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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? "
Of course (at this time anyways) it isn't modded up at all.
I love how 90% of the arguments here are lying around the "it's my computer, my bandwidth too...I can block whatever I want". But no one gets it that a server should be able to block what they want too. All of a sudden it's a terrible thing!
The feeling of entitlement here is amazing. People who actually make things, spend time on things, are creative, etc are always being chastised here for wanting to get paid for their efforts.
If a Website operator thinks a user is blocking their ads, then they have every right to block them. If a Website user can't browse a site in their favorite browser, they have every right to go somewhere else.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
There is no legal agreement between you and the newspaper company either, but it's expected that when you plop a quarter into a paperbox that you don't take the entire stack of papers. Or, that you don't wait for someone else to put in a quarter, then grab the open door and take the stack. It's called the honor system.
Just because circumvention can happen doesn't mean you are morally in the right to do it. A web site proprietary puts ads on his website with the intention that you at least give him the opportunity to view his ads (you don't have to watch them, but you at least give him the opportunity to sell to you). By circumventing that implied intent, you are morally in the wrong.
If you don't want to veiw ads, you should simply not go to a web page that has them. Now, you can't know up front, before you visit, so.. morally speaking.. if you see an ad on the a page, you should immediately close your browser and go somewhere else.
You might find the web a pretty small place though, if you refuse to go to any sites that have ads on them.
Now, what's legal and what's moral are two different things. And, you are under no moral imperative to watch any ad, but you do not morally have the right to disregard the owners wishes and block ads, not even giving him the opportunity to interest you in ads.
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I would say that you definitely have a right to ignore the ads. You might also have the right to block them from your view before you can actually see them. but at least let the server shove them your way first.
I have been trying to figure out why I am stuck on that issue. For some reason it just seems like the proper thing to do, they present something, I should take it as a whole and not let them know their efforts are only half appreciated. I think the closest match would actually be when those video stores where pre-filtering movies, re-recording them, and you would send in a legit copy that you purchased so they would send you the clean version they made. This model lost in court but the strange thing is, the judge said that if they (the consumers) wanted to edit it before watching and then watch the clean versions, that was perfectly ok.
I don't know anymore. I would say that I am still against putting an ad blocker into a web browser and turning it on by default. If someone doesn't want the ads, it is really easy to get around it with a google search (or any search engine for that matter).