Online Ad Czar Berates Adblockers As Freedom-Hating 'Mafia' (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Randall Rothenburg, the president and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has made a speech branding the creators of Adblock Plus (who were banned from the conference where he made this keynote) as "rich and self-righteous," and accused adblockers of subverting freedom of the press. Speaking at the IAB's annual conference, Rothenburg characterized the Adblock Plus team as "operating a business model predicated on censorship of content."

Comments

Re:Yup

[dreamchaser]

Don't forget that it also helps protect you. Ads are a common vector for drive by malware attacks.

Re:If AdBlocking is freedom-hating...

[Curunir_wolf]

I think it is an irrevelant technical difference if the ad is coming from a google server or from a - maybe google - server leased by the web page creator.

Clearly you have no idea how the Web works, based on your incredibly ignorant response. It's not an "irrelevant technical difference" at all - it's the key issue fundamental to the entire argument.

now that the percentage of ad blocking users exploded I am sure that within one year a few web hosts start to proxy ads.

No, you're wrong, they will never do that - it will cost them in server hardware and bandwidth to host all that advertising. It would create massive logistical issues with advertiser billing (not to mention new vectors for click fraud).

I am afraid you will be the only one who will be happy with this solution.

I really don't care - as I already stated. There are several web sites that have already lost my business because the obtrusive annoyance of their ads is not worth putting up with to consume whatever "content" they have. Hulu eventually wised up and started offering an add-free subscription service. Too late for me, because I had already cancelled my subscription because of all the annoying un-skippable advertising.

You should stop posting on this topic - you're just going to embarrass yourself further.