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

Re:A non-issue ...

[truesaer]

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.

Re:Oh boo hoo

[SatanicPuppy]

It's not just about "offensive" ads...It's ads that slow down your goddamn page loads, because the page waits for the massively overloaded ad server to finish loading its ad before the rest of the content pops up. Screw that.

I block ads from most big banner providers because I hate them. For sites that depend on that revenue I tend to buy their stuff, or subscribe, or donate, or whatever.

For small providers or people who host their own ads? I don't block 'em. They're usually not as annoying to me as the interminable "Punch the Monkey to Win an XBox/iPod/Whore" ads and I don't mind giving them my business. Hell, to use an over-wrought example, look at Penny Arcade...They put thought into the ads they choose to host, and the ads are relevant and informative to the people who frequent their site.

Re:Well you're half right.

[Skreems]

This would probably get ignored as click-fraud, and if it happened often enough might get the page banned from the advertising service altogether.

Re:Well you're half right.

[Dun Malg]

Suppose someone puts up a booth on the street with Ice Cream, and little drop box with a sign that says "Please pay .25 for each ice cream bar you take". You're saying it's perfectly MORAL for you to come along and take all the ice cream (or as much as you want) and not pay him a dime because he didn't provide a means to enforce the sale? You're an idiot. You either can't construct a valid metaphor, or think we're too stupid to see through your intentionally invalid one.