Using Adblock Plus to Block Ads is Legal, Rules German Court -- For the Fifth Time (arstechnica.co.uk) 237
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Using Adblock Plus to block ads on websites is legal, a German regional court has ruled. The suit, brought by the company behind the leading German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, is the fifth such case to be decided in favor of the makers of the software, who are based in Germany. The court in Munich also ruled that the "Acceptable Ads initiative," a scheme that requires larger companies to pay for their ads to be whitelisted by Adblock Plus, is acceptable under German law. "To the contrary, said the court, users have the right to block those or any ads, because no such contract exists," Adblock Plus's Ben Williams writes. "Additionally, the judge ruled that by offering publishers a way to serve ads that ad-blocking users will accept, the Acceptable Ad initiative provides them an avenue to monetize their content, and therefore is favorable, not disadvantageous, to them."
Previously, Adblock Plus's parent company Eyeo has won court cases against the German publishing giant Axel Springer, Germany television companies Pro 7/Sat 1 and RTL Interactive, and against the companies operating the Zeit Online and Handelsblatt websites.
I started blocking ads when they started tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
When Google did their unified login, and unified privacy policy, that was the point I started blocking adverts. You watch something on YouTube, or visit a shopping site, and you get served up ads for that product where-ever you go. "Do not track" is ignored.
Adverts became privacy invasions, and they are easy to block, so I block them. IMHO Firefox's new "block tracking items" is one of few new features in Firefox that are the right choice.
And Android is worse, a unique ID sent to Google all the time so it can track you. It's claimed to be anonymous, but its trivial for them to link it to a real identity. And its sent whether you opt in to personalized ads or not.
Why should I watch your ads if you do shit like that Google? I've already ditch Google for DuckDuckGo due to tracking.
Privacy Badger (Score:3)
You can use that EFF tool, Privacy Badger [eff.org]. Though, I'm finding it tends to be a little aggressive about blocking tracking cookies, and some websites don't work right. But enh, I figure if a website breaks due to it's blocking cookies, nothing of value is lost.
Yes, it's perhaps a shameless plug, but I just really like that tool.
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Why not add both uBlock and uBlock origin when you are at it...
Stacking adblocking extensions will only make your browser go slower. A better idea would be to use a single extension and configure your lists as you see fit. I personally like uBlock origin, mostly for performance reasons.
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This is why I never browse while logged in to anything and I clear my cookies every time I close my browser. I also keep auto complete turned off. In addition, I run with noscript and will always leave google-analytics and other tracking domains blocked.
I do not need to run an ad blocker because the only ads I see are the plain-jane non scripted ones.
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If as first you don't succeed, sue and sue again (Score:3)
Remove Flash (Score:3)
Bring back Gopher (Score:2)
It's not really the ads that are the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Though too many are F##KING annoying and resource hungry, and should be killed with nuclear fire.
The real problem though, is the dozens of TRACKERS that usually come with these ads.
They need to die in nuclear fire as well, along with their authors.
I admire the honesty (Score:2)
âoeThe core business of the plaintiff [Axel Springer] is to deliver ads to its visitors. Journalistic content is just a vehicle to get readers to view the ads.â
You have to admire this kind of honesty. They admit their business is to serve ads. So complaints about "journalistic integrity" can't really be made of this site (or indeed any other).
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What do you think any media is? Why do you think so many radio stations play music? Because it keeps the most listeners engaged long enough to get to the next commercial break. Do you really think television is designed to entertain you? Ha. It's there to make you feel as inadequate as possible until the advertisements play to sell you products that will fix your inherent inadequacy.
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In Canada, this is getting out of hand. Used to be one commercial break in a 30 minute show. Now there's three. Wait, that wasn't enough. You know the credits at the end of the show? They've been squished to less than 1/4 of the screen, making reading anything illegible. The other 3/4+? Ads.
