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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."
"Today is also a sad day for internet users, because AdBlock Plus jeopardizes the financing options for all free internet sites. We still feel it is inadmissible under copyright and antitrust laws, and it is an anti-competitive attack on media diversity and freedom of the press. Therefore, we will review the options for appeal and further legal action against Eyeo.”
I don't think they understand that they are free to publish whatever they want... but we are also free to ignore/cut up/block the stuff we don't want. I call that a win. If it means a bunch of publishers go out of business and the internet gets less commercial, I'm fine with that too.
Not true. You can block all ads. https://adblockplus.org/accept...
Why the hell do corporations think their business model is a guaranteed right, or that it confers any obligations on anybody else?
My business model involves being given millions of dollars to engage in acts of debauchery with college girls.
So far I've been having a hard time coming up with the millions of dollars. Or the college girls. Or the acts of debauchery. Most of them seem awfully complicated and there's stuff on TV.
Who do I sue about that? (No, really, I need to know this. ;-)
I should be given my millions of dollars to commit debauchery with college girls ... because ... business model!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hey if you feel guilty you can always cut them a check...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
1: Stop using them to track users, you want to show a text ad, fine Ill deal with it, but if you're going to track me across multiple sites then I block you.
2: Make them text based, or at least no flashing colors etc..
3: Stop using Flash, which is another attack vector
4: Stop selling our personal information to every single spammer that offers you money for our info
5: Make the site more than 75% content to 25% ads
6: Secure your servers so we aren't being attacked from letting your ads through
When you accomplish those simple things you may see a difference in the amount of people letting ads through, till then, go to hell.
You post a sign on the side of the highway do not think others owe you anything to read it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
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.
Those of you who block ads but still consume the services of sites that run them without paying into any subscription fee, why do you freeload?
Leaving aside the technical issues for blocking ads (EG taking up *my* bandwidth for things I have no interest in, nefarious tracking schemes and their ilk, etc), your argument seems to be predicated on an RIAA lost revenue model.
If I "freeload" now in order to view content a website, I severely doubt that I would buy a subscription to view content on that website if it became closed. Therefore if the website can't survive without monetizing all 100% of their viewers, why do you think it can survive with monetizing 100% of a smaller pool of viewers? IE I am not a "lost" sale - I was never a potential "sale" in the first place.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Those of you who block ads but still consume the services of sites that run them without paying into any subscription fee, why do you freeload?
If you like something you support it, right?
I still have not figured out the bizarre-o world of the internet where some people want something for free, block any attempt to pay for it via ads, refuse to pay subscriptions, won't buy the T-shirt, etc., but still want it to be there tomorrow for them when they wake up.
I'm addressing now folks who do that - who do you think pays the bills on sites? Who do you think puts the work in? Do you get paid for doing YOUR job?
Questions ever unanswered..
The problem isn't not wanting to pay the site maintainers its not wanting to be subjected to potentially malicious code embedded in attack ads. And as this same subjects comes up ever couple of weeks now I am just going to copypaste my response to this same objection from a little over two weeks ago.
I trust Slashdot not to attack me. But Slashdot is paid by "acme ad company" to insert their ads. Acme will pipe through whatever code crackers and malicious operators gives them as long as they get their money. I don't trust acme because of this and I certainly don't trust the person placing the ad. But here is the problem acme doesn't care as, I am a product not a customer. They only have to appease Slashdot and who ever is placing the ad. In fact their is a disincentive to scrutinize the content on the ads they are selling as they get paid either no matter the content and passing up bad operators is lost money. They can get away with it because if Slashdot viewer complain then they can say they will look into it opps one got through our system and nothing happens. So the only way to be safe is to block ads.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
7. No more video ads
8. Quite autoplaying
9. No audio ads overwhelming me when I am trying to read a text website
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Those of you who block ads but still consume the services of sites that run them without paying into any subscription fee, why do you freeload?
If you like something you support it, right?
I still have not figured out the bizarre-o world of the internet where some people want something for free, block any attempt to pay for it via ads, refuse to pay subscriptions, won't buy the T-shirt, etc., but still want it to be there tomorrow for them when they wake up.
I'm addressing now folks who do that - who do you think pays the bills on sites? Who do you think puts the work in? Do you get paid for doing YOUR job?
Questions ever unanswered..
Those of you who fast forward over ads but still watch the TV shows, why do you freeload?
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
Put your services behind the subscription fee, then.
Deliberately giving it to public access then whining when it's accessed is bullshit.
"Do I want to contribute to this site in another way?"
No
"But I've designed and made this content for you to enjoy, should I not be paid?"
No
"Okay, don't use my site then"
Okay
The sites that I want to use I donate to if given the option. They tend to not be overfilled with ads, but I will always look for the least annoying while most useful alternative to your content. If this makes you sad, that's fine with me.
