The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking

An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "

Comments

Ads?

[reaktor]

What ads?

Who will be the first...

[Forthan Red]

Who will be the first to write a Firefox extension to block the Firefox blocking? Gentlemen, start your coding!

Re:Oh boo hoo

[Pojut]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

No, but three lefts do ;-)

Re:A non-issue ...

[CaptainPatent]

I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein. You didn't even read the slashdot summary, much less the article obviously. The newspaper gets paid for including the ad, not for you viewing it. Websites often get paid by impressions, so if the ads aren't received by the customers then the revenue isn't received by the site. Totally different from the newspaper, who gets an "impression" with every paper sold guaranteed.

Still not necessarily wrong given how parasitic a lot of ads are now, hogging resources and making annoying sounds. But lets focus on the actual argument raised in TFA. In other words it would be like acquiring newspaper gnomes that take the ads out of your paper before you get it, and the newspaper being paid less by advertisers for every newspaper gnome known to be on the loose.

I hope that clears things up.

Re:No

[Trigun]

Wow, a logical and technically sound argument? Holy crap, Slashdot's going to implode.

Re:a better mantra

[SCHecklerX]

Somebody should make a t-shirt with that. I like it. We can advertise it with web advertisements!

Re:a better mantra

[mcmonkey]

"Your business model is not my problem".

Forget the t-shirts, it should be stamped on every MBA diploma and integrated into every word processor. Finally Clippy has found his purpose!

"It looks you are making a business plan. You do realize no one is obligated to behave in the manner required to make your business profitable, right?"

Re:Exactly.

[OldManAndTheC]

Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?

No, that is "denial of service".

And if it happens with every woman in the bar, it's "distributed denial of service".

Simple Solution

[prxp]

Simple solution:

Just render everything (content + adds) as a single JPEG image or a flash video and stop whinnying for Christ's sake!

Re:Oh boo hoo

[ceoyoyo]

Are there advertisers who still pay by the view? I think I just found a use for the university's cluster....

Re:Costs me money too

[kylehase]

Don't forget the cost of the electricity to write the data to RAM, spin the HDD and write to the temp Internet cache, light up those LEDs on your NIC card and cable/DSL modem, push the electrons on your TV cable/Telephone line...