Wait, not e
ABP too mainstream now (Score:4, Interesting)
adblock plus is better than nothing but uses tons of ram and is just too "mainstream" now.
ublock origin is the way to go. Much lighter weight, saves ram and processor, has that exclusive air about it.
ublock origin was blocking ads before blocking ads was mainstream.
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It's simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Users have the right to block banners.
Websites have the right to block users who block banners.
Deal with it.
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Yes, but why would they rather sue adblock writers instead?
Because we are not their customers - we are their product. Most sites these days are in the business of selling your attention to advertisers, their actual customers. If you use adblock (or stop visiting them), you cannot be sold anymore. That they don't like.
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No, websites have the right to TRY.
NoScript (Score:4, Insightful)
I use NoScript for Firefox. A side-effect of blocking 3rd party scripts is most advertising gets blocked out. I don't care much about ads, but I'm not going to let some random third party run scripts on my computer when I visit a web site. If the site wants to serve up static jpegs as ads, that's fine, it works, and I don't care about it.
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Me too. I do all my primary browsing in FF with exactly 2 add-ins: noscript and colorful tabs.
I use Opera, Chrome and Edge for other specialty purposes. Chrome whenever I need to cast something to the TV. Opera for one of my side project jobs and Edge for all other work-related stuff.
NoScript does as much ad blocking as I require. That is, it blocks the harmful/obnoxious ads... that is all I require. I don't care about banner ads or textual ads.
So? (Score:2)
Wired as well (Score:4, Informative)
There was a link at the bottom of this page to go there, it looked interesting so I clicked on it.
Up comes the demand that I disable my adblocker.
As they say in the old country - No fucking way.
So now Wired joins Forbes and a number of other sites that are on the list at the same level as goatse or tubgirl. Having had the chance to do some browsing on another computer that allowed the whole shebang of intrusive crap the trackers and advertisers ram down our gullets, it's painfully slow - reminiscent of the days of 14.4 dialup. And worse than the last time I went bareback on the web.
And now that the Grandmas of the world are finding out that their computer can be "fixed" by blocking scripts and ads, look out. This cure is not just for geeks like me any more. Grandma net is remarkably quick and powerful. Even my wife's friends are hearing about this cool thing I installed on her laptop, and maybe Ol could install it on their computer too?
And that is what the ad/malware servers are afraid of.
For Forbes and Wired - sorry friends, your using a scorched earth policy of demanding I open up my computer to the wild world of malware you serve, in order to see your content - you can go straight to hell. Your content is no where good enough to allow me to do that.
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I have whitelisted wired.com.
The problem is, there is a tidal wave of crapware sites that show up in no-script:
condenast-blah-blah, amazonadsystem-blah-blah, googlesyndication-blah-blah...
There was a time when I could manually select which other sites to whitelist to get a site to work.
I'm getting tired of doing that...
I am going more in the direction of, if whitelisting the "top level" domain doesn't work, and I don't s
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Wired works fine with adblock if also blacklisted by 'yesscript' (one click). Works with all the 'anti-adblock' websites I've tried.
You do not even remotely understand. I am not going to go to websites that demand I bow to their demands as the price of admission.
They need me. I most certainly have no need for them. If Wired or Forbes disappears tomorrow?
Good. Perhaps the needed casualties that shows we are not going to accept the shit they are serving us. I'll raise a celebratory beer and enjoy every sip.
mistablishing president (Score:2)
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I haven't looked up the past lawsuits, but IIRC another article about this most recent case, this time the argument went along those lines:
1. The newspaper and adblock are competitors because of the acceptable ads program. The court agreed with
Common sense once you simplify (Score:2)
Unless you have entered into a contractual arrangement with a website, it is up to you how your browser works. If that browser does not display ads, that is up to the user. If the user wants to run a greasemonkey script, that is up to the user. If a website wishes otherwise, it needs to have users sign up to a legally enforceable contract which stipulates how they use the site. That this is too much like hard work for both users and hosts is not the users' problem. (As for copyright legislation, I do think
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:5, Interesting)
And there are so few who've signed up that it's unlikely you'll see any acceptable ads anyway.
