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French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus
HughPickens.com writes Frédéric Filloux reports at Monday Note that two groups of French publishers, the GESTE and the French Internet Advertising Bureau, are considering a lawsuit against AdBlockPlus creator Eyeo GmbH on grounds that it represents a major economic threat to their business. According to LesEchos.fr, EYEO, which publishes Adblock Plus, has developed a business model where they offer not to block publishers' advertisements for remuneration as long as the ads are judged non-intrusive (Google Translate, Original here). "Several criteria must be met as well: advertisements must be identified as such, be static and therefore not contain animation, no sound, and should not interfere with the content. A position that some media have likened to extortion."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
The publishers will eventually win. Right now, it is very trivial to get adblocking working. Fire up the web browser, type in AdBlock in the "get new extensions", and it is in place.
However, with this attack, it may not kill it, but it can force it to the edges. It is trivial to have an Adblock-blocker, or websites can use DRM extensions or just use a Flash wrapper for the site to bypass it.
The ironic thing is that in my experience, the #1 means of attack onto networks are ads that serve malware. So, AdBlock is a security tool. I wish someone could countersue with the fact that the ad slingers either play the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" game with the malware players, or passively don't keep their stuff secured. This forces places to have to block ads since they are such a common attack vector... be it attacking browsers, or browser add-ons like Flash or Java.
This is going to be a battle, and it will absolutely suck for us as a whole, because eventually DRM will won. For example, the latest EA title which hasn't been cracked, or any title on XBox One or PS4 with a piracy/cheat rate of 0%. I'm not looking forward to either eventually having to sit through ads and websites demanding to install their version of Blizzard's warden to see their content... but it is coming. Viva, France!
It seems you understand how the internet works.
As such, I'll remind you that they don't use your bandwidth without your permission. In fact, you must request all the pages from the internet that you'd like to see. It's the primary technical argument for blocking ads -- in that you're free to do with the data you receive as you please.
...someone else will develop a list...
Which is why I believe that the whole exercise is futile. Suing Eyeo is not unlike playing Whack-a-Mole. If they are forced to remove their app, others will simply take their place. Given that Ad Block has already forked development lines (see: Adblock Edge), they're already too late.
Ultimately, websites are going to need to protect their content using JavaScript or other means. I'm already familiar with a few sites that use JS based elements that display a message after a few seconds if the ads in the page don't load (see: Fark.com). Of course, AdBlock Edge allows me to block those elements, but it wouldn't be hard to use element name randomizing techniques to thwart AdBlock Edge.
Since I've been running things like Ghostery, Request Policy, or HTTP Switchboard ... even I am surprised at the sheer amount of tracking and other crap which is embedded in the average web page.
What's really sad is how many sites completely fail to work even once you enable all the stuff you ought to be enabling. There's been six or seven products I decided not to buy in the past year because the forums don't work if you have that stuff turned on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"