German Supreme Court Rules Ad Blockers Legal (faz.net)

New submitter paai writes: The publishing company Axel Springer tried to ban the use of ad blockers in Germany because they endanger the digital publishing of news stories. The Oberlandesgericht Koln (Germany's Higher Regional Court of Cologne) followed this reasoning and forbade the use of ad blockers on the grounds that the use of white lists was an aggressive marketing technique. [The business model allows websites to pay a fee so that their "non aggressive" advertisements can bypass AdBlock Pro's filters. Larger companies like Google can afford to pay to have the ban lifted on their website.] The Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice or BGH) destroyed this court ruling today and judged that users had a right to filter out advertisements in web pages.

Comments

I make the rules here

[Anonymous Coward]

and the rule is suck my DAMN balls

Re:I make the rules here

[Anonymous Coward]

no. i do.

why do we have comment subjects

[Falos]

> they endanger the digital publishing of news stories

So do eyelids. You can offer whatever content you want. That's it. That's all you can do online: Offer. Whether it's a credential-restricted content (ie premium) or simply open pages, the viewer decides whether to access. The viewer decides whether to subscribe, literally (paywall) or figuratively. Can't force buyers, can't force viewers.

Whether the selective mechanism is eyeballs or software is irrelevant.

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[aevan]

This just in: East Texas Court rules blinking to be theft. Mandates lid speculum integration while using a browser.

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[AmiMoJo]

To be fair their argument wasn't quite that stupid. They claimed that the pages were copyrighted works (true) and that ad-blockers were altering them, transforming them into a new unlicenced work. Kinda like if someone took a print magazine, stuck masking tape over all the adverts and sold it on as their own version.

A key point is that AdBlock Plus does actual profit from blocking ads. It takes money from advertisers to whitelist their ads and offers consultation services. So the transformed work has commercial value.

But as the court noted, this technology is different. The browser is under no obligation to render a page a certain way, and in fact often overrides the publisher's wishes with the user's preferences. Larger fonts, high contrast mode, text to speech etc. Disable image loading was a basic feature right back in the Mozaic browser days.

Plus there are many examples of similar technologies, such as the fast forward button on a DVR, the auto-volume limit system on a TV, earplugs, 3D glasses with two left lenses, photocopiers and the like.

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least that claim is a threat. If you grant it the assumed premise. However,

If I refute the premise: The imaginary property isn't being released, distributed, published, etc; even a paid adblocker means you're buying tape, not a magazine. This invites the ancient philosophical shitstorm of lawyers trying to draw fences around all possible channels, accusing the universe of facilitation, etc. eg linking to content ("it's a webpage that teaches how to kill a human!") or sometimes even mentioning it is the same as publishing it, ie news articles get (got) charged.

Nothing wrong with selling tape. But hey, we tried to sic lawyers on selling blank DVDs.

If I allow the premise: The imaginary property isn't conditionally offered. At the very minimum, this requires a ToS or disclaimer or any means of informing saying that I (the viewer) am being offered a conditional view. Half-assed code that says "please turn off your adblockers~" is a toss-up, it doesn't quite declare that the content is post-agreement-only.

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

*but a message that says you're not allowed to view the content if you adblock would be valid

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

> It takes money from advertisers to whitelist their ads

Not really. It whitelists acceptable ads https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads .
Since checking whether your ads are acceptable is a manual process, they charge a fee for this checking.
If your ads are not acceptable, money is not going to whitelist them.

Re:why do we have comment subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

"Turning off your monitor while viewing our site is copyright infringement."

Of course it is

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes someone think they have a *right* to run their code (JS) on my machine without my explicit permission?

Would they allow me to run my own arbitrary code on their computers? Why not?

Re:Of course it is

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes someone think they have a *right* to run their code (JS) on my machine without my explicit permission?