I've got the "allow some non-intrusive ads" checked and I've never seen any.
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Still.. no one seems to have answered the fundamental question of who is going to pay for the web. Or more to the point, how *you* are going to pay for the web.
Good question. Some sites are offering a option to get a subscription, but I'm not really interested in paying $5 a month (or even more) for some local newspaper subscription in a country or state that I'm only visiting this time because I followed a link in someone's Twitter post. I guess the best model is a payment per visit, but it needs to be effortless and really cheap.
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:5, Insightful)
I pay my ISP for the privilege of access to the "web". Expecting others to pay for yours is quite a ridiculous idea. If you don't want others to see your shit, don't put it online.
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If you follow that argumentation, we are back to a cable subscription model, where you have to pay for any additional channel.
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Supporting a family does not make you entitled to other peoples money.
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No problem. If the site doesn't want me viewing the content without looking at the ads, they can put in measures to prevent this. Perhaps they could require me to view a bunch of ads, then take a test (similar to a CAPTCHA, but much longer and more comprehensive) to make sure I actually looked at all the ads and can remember them, before showing me the content. I'm sure that'll work great!
As long as the site willingly shows me the content despite me blocking the ads, they have no leg to stand on. My br
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And that is how it is.
Incidentally, that is the classical payment mode for all art: They perform and the audience decides whether it was worth anything and donate _afterwards_ or not. This is the thing that Shakespeare worked with, can have been only good for quality. You have zero moral or practical right to be paid for content you put out there. The only right you have is to not have somebody else claim they created it, not you.
Now, as long as I can block parts of a website, I will do so whenever I like.
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Although I feel like a
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:5, Insightful)
Still.. no one seems to have answered the fundamental question of who is going to pay for the web.
This question has been answered the same way many times: The web was paid for before web ads existed too. Those payment models will still work, even with perfect adblocking. Shops will have their own websites - earning money through sale of wanted items instead of sale of unwanted advertising space. Newspapers and such can use the paywall method, perhaps with "10% free so you see that their stuff is good, pay if you want the rest too". And lots of enthusiasts will still run their websites & blogs as a hobby. I couldn't care less if facebook failed due to adblocking though.
I don't believe we'll ever get perfect adblocking though. The adblockers will get better and better at tossing out:
* ads depending on cookies, especially those used by big ad agencies
* ads depending on scripting, especially standardized scripts from the big players
* ads relying on big garish images, sound or video
because those are the most annoying - and incidentally also the easiest to thwart. Ads in the form of plain text is almost impossible to detect reliably - because you need AI to fully understand text. So to be successful, some will switch to unobtrusive text ads and get through heavy blocking that way. But that will be much better - simple text is easy enough to scroll past.
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:4, Insightful)
Newspapers and such can use the paywall method, perhaps with "10% free so you see that their stuff is good, pay if you want the rest too"
The problem with newspapers is that there are hundreds/thousands of newspaper sites that take 90% of their content from AP/Reuters or other press agency streams. Still, they have their own website, with their own office, and their own paid people. This is a huge waste of resources to duplicate many of the same articles. So, if I was forced to pay, I'd pay for a simple automatic aggregator site that just copies the original press agency articles, and the newspaper sites would still go broke.
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with newspapers is that there are hundreds/thousands of newspaper sites that take 90% of their content from AP/Reuters or other press agency streams. Still, they have their own website, with their own office, and their own paid people. This is a huge waste of resources to duplicate many of the same articles. So, if I was forced to pay, I'd pay for a simple automatic aggregator site that just copies the original press agency articles, and the newspaper sites would still go broke.
You are describing businesses that we do not need. They should go out of business.
This may be a problem for them, but it's a boon for the rest of us.
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It's also a problem for us as newspapers are usually the ones responsible for investigations into local affairs.
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And if they did go out of business, do you honestly believe that something new (and likely better) would not arise to replace them ?