"What about the quality, it'll go down if there are no incentives."
No, it won't.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
10. No more "32 top reasons to click through 32 pages of eights ads" - type BS; thank you so much in advance.
Requiem for the American Dream
it's most likely using the JavaScript detection - if you don't run the ad javascript, then you're most likely blocking it (are there any modern browsers that don't support javascript?).
Of course, it's a basic check - there are more advanced checks that could be done. But right now, few enough people do extensive ad blocking to matter.
Eventually you'll probably see things alone the lines of "use an adblocker and it's paywalled" scheme - so if you have an adblocker, you have to pay to view the content, or you can view the ads and get it for free.
The real concern though is that these websites use some sort of common paywall system, which may not have the best privacy protections and is vulnerable to hacking.
Here in Manchester (UK), there are an increasing number of HUGE eye-searingly bright digital displays on buildings, roadsides, on the sides of bridges under which the road passes... They are generally the slightly more upmarket version of the flash ads begging you to click - irritatingly distracting. I find it interesting that whoever grants these licenses would so casually prioritize ad revenue over driver safety. It's almost as if they don't actually care.
Requiem for the American Dream
Omg, communist! By using AdBlock you have robbed the advertising ghouls of the opportunity to perform a non-customer to customer conversion against your will, using their superior ad-fu. It's just not something that should happen in a free and democratic police state. Shame on you =S
Requiem for the American Dream
What neither side pointed out in their statements was that there is a huge difference between companies creating ads and adblock. Primarily, that Adblock does not come to users by default. People have to find, download, and install Ad-block. It does not come pre-installed on anything I have ever seen.
Now compare that to the ad companies complaining who give you ads without your consent, and where you can not block them without an application like Adblock. You have to see their crap until you can figure out how to block it.
I have nearly the same amount of respect for these "advert" companies as I do for spammers. I think there is a spec on the bottom of my shoe someplace... er wait, what did I step in??
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Find a better business model. This model you are championing sucks, you brought this upon yourselves. Monetization is important, but the directions ads have gone broke decorum in every possible way. I dont feel guilty about idiots wasting their money trying to use a shitty model
Good-bye
In theory, it should be the same verdict. In the US, the right we have is for free speech. You can say and publish anything you want (with reasonable restrictions regarding slander/libel, etc.). But the first amendment right to free speech is not the same as the right to be heard. Just because you can publish what you want doesn't mean you have any guarantee that anyone has to read it. You are not guaranteed an audience for what you say. The only right you have is that the government cannot shut you up without a damn good reason.
Will the courts continue to rule this way is the real question. After all, the courts do seem to be trending towards shills for corporate interests. Because of that, there is a chance they would ban ad block software if their benefactors wished it. It's hard to say for sure.
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.
people would not use adblock if advertising did not suck up so much bandwidth.
Adblock is used as a self defense mechanism. If we keep getting punched in the face then we're going to start wearing head protection, no matter how much someone whines that they make their living by punching me in the face.
If your livelihood depends upon annoying your customers, or even harming them, then you need a better job. If it's just a hobby then stop demanding that we pay for it.
Seriously, who is the freeloader, me for protecting my computer and my bandwidth, or the advertisers who use my bandwidth without permission and sites who offer up any ads without testing for malware first? Try living for a month on dialup only or pay per megabyte, then see how much you learn to hate advertisers.
- Treat your viewers and customers with respect
- Be responsible
- Stop tracking viewers
- Stop stealing their bandwidth.
- Provide the ads from your own server, not from a third party provider that you have no control over.
- Stop annoying users with ugly crap, stupid animations, pop ups, pop unders, blaring sound, etc.
- No videos!
- Provide relevant ads
- Stop sending out malware - if you do not vet your ads then you are at fault if malware gets through.
If you have an advertisement that you feel is appropriate, then submit it to adblock and see if it gets on their whitelist.
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
Depends on how much the US judge would have been paid off.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
I think the expensive clothing items with the giant company logo on them are hilarious. Pay extra to wear an item that is essentially a billboard, what an ingenious business model!
No ads designed to mislead. If you are a download page and you have dozens of "Click here for your download" ads you are getting adblocked or simply not visited. If you care so little about your website that you can't be bothered to protect it's users from malicious and misleading ads, you don't get my ad views.
Well I ask you "6 Ways to Burn Your Belly Fat Fast", do you like visi"Work at home mom makes $8,795 month working part time"ting sites that be"CR7 Driven to Perfection Thanks to Herbalife"come unusa"Napoleon Games Play When Feeling Lucky"ble because of al"McDonals I'm + Lovin' + It"l the unrela"15 Downloads That Will Block Annoying Ads and Pop-Ups"ted advertentions? Do yo"The “Ordinary” Mom’s Discovery That’s Making Botox Doctors Furious!"u? Do you re"KFC It's Finger Lickin' Good!"ally like these 'free' ser"Can you hear me now?" vices?
