I didn't purposefully misconstrue, I asked you if that was your intention. But there's no doubt that you purposefully blame the victims of malware instead of blaming the criminals who purvey it.
Again, I'd like your List of Malware-Free Sites, so I dont get anymore malware.
Your style of asking seems to be assuming something ridiculous and putting it as a question. You'll have to find someone else who will entertain your style of writing. This is my last reply. Bye.
How are you supposed to avoid sites with malware unless you know about it beforehand? How are you supposed to do that without some sort of list? You don't appear to have thought through your own suggestion.
No one is talking about specific malicious sites, people are talking about entire ad networks being infected, something that has happened multiple times in the past.
When every site gets their ads served from the same central location and that location is compromised, everyone is at risk unless they have strict anti-ad rules implemented.
Every site doesn't do that, though. Almost B2B (non-consumer) sites sell their ads directly to clients (major companies) and don't have malware come through. It's only the ad networks that really are guilty of selling ads to people they don't know and getting the bad creative. If ad blocking software was really about stopping malware they would recognize this and have a way of certifying sites that do business directly and don't allow ad networks.
Why are you trying to bring about change with one hand tied behind your back? If there was a public vote about whether to outlaw the use DRM software would you vote against it on principle because, "if people really didn't want DRM, they wouldn't buy products with DRM"?
If a large enough segment of the population uses an ad-blocker it signals a clear and direct message to site-owners and ad network's wallets that you won't put up with ads and that they won't make money from you until they come up with a different business model. What could be better? It's way more effective than just leaving, emailing the webmaster, or writing an angry blog post.
I long for the day when I don't need an incredibly aggressive content filter on the web for it to be usable, safe, and private.
>If a large enough segment of the population uses an ad-blocker it signals a clear and direct message to site-owners and ad network's wallets that you won't put up with ads and that they won't make money from you until they come up with a different business model.
They're going to take the 'easier' route of trying to keep bypassing the blockers than changing the entire revenue model. That's why supporting websites which are founded on a non-advertising revenue model is crucial.
>It's way more effective than just leaving, emailing the webmaster, or writing an angry blog post.
You claimed you were for people getting rewarded for their work, just not by using methods that you don't agree with.
If you are truly principled then you would avoid going to websites that have those ads and only go to websites whose revenue model is aligned with your interests.
I try in all possible situations to only visit sites that I think aren't causing damage to the landscape of the internet but again, that is a separate issue to me choosing to block all ads. When I browse a content aggregator or a friend sends me a link I'm not going to research each site before clicking the link, I'm just going to click the link if I think it will be interesting. And I'm not going to be okay with exposing myself to security vulnerabilities. Browsing the web I have a right to protect myself, and I'm not going to be somehow guilted into removing that protection.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. So what do you do for a website that doesn't have ads? That website could still attack with you JS bugs, HTML rendering bugs, JPG/PNG rendering bugs, etc.
You're still not really completely protecting yourself. So it seems to me like you're hedging your bets by assuming that primarily websites which have ads are a liability, but websites with no ads, but with equal opportunity for exploiting vulnerabilities are not.
To be fair, there's good history of this to back his assertion. Ad networks have frequently had exploit kits dropped on them.
Not only that but the ad networks also get all your details which makes Internet advertising quite unlike other advertising.
If the ad networks have no "ethics" I see no reason to feel an ethical obligation back. Sucks for content providers, yeah, but if they have to die to get rid of the sketchy ad networks so be it.
I'd be willing to whitelist ad networks which were sandboxed and could only show me straight up images proxied through the first party site. Anything more than that and I'll show some control of my own hardware and block it. Ultimately, it's my hardware, if it does anything I don't like, I have a right to fix it.
The similarity lies in that, just as with deciding to move into a country, it's hard to find out in advance whether bad factors are there and how bad they are; and once you actually like it there, relatively pricey to give up on what you like just to avoid the bad factors. Plus, just like almost every country has some racists, nowadays almost every website has ad software that can be a potential vector for malwaare.
>nowadays almost every website has ad software that can be a potential vector for malwaare.
If you're concerned with what's possible then any website that has JS is a potential vector for malware. Then you can just disable JS and browse the web that way. But wait, websites can also attack you with HTML browser bugs with malformed HTML, or PNG or JPG renderer bugs with malformed images, etc etc. At some point, you're going to have to be practical and compromise or something. My point is if you want to be principled, then reward websites with no ads by visiting them and don't reward websites who have ads.
I do block all JS content by default and have to whitelist individual sites. I consider that in tandem with my adblocking. I'm not going to give up either.
I'm amazed that "don't go to sites with malware or malware ads" being the same as "don't live in countries with racists" is hard for you to understand, and i feel sorry for you.
I suspect you are a minority ad block user, most block ads to not see ads. I agree with your sentiment but frankly it comes off with the same amount of credit as I only torrent content I already purchased. I don't dispute what you do and don't pay for or why you block ads.
But don't try and turn a security issue into an ethics issue.