Your fear is basically an appeal to tradition fallacy: we've always done it this way so we know it works. But that's a logical fallacy. There is almost nothing humans do that can't be done better, sometimes the only way to discover what better looks like is to get rid of the current system entirely first.
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You may well be putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps the reason why you don't have effective local journalism is that what's left of it has been minimised and cost cut to the point where they can't effectively hold local government to account because people weren't willing to pay for that level of local journalism.
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You are describing businesses that we do not need. They should go out of business.
For the 90% that they just copy and paste from a newsfeed, I agree. But the 10% they add from their own reporting we lose too, because that 10% isn't interesting or big enough to warrant an expensive subscription.
This may be a problem for them, but it's a boon for the rest of us.
When I visit a website now that will disappear in the future, it's not exactly a boon for me.
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So, if I was forced to pay, I'd pay for a simple automatic aggregator site that just copies the original press agency articles, and the newspaper sites would still go broke.
I'm surprised they allow this. It's like allowing people to watch basic football matches without any commentary for a lower price than the premium sports channels. In fact a lot of people in the UK watch foreign broadcasts of football matches because it's cheaper - the "value" that the premium channels offer can't compete.
I can see Reuters and AFP going behind paywalls or offline entirely one day.
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Shops will have their own websites - earning money through sale of wanted items
Unfortunately many shops rely on sales of unwanted items to survive. From the supermarket that puts sweets at child eye level by the checkout queues to Apple's shiny things that are inferior to the cheaper ones but have a fruit logo on them, advertising is used to sell people crap they don't really need or want.
Advertising is about 10% "look at this useful thing you might want" and 90% "buy this shitty shit NOW!!1!"
The only way to get past that is to accept a massive contraction of the economy as the huge n
Slashdot, Facebook, and Snopes (Score:2)
Problem is that people get their news socially these days, e.g. via a link from a summary on Slashdot or Facebook.
But then who pays for Slashdot or Facebook, if not those sites' advertisers? And who pays for verification that it isn't a hoax, if not the advertisers on Snopes?
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That's my point. Chances are a lot of sites wouldn't exist without advertising, or if they were subscription only. I whitelist Slashdot's non-animated, non-intrusive ads, but it's impractical to do so for every random site I visit.
I don't know what the solution is. If someone trustworthy came up with an acceptable ad whitelist then I'd try it.
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Hobby sites are dirt cheap to pay out-of-pocket, and have been for years and years. You can get web hosting plans for $5/month or less. They won't support a huge amount of traffic, but for a "hobby" site you really shouldn't need a lot of bandwidth. Lots of sites are funded by donations; I believe soylentnews.com is funded that way (since it needs a lot more bandwidth and resources than a $5/month site).
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And somehow they think malware has something to do with publishers.
Sorry, but it does. If you host malware on your website, then of course it has something to do with you! It doesn't matter if you've outsourced your ads and the ad server served up the malware: you personally vouched for the ad server, and by extension, the malware, by adding the ads to your site, so the malware is your responsibility.
No one owes you a living doing something you apparently like to do. I'd love to have a job sitting at hom
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In addition, my impression is that the part of the web that does _not_ try to monetize its users (or very, very discreetly, such as the Sponsor-Logos at the bottom of www.kernel.org) is the part that has the highest value. Next come sited documenting and selling their own products: They do not need ads for other things. I think we would actually be better off without the rest.
Question makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a nonsensical question. The web is not a monolithic service that has a fixed cost for which its owner must be reimbursed. The web is made up of untold millions of individual sites, the vast majority of them free of charge, and its value lies in its diversity. It is not a consumer-pays web.
A few late arrivals from traditional publishing seem to think that they are special, and are asking who is going to pay for their website. Nobody! If this means that they will disappear, excellent, and good riddance. That would be exactly the desired outcome, because they don't understand the web and are trying to roll back time.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Look you want it so bad then YOU pay for it. The Internet was just fine before advertising and endless September and I say it will be great again just as soon as we get rid of the advertisers and their related social media web 2.0 ilk.