Except those defined by Adblock as being "acceptable" (ie, they get paid).
Fine with me. They are unobtrusive, contain no malware, and don't blink or beep. I don't block them, and I occasionally even click on them.
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.
The world does not owe you a living.
>internet will die if ads don't exist
I pretty much preferred the old Internet when the NSF was the backbone.
Go cry more.
--
BMO
Blocking of ad content on the internet is a problem that the internet advertising community brought upon itself.
Huge, messy, obnoxious high bandwidth, sometimes even dangerous ads.
If the entire playing field of internet advertising wasn't as toxic as it is, we'd see a wider array of people running without adblockers.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
is a public communication network, like a phone network. It was developed by public research dollars. I pay for my own bandwidth. I have ZERO obligation to tolerate your ads polluting my communication network.
If you don't want people downloading your 'content' for free, put up a paywall.
P.S.: F off and dye.
Taboola is on that list. The kings of click-bait. They use about 4 million different domains to avoid being blocked outright as well. BS. The crappy part is I actually value Googles Ads but if you disable all acceptable ads you disable all sites.
Sadly advertising is not simple. It often involves forms of brain washing. The notion of creating a market is just an insidious way of trying to make someone desire something that they probably should not. There is a certain very lusted after American sports car that in reality is a high priced, rolling death trap that has no reason to exist at all and is a menace to public safety. But ask every high school senior if they want a Corvette and it will get almost a 100% positive response. We see the same in motorcycles. Just why do young people want or even imagine they can handle a stock street bike capable of going 237 mph? Even professional racers are highly frightened to drive these machines but do so as they get huge pay checks. But because of advertising the kids don't want a 100 mpg. motorcycle. They want a bike that can go zero to sixty in two seconds. Yet the human eyeball flattens enough under that kind of acceleration that vision is severely limited. Some modern motorcycles accelerate faster than a military jet accelerates launching off of an air craft carrier. And kids try this with zero training.
And then you get sites like Slashdot, which have this wonderful checkbox that says because I am such a good user, that they will disable advertising for me if I want. Which even if I do, I still get ads served up to me - hence another reason for ad blocking software.
Yeah.. I noticed that.. Rightt now, here on Slashdot, where I'm such a good user, I get to have ads turned off, uBlock is reporting 2 ad networks are *still* trying to put their shit on my system.. Good job, Dice.. Good thing I use Linux instead of Windows...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Actually their acceptable ads (which you can turn off with a single checkbox and they even offer the option on first install) is exactly what I've been saying for years should be the only ads allowed due to security concerns,
1.- Static only (no Flash or Java, but they go one further and put no animations like GIFs), 2.- No "pop up/ under" ads blocking content (which is more likely to cause the user to click to try to move it, thus making it a good target for a malware link) but again they go farther with actual size requirements, 3.- Ads have to be clearly labeled as ads (so no fake security dialog boxes or images the user might click on concealing ad links) and yet again they go farther than I came up with by rules for borders and a bunch of rules for hyperlinks.
So as long as advertisers follow these rules? The odds of an ad based malware attack drops right off the chart. All your usual threats, third party flash, fake links, etc are removed from the equation. Most of us have no problem with the sites we use having a few adverts to stay afloat but what we DO very much have a problem with is putting users at risk for the profit of website owners. the ABP acceptable ads rules seems to address this concern and goes above and beyond so ATM I can really find no fault with the system.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I practice law in California in one of the few areas where the prevailing party as a practical matter is entitled to recover it's attorneys' fees and costs. It is the best possible method to discourage meritless litigation as people generally think very carefully before filing a lawsuit. This should absolutely be the norm for most civil cases.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
The part about the website viewer being the product rather than the customer is lost on most people. I'm just being a clever mouse, eating the bait without springing the trap.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
The fact that this happened, and with the right result, is a good thing as it confirms that the system is working.
No it isn't. This would be like a malware company going after Norton or Kaspersky because it hurt their distribution model, or if ammunition manufacturers sued bullet-proof vest manufacturers because it makes their product less effective. Yeah, the good guys win, but they ended up having to spend a lot of money to defend themselves unnecessarily.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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
Actually their acceptable ads (which you can turn off with a single checkbox and they even offer the option on first install) is exactly what I've been saying for years should be the only ads allowed due to security concerns,
I disagree. The "acceptable ads" rules that Adblock Plus uses allow the very thing that I object to the most about online ads: the tracking. So their "acceptable ads" are completely unacceptable to me.
Until ads stop spying on me, I will block every single one of them that I can.
With this Supreme Court, it would depend on whether the advertising was religious or not.