Mostly a widespread notion that plebs shouldn't have the right to own property.
More specifically this is the result of the propaganda RIAA has pushed to make copyright something that not only applies to the public space but also to the private one.
They don't want you to be able to do what you want with data in your own home or in private communication with your friends.
Now that that war is one, controlling what code you may run is the next logical step.

Would they allow me to run my own arbitrary code on their computers? Why not?

Of course not.
It is not about equality so you can't just assume that you should be able to do to them what they do to you.
You aren't a corporate overlord so you shouldn't have rights.
If you don't like it you can just fsck off to a socialist country of you choice.

Just don't provide content then..

[bobbied]

Website operator: If you don't like folks blocking your ads, it's perfectly fine for you to refuse to serve them up your data.. It would be nice if you let me know why, but it's up to you.

Browsing user: You are free to decide what to block and what to accept.

I get hit by this all the time... "We detect you are running an add blocker...." Followed by a plea to turn it off... If I want the content from your site, I'll let your ads display.. But my ad blocker stays on by default and if you don't provide enough value to make it worth pausing my blocker for you, I suggest you may not be in business very long anyway.

Why did we need to tie this up in court? It was a waste of time and money doing that.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[Anonymous Coward]

Website operator: If you don't like folks blocking your ads, it's perfectly fine for you to refuse to serve them up your data.. It would be nice if you let me know why, but it's up to you.

Came here to say the same thing. It's my time and attention, therefore it's my right to decide where it gets spent. Let content owners block me if they wish. Otherwise, don't complain.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[gweihir]

A large German news site (Der Spiegel) recently tried that aggressively. My response was to basically stop reading it. After a few weeks they went back to the old scheme, which tells me they were bleeding traders.

Re: Just don't provide content then..

[houghi]

More sites are doing that and blick content if they notice adblockers.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[dunkelfalke]

Heh, same here. I have blocked the Spiegel completely.
They've actually sued together with Axel Springer. Suits them right if they are willingly cooperating with the fucking Bild.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[AmiMoJo]

At this point asking you to turn off your ad-blocker is worse than asking you to turn off your anti-virus software just to install an emoji pack. It's an insane risk, not just of malware but of being tracked, having audio blasted at you, of having your bandwidth and battery wasted...

Even if you promise to be good today, what guarantee is that there you won't turn evil tomorrow?

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why we need to stop focusing on the ads aspect. Every time someone yells at you for blocking ads, calmly tell them "I'm not blocking ads, I'm blocking scripts" (or whatever verbiage you think would work best to get the point across that you are blocking the execution of untrusted code that could compromise your system).

Here's a radical idea for them. If they think the ads are so safe, why don't they run the ad code on their servers, and then serve me up a static image of the ad?

Re: Just don't provide content then..

[joh]

They are totally entitled to do that. I just close the tab then and go elsewhere, but I agree that they are free to deal with that this way. No problem. They don't want me to read their content and want me to never return, OK. I mean, they STILL don't earn money with my eyeballs.

What I never do though is disabling my ad blocker for them then.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[mrprogrammerman]

It's not worth it to allow the ads even if you like the content. What are you going to do when there's an exploit script in the ads that installs some ransomeware? It takes just one time and your system could be compromised.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[nukenerd]

Every time someone yells at you for blocking ads, calmly tell them "I'm not blocking ads, I'm blocking scripts" (or whatever verbiage you think would work best to get the point across....)

Great idea, and I'm sure they always provide a box for giving such feedback. I must look for it in future.

Re:Just don't provide content then..

[gweihir]

They participated in that? Thanks, I did not know that. May decide to drop them after all....

It's pollution.

[Gravis Zero]

I posit that advertisements are simply a form of information pollution. Instead of getting just the information you want, that information is polluted with contaminated by the inclusion of advertisements. There is a far better argument to be made for outlawing unrequested advertisements than there is for forcing people to see them.

Re:It's pollution.

[The Evil Atheist]

It's real pollution. Those ads chew up processing power on the client, and transmission power over the network.