Oh - and get off my lawn!
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:4, Informative)
Still.. no one seems to have answered the fundamental question of who is going to pay for the web.
That fundamental question has been answered long ago. Most web sites are crap. I couldn't care less if they die. Web sites survive because they sell something and/or make a commission (Amazon, eBay) or because they help selling (Samsung, your bank). Some web sites are just fine with being run for free or with donations (blogs, wikipedia).
In the end, it's not my problem if I block ads and you don't. Just like it's not my problem if you watch TV commercials (without mute or fast-forward) and stop to read every time you see an ad when driving your car. In the end advertisers are going to make more money with you than with me and there is nothing wrong with it. Advertisers never had a guaranteed return on their investment.
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Or more to the point, how *you* are going to pay for the web.
I put as much content online as I consume. Much of it is free, some of it is "if you like it, here you can donate" and some is paid.
For me it works. I've been doing this for 20 years and I don't do advertisement and I'm proud of it.
There are other business models beyond selling your readers to advertisers. For example, I stopped downloading MP3s and re-started buying music when it became so easy and convenient with iTunes that finding a torrent and copying it to my phone was more trouble than it was worth.
I
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That comment deserves to be modded up, there are definitely models which don't require advertising and anyone who believes that advertising is a great thing that powers the internet is delusional. Advertising networks spread malware, and that's a fact. The advertising industry is a drain on the internet, not its savior. How much internet traffic is devoted to spam email, again? Imagine how fast things would be if all of the spam instantly stopped. Imagine how fast things would be if the traffic pipes w
Re:The law is the law ... and then there's DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA works both ways - in theory.
It is illegal to circumvent "access controls", right?
Well, an adblocker is an access control. It control access to my computer & its screen - and access to my eyes. It also controls read and write access to my cookie database. Hence, circumventing an adblocker by clever websites is a DMCA violation.
A database is a database - there is no legal difference between breaking into my cookie database and breaking into - say - a webshop.
Now, can we have the EFF or some bored rich guy take that to court? Would be interesting to watch the DMCA being used that way.
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No - I don't think you understand: The DMCA is not for use by the consumer. Not a tool invented by, for, or with the consumer in mind. M'kay?
Re:The law is the law ... and then there's DMCA (Score:5, Insightful)
No - I don't think you understand. The DMCA is an American law, and this is a German court.
What does the ISP pay the site operator? (Score:2)
I already pay for the internet.
And how much of your ISP bill is your ISP remitting to site operators? Probably a lot less than cable television retransmission fees, if any at all. The only case I'm aware of where ISPs pay a site operator is ESPN3.
Pay-per-article is still impractical (Score:2)
if they don't have a product anyone wants to pay for
I want to pay for a product: one single article that a search engine, social media friend, or other aggregator recommended to me. I just don't feel a need to pay for a large number of unrelated products on the same site by buying an all-you-can-eat subscription or a thousand page views. So how would a site operator go about letting a viewer pay for a single page, as opposed to paying for a year's access to the site? The fairly high per-transaction fees of credit cards and Bitcoin rule out their use for micr
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So how would a site operator go about letting a viewer pay for a single page, as opposed to paying for a year's access to the site? The fairly high per-transaction fees of credit cards and Bitcoin rule out their use for micropayments.
I think it could be implemented by a trusted middleman. Something like paypal, where you can transfer $10 into an account using a traditional money transfer method, and it takes out a micropayment every time you read an article. Of course, a few problems still remain. For instance, I don't want to be paying for stuff I don't want, or overpaying for stuff, but on the other hand, I don't want a huge hassle every time I do want to pay.
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Who cares? uBlock Origin is faster and uses less RAM. Why bother with something that's a pig with machine resources?
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Which is not even hard to find.
And on the other hand, I do think that AdBlock plus is on the right track with their "acceptable ads" idea. I don't know what they will do if an "acceptable ad" serves malware though.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I switched to uBlock Origin because it is faster, lower memory and has more features.
