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Adblock Plus Victorious Again In Court
New submitter Xochil writes: AdBlock Plus has successfully defended itself in court for the second time in five weeks. The Munich Regional Court ruled against media companies ProSiebenSat1 and IP Deutschland. The companies sued Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, asking the court to ban the distribution of the free ad-blocking software, saying it hurts their ad-based business model. An Eyeo release says in part: "We are elated at the decision reached today by the Munich court, which is another win for every internet user. It confirms each individual’s right to block annoying ads, protect their privacy and, by extension, determine his or her own internet experience. This time it also confirms the legitimacy of our Acceptable Ads initiative as a compromise in the often contentious and rarely progressive world of online advertising."
Why would anyone, ever, think that me not looking at their ad should be illegal? I mean, are we that far gone that it's even conceivable to have the courts forcing me to view ads?
I look forward to the day when somebody makes augmented reality glasses that block meatspace advertising like billboards, TVs in airports and bars, logos on clothes, all it. I'll be the first in line.
When I've run my sites in the past, I've never put a single banner on that page that wasn't my own... except for a single page that was specifically built just to allow access for my users to make use of my affiliate programs. That one page had one affiliate block each for Amazon, DigiKey, NewEgg, and TigerDirect. The rest of the page was banner links to friends' pages where they were selling their own products or services. I made dick on running that entire ad page (maybe 60 cents over the course of that 2 year run), and I never expected to make any money off of it. It was only there as a side service to customers that were already cruising the rest my site for my products/information. My direct revenue at that time was only ever from whatever product or service I was using that site to sell, not advertisements from 3rd party sources. If I was running a blog on a page of the site, I wasn't making money off of it. That was just a way to put my own opinions out there. If you went there, read through it, maybe left a comment... great. Not once on that page were you going to be subjected to any kind of advertising. The #1 compliment that my customers and site visitors gave me on the site design? It was a refreshing break from the rest of what they had to deal with on the web. Simple, sleek, great use of colors, and the fastest loading pages that they've ever seen since the inception of the commercialized web.
If you are a large syndicated news site, charge a subscription fee. That's fine with me. If I like a sampling of your articles, I'll probably pay for a subscription. If enough people feel you're worth the subscription fee...great, you get to live. If you're Joe Sixpack running a personal blog and putting your opinions out there with a ton of clickbait ads all over your page... Guess what; opinions are like assholes: Everyone has one and every single one stinks. You want to support yourself by putting yet another source of near useless information out there and rely on that for your only bit of income? You deserve to flounder when no one clicks your ads, blocks the ads, or just doesn't visit your site after the first go. If you're not truly insightful, you're offering nothing for society. If you were truly insightful, you'd be able to put your money where your mouth is and make something of all those wonderful ideas you have, and use that to make your money on...instead of bombarding me with garbage ads for enlarging my dick or what ever one neat trick pony they put up on your piece of shit site.
Basically it comes down to this: do something useful that I'm willing to buy into? I'll go to your site and buy all day. Use your blog to bullshit me like a damn street hawker and then flash all kinds of ads in my face? Fuck you, goodbye. I listen to enough bullshit all day, I don't need yours too.
Personally, I allow the adblock allowed ads. Not many sites use them.
Sites I frequent that give me the 'Please disable your adblocker' I tend to respond with(and yes, I've used their forum/webmaster address to do this) 'Then use adblocker approved ads'.
After about the 3rd time the ad sites tried to serve me malware it became more about protecting my computer than anything else. The fact that many sites are unusable to the point that I wonder if their web-admin is even testing the sites without an ad blocker doesn't help.
I don't read AC A human right
This reminds me of the giant blow up over paid mods to Skyrim. The player community went nuts. But the modding community also went nuts and split a bit, some still wanting to treat their modding as just a hobby same as any other open source, but others who stopped modding altogether because "we deserve to be paid", "no one ever voluntarily donates", "you're a bunch of freeloaders". Ugliest mess you ever saw.
All because it was a system that worked well for a very long time, and then one day money entered the picture.
You are correct, I work in digital signage and the states DOT have specific rules for LED billboards. An example (from Iowa, the first i could find, but these are fairly standardized).
Each change of message must be accomplished in one second or less.
Each message must remain in a fixed position for at least eight seconds.
No traveling messages (e.g., moving messages,animated messages, full-motion video,or scrolling text messages) or segmented messages are presented.
The intensity of the illumination does not cause glare or impair the vision of the driver of any motor vehicle or otherwise interferes with any driver’s operation of a motor vehicle.
LED displays must be located a minimum of 500 feet from any other LED display facing the same direction within cities. LED displays must be located a minimum of 1000 feet from any other LED display
âoePeople are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from the buses that imply youâ(TM)re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. Itâ(TM)s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially donâ(TM)t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, donâ(TM)t even start asking for theirs."
â" Banksy
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why? Since when is it a court's business to protect some business model that doesn't work out?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually their acceptable ads
The real kicker (and why I switched to AdBlock Edge a long time ago) is that they ask for 30% revenue share on those acceptable ads, and with that they got too much into bed with the advertisement industry.
Especially given that AdBlock now belongs to a group of advertisement companies, and they whitelist all the ads from their network by default.
They sold out, simple as that, and they fight in court not for the good cause (though that is a side-effect and a very good one) but to protect their revenue stream.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This should absolutely be the norm for most civil cases.
An interesting twist we have here in Sweden is that for purposes of determining who pays cost, even if you win the case but is awarded less than half of what you originally claimed, you're counted as the loser when it comes to paying cost of litigation.
Keeps down frivolous claims quite nicely. However, I doubt this way of running civil cases would serve well if we didn't also have the system of ombudsmen, i.e. in any case where the little guy would face interests with big pockets (including government) there's an ombudsman to hear you case and litigate on your behalf, providing both the expertise and funds. (They can also fine directly.)
Stefan Axelsson