Re:It's pollution.

[UnknownSoldier]

Its worse then that.

Ads have ZERO respect for your:

* Time
* Space
* Money
* Power
* Scenery -- how many fucking billboards do we need visually polluting our spaces??

I'm almost of the opinion that:

Corporate ads are immoral.

The sooner we ban these fuckers the less corporate bullshit distractions have to put up with.

I can see the future going one of two ways:

* Corporations data-mine the fuck out of you, everything fucking place you go -- blasting these ads to you the instant you step foot in a corporate space
* Or people say I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore, and ban these fuckers.

Sadly, the majority are wussies and won't do anything about it. :-(

Re:It's pollution.

[MrL0G1C]

I think they're also immoral because they sell a lifestyle that is an unobtainable fantasy and the attempted attainment of that lifestyle is psychologically and ecologically and sometimes physically destructive. Unfortunately they're successful enough in their brain-washing that the majority of people are affected and can't see the wood for the trees.

Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Socialism is caused by bad parenting and laziness.

Re:Just The Facts

[bobbied]

Socialism is caused by bad parenting and laziness.

Maybe it is.. However I think it's actually a learned behavior which is systematically taught though the public education system and under the guise of "not being selfish" and "fairness".

Kids are born understanding capitalism in it's unbridled form. Just watch a group of 2 year olds interact. They have the base concept engrained in them.... I want MORE than you...

The problem is socialism doesn't work for the very reason why 2 year olds act like they do, folks want more but don't want to work for it. It's human nature and it cannot be suppressed enough for socialism to work. It can work in a capitalistic society though. One just have to add the concept of hard work being the means of getting more and that "fairness" is defined as equal opportunity, not equal results and you are there. Those are concepts that many adults don't understand these days... But time and the wisdom that comes with it may fix that.

Re:Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Just watch a group of 2 year olds interact

Most folks grow up and recognise that unbridled capitalism works about as well as it did when they were two.

You might want to look to see if you can find patterns of behaviour in children that exhibit co-operative, almost socialist behaviour. It exists, just as surely as selfishness exists. They tend to be phases of development and say less about society than you seem to think.

The problem is socialism doesn't work for the very reason why 2 year olds act like they do, folks want more but don't want to work for it

Some people are selfish. They want more for themselves, even if it costs other people something. Other people are selfless. They aren't satisfied unless they know that everyone is doing OK. Most people are a mix of both traits, and to a degree capitalism/socialism align with those traits.

It's human nature and it cannot be suppressed enough for socialism to work

Pure socialism, sure. But then pure capitalism fails in similar ways, for much the same reasons (selfishness of a few). Your simplistic comparison fails to account for the reality that hard-work is not equally rewarded; that early access to capital creates monopolies that even passively create too high a barrier to entry for new 'hard workers' and that actively seek to perpetuate their power and ignores the tragedy of the commons.

It's human nature to co-operate as well. We're social animals. History is filled with examples of co-operation just as much as it is filled with competition. It's almost like we're animals with complex social interactions.

Capitalism, moderated and regulated and with strong social policies is a fantastic system and those societies that follow this model have some of the highest standards of living for their citizens in the world. The mix of capitalist and socialist policies avoids the weaknesses of each and takes advantage of the strengths of both.

Those are concepts that many adults don't understand these days

The 'American Dream', social mobility and the idea that hard work will result in bettering oneself and one's children has been becoming less true for some time. The US has some of the worst social mobility of any first world country. If some people are refusing to buy into the idea that hard work pays off, maybe they have a better understanding of how hard work is repaid at quite different rates depending on a wide range of factors, including race, socio economic background, educational opportunities etc.

If you want to understand why more people, today, seem to not buy in to the old 'hard work will result in a better life' maybe you should look beyond simplistic stories about two year old behaviour and selfishness. Maybe the income disparity in the US might also clue you in as to why some people have decided that the system that seems to have been good to you isn't one that's likely to be as good for them.

But nah. Social responsibility = socialism = evil is so much simpler.

Re:Just The Facts

[zabbey]

Which capitalist countries have your theory been tested in? Oh, none? Sorry, I forgot that there are no capitalist countries on planet earth. Every state meddles with their economy. Show me a country that doesn't offer copyright protection or some other state sponsored economic interference. Please!

Re:Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I forgot that there are no capitalist countries on planet earth.

No true scotsman. By the same argument there have never been any socialist countries, either. I still think that it's possible to look at the examples that have existed and extrapolate from them. Certainly the GP seemed to be discussing capitalism and socialism in that way and I replied in that spirit.

If you have a specific criticism of something I said, please make your point.

Handwaving about a lack of 'true' capitalism is noise.

Re:Just The Facts

[bobbied]

Words mean things.. Socialism is a form of government that is, at it's core, the government controlling all resources and doling them out to everybody. "To Each according to their need." and all. Your definition is just the slippery slope that leads to socialism as a form of government.

My point remains, socialism doesn't work because people are going to naturally look out for their own self interest. You can see this in the failed governments of history which where based on socialism. Or even current governments where socialism is being practiced. Such places have a ruling class which grows very rich and a growing population of poor who suffer greatly from lack.

Venezuela is an excellent example of how this progresses. 20 years ago this country was a thriving capitalistic country with a bright future. They had huge natural resource wealth, a vibrant economy and one of the highest standards of living in south America. Now look at where they are. They have a uber rich ruling class and hordes of poor destitute people who have no food, no resources and no prospects. All this in less than 20 years of "socialism" where the government took over private industry "to give it back to the people" and now there is nothing left. The poor are going to suffer greatly, but that's the legacy of socialism. the poor ALWAYS pay the price for bad government.

Capitalism on the other hand, has lifted more people to a higher standard of living than any other kind of economic policy. Take the USA for example, even our poor have a higher standard of living than a frighteningly large fraction of the world's population. This is due in large part to our capitalistic form of government and the ability for such a system to generate wealth. Wealth that lifts all of us to a standard of living which is the envy of the world.

Yet you wish to throw it away on something proven not to work?

Re:Just The Facts

[Uberbah]

Words mean things.. Socialism is a form of government that is, at it's core, the government controlling all resources and doling them out to everybody.

Indeed, words mean things - so why are you trying to make up your own definition of socialism out of thin air? Socialism == workers owning the means of production. Not that hard to understand, really.

You can see this in the socialist governments of history which where overthrown by the CIA or invaded by the U.S. military, slaughtering millions

FTFY. Iran, Iraq, Chile, Congo and others the victim of American coups, and six million dead just between Korea and Vietnam.

Venezuela is an excellent example of how this progresses. 20 years ago this country was a thriving capitalistic country with a bright future. They had huge natural resource wealth, a vibrant economy and one of the highest standards of living in south America. Now look at where they are.

Yes, look at how their GDP has tripled while lifting millions of people out of generational poverty. Look at the US supported coup in 2003, the currency manipulations, the laughable sanctions that were imposed by claiming Venezuela was a threat to the US, and the many millions of dollars the US has spent to subvert Venezuela's democracy. Before whining like a bitch about 13 twitter trolls.

Capitalism on the other hand, has lifted more people to a higher standard of living than any other kind of economic policy.

Only for those who would have already been rich robber barons. Demand creates jobs, not capitalism. The three richest people in the United States are worth more than the bottom half of the population, and here you think Venezuela has a failed system?

Re:Just The Facts

[bobbied]

The rewriting of history is strong with this one.. The ills in Venezuela are NOT from direct US intervention or externally applied policies. They clearly are from the implementation of socialism and government mismanagement of "the means of production" which always happens. The rest of your examples are just as invalid.

Socialism also means: " (in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism."

So... The end state of socialism is communism. It's the logical destination. Which is why I used the definition I used. It's the destination you are headed towards. This form of government is responsible for a very large number of deaths and suppression of human rights world wide both in the past and in current events. You need to own that.

Re:Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

This is due in large part to our capitalistic form of government and the ability for such a system to generate wealth.

Shouldn't you be in school right now?

Re:Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

(in Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism.

So... The end state of socialism is communism.

Literally the only people who believe that are Marxists and you. For those of us who aren't trying to ignite the worldwide proletariat revolution socialism is medicare, medicaid, social security, and SNAP. God save us all if you don't think there is a way to avoid medical bankruptcy without global stateless communism.

Re:Just The Facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure bias and extremist idealism post... You need to really step back from your way off the chart extremist to come back a bit to the middle...

Re:Just The Facts

[Uberbah]

The rewriting of history is strong with this one.

Your typical capitalist projection is noted.

The ills in Venezuela are NOT from direct US intervention or externally applied policies.

As is your gaslighting.

They clearly are from the implementation of socialism and government mismanagement of "the means of production" which always happens.

Mismanaged to the point their GDP tripped while lifting millions out of poverty. Like I said the first time.

So... The end state of socialism is communism. It's the logical destination.

Sounds like a communist saying it would be "logical" that as soon as you find capital investors for your landscaping business, you'll sexually harass your secretary, dump toxic waste in the river, defraud your investors, and order mob hits on your rivals. Of course, there probably has never been a communist that was that much of an idiot to suggest such "logic".

This form of government is responsible for a very large number of deaths and suppression of human rights world wide both in the past and in current events. You need to own that.

Riiiiiiight. Like you capitalists have owned up to slavery, genocide, and occupying other nations for over two centuries. Then there's the fact that all the socialist violence you'd like to whine was just a backlash to capitalist exploitation. You never would have had Castro without the brutal dictatorship of Batista. You never would have had the Soviet Union if it weren't for the Tsars.

Heads, socialism wins, tails, capitalism loses.

One word solution...

[GerryGilmore]

Lynx! No ads, no funky JS/whatever....Yeah, baby!!!

Re:One word solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx is great, hopefully it won't become illegal since it doesn't support advertisements. Stupider things have happened.

Re:One word solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is unlikely to happen. And besides, it would be rather trivial to write a wrapper around Lynx to make websites think they were seeing Firefox, et al. The same thing happened with LSO cookies (super cookies/Flash). I simply wrote them to /dev/null. The website believed they were being written to the drive when in actuality, they were being tossed into the bit bucket. The same can be done with vanilla cookies, though it makes everything a session cookie, with which I am more than fine. Software problems can be solved with other software hacks and coding. It's fairly trivial. And besides, the arms race between actual humans and the ad scum is fun, something I've enjoyed for years.

Re:One word solution...

[Seahawk]

An even better solution would be to send actual feral Lynx' to advertisers - that would make them stop pretty quickly!

Re:One word solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lynx supports ads just fine, just not any that requires javascript. Or images, I think. Lynx is text only, right? My point is, any web browser that can transmit data to you in a format that you can understand, can serve ads, as long as the ads take the limitations of the platform in mind.

Still

[AHuxley]

the computer owned by the user. The user still has control over their computer and browser :)

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

Less and less true everyday. The HW is yours (for now) the firmware and software are licensed.

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

Licensed... under the GPL. Nobody can take that control away from me.

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

This can be overcome. It's not terribly difficult to write and deploy a proxy that acts like a computer that looks like it accepts the ads, but strips them out in-stream and delivers a cleanly-rendered page. Right now we are really still in the nascent stages of ad blocking because the web is largely run by JS and it's detection algorithms. Ad block of the future will be different. It might do false hw/sw proxying, smart algorithms, etc. This can be done now but no one has taken the time to do it. It's trivial in that the knowledge exists, but