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True, but switching to uBlock Origin will also cause your browser to use much less RAM and CPU than ABP. Why bother with a resource-hogging ad-blocker if you don't have to?
Re:There are no acceptable ads (Score:4, Informative)
uBlock actually seems to be coded a bit better. I've noticed that with it installed on my desktop, in Firefox, my browsing is snappier. And for sure on my mobile device using uBlock, Firefox mobile on an Android, it is much better than Adblock.
I personally did not like the idea of the white-list and the philosophy behind it. However that did not stop me from using Adblock and just toggling the white-list off. But since uBlock is faster I've switched to it. Finally some options when it comes to picking apps/add-ons is always good too.
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> I was very specifically talking about disabling the whitelist
Right, disabling the whitelist blocks ads. You have to press buttons if you want to block the ads, that was my point.
Installing uBlock Origin is a one time operation. More importantly, it is worth the switch because then you won't be supporting a company that makes money based on ads. If something maintained by one principled man, who doesn't take donations, is the same functionality as a thing that ends up in court because it selectively
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> You shouldn't have to press buttons to write words in a product called Word.
Yes you should. Word allows you to write words.
> You shouldn't have to press buttons to command and conquer in a product called Command & Conquer.
Yes you should. You have to command in order to conquer.
> You shouldn't have to press buttons to move in a product called automobile.
You don't.
The reason you shouldn't have to press buttons to block ads in a product called Ad Block is because installing it is the user inte
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This is stupid. The reasons why people hate ads is that they're often lying, they're huge, they're distracting, they're misleading, they might point to virusses. Acceptable ads to exist, they're the one that don't do any of those things. The maker of Adblock Plus has realized that not having any ads is not a solution and he's right.
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If you want to get rid of ads on Android you need root anyway, if only for the option to disable the adservice in Google Play Services thereby making a lot of apps (not only the browser) adfree.
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There are lots of acceptable ads. If I choose to listen to the free version of some internet radio streaming sites, then I've consented to allow their ads through (I still don't listen to them). Most of them offer an ad-free stream if I subscribe, and I do subscribe to some of them. That, to me, is an acceptable business arrangement. They have something I want, it's got to to be paid for somehow, so I accept one or another arrangement. The internet is NOT free - if you want to host a vanity site and you're
Served locally how? (Score:2)
OTOH, if your ads are fetched from multiple third parties, instead of served locally, then it's noscript, ghostery, and disconnect for you.
I can think of two ways to serve ads locally. One is to sell ad space locally, which requires each site to operate its own full-service ad sales department. Said department can prove impractical for a small site, and advertisers tend to worry more about click fraud on smaller sites that sell their own ad space. The other is to arrange for the site server to proxy the ad server, which ad networks forbid at present.
What practical means of "served locally" did you have in mind? Or is it fine if a site just cho
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Yes there is. In the real world.
If you've ever watched e.g. racing, you'll notice that most of the cars have ads. Those are acceptable ads, because the advertiser pays the owner of the car for permission to put their ad on it.
Likewise, an advertiser who paid the owner of the computer / monitor to put up an ad, would be an acceptable ad. Now, before you complain that what you would be paid isn't worth it, remember that selling advertising space happens when the owner and the advertiser can agree on a price.
Pixel per minute rate to view the site (Score:3)
Don't accept any offer that isn't per pixel per minute the ad is on you monitor.
Then the site could turn it around by charging the owner of the monitor a pixel per minute rate to view the site, which rate happens to exactly match the rate that it pays the owner of the monitor to show ads, so that it all balances out.
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Re:Court favoring homegrown boys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Germany, like most (no, all) countries in Europe, is a Rechtsstaat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechtsstaat - note the certain Germanic sound of that word), so follows the rule of law; the North-European countries in general, and the Germans in particular seem to take a particular pride in being law-abiding and care a great deal about not just the letter, but also the spirit of the law. This may be different in America - one sometimes get that impression - but we have a strong tradition for this in Nordic culture; look up as an example the concept of the Lawspeaker (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawspeaker). Knowing, understanding and following the law is a part of our cultural identity, and implying that our courts are biased or corrupt is hurtful and rather insulting on a level that may surprise outsiders.
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Also to enforce your rights against the government you have four courts that the government can not appeal (since it has no basic rights). The lowest being the Bundesgerichtshof which is the top civil court, then you have the EU's Court of Justice and the supernational European Court of Hu
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Germany, like most (no, all) countries in Europe, is a Rechtsstaat (...), so follows the rule of law; the North-European countries in general, and the Germans in particular seem to take a particular pride in being law-abiding and care a great deal about not just the letter, but also the spirit of the law. This may be different in America - one sometimes get that impression
We certainly argue about what the laws mean, with people adhering to their preferred interpretations, regardless of what other people are doing.
We do generally hold that "ignorance of the law is not an excuse."
However, our Supreme Court recently ruled that because a police officer had a "good faith belief" that a law was being violated, therefore, the defendant's 4th Amendment rights were not violated - despite the fact that the problem the officer observed was not a violation of the law.
So, apparently, "ig
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Indeed, that would have been brilliant; alas that I am now old and cynical. All the same, I think I speak with some authority in my previous comment: I am Danish, and know the culture from within, at least from the Danish point of view - it is also worth remembering that as a Dane, I have grown up with the memory of the German occupation, so don't have particularly good reasons to love all things German. That being said - Scandinavia and Germany used to be not so much a well defined set of nations, as a lar
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Looks like the German courts' one-sided ruling are favoring home grown boys
Except that the guys who brought the cases are also Germans. Axel Springer, for example, is one of the largest newspaper and magazine publishers in Germany.
So, how about you get your facts straightened out and try again?
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Mod parent up!
Why would anyone want to do that? He starts off with a completely meaningless assertion.
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Further, he claims this is a due to nationalism. Based on the fact that in a case of German company vs. German company, a court ruled in favor of German company.
How fucking retarded do you have to be to accept that argument?
It's really sad that this is (the OP claiming nationalism) the depths to which commentary on Slashdot has descended. Where have all the really smart people gone? Here we are wasting time pointing out utterly obvious logical fallacies that a 2nd-grader could have pointed out. Absolutel
No. (Score:2)
"1) The german courts are ruling preferrentially in favor of german companies (surprise,it's captain obvious to the rescue)"
Not at all the reason of the judgement was a contractual basis. This has nothing to do with being a german company in fact the company ruled AGAINST was german.
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1) The german courts are ruling preferrentially in favor of german companies (surprise,it's captain obvious to the rescue)
All the companies involved in this case were German, you idiot.
So I guess he was right!
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Every mental gymnast has a price; and we have some very talented ones.
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Why did you agree to it? (Score:2, Insightful)
When I issued the GET request, you responded. I did not play the ad or display the ad content and did not GET request on the load for the advertising, yet your server agreed to this and I did as I wished with your permission.
Why the hell do you call that theft?
Where, for example, is the loss of your content if I don't take it? It's a funny theft when I leave stuff alone...
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FTFY. Turns out I own the fucking client machine and I decide what it fucking does, including which documents and data I fetch/render.
If you think there's an obligation involved, demand agreement, THEN you can demand participation. Better still if you wall access - in the rest of the proprietary world, they don't unconditionally broadcast "conditional" data.
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Don't feed the trolls.
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So you complain about articles relating to Microsoft by being the very first poster to talk about Microsoft in the discussion of an article that has nothing to do with them and doesn't even mention them.
You should really lay off the bath salts, friend.
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I think there's no such thing as a good ad, ever. But I do get that there's some people who don't mind ads as long as they don't try to control your computer, install malware, break your browser, etc.
One problem here seems to be that of legal liability. Forbes famously went through some (trivial-to-get-around) efforts to stop people with adblockers from visiting. Then, once people whitelisted them, they served malware. Was Forbes liable for this? Probably not. The "third party" thing with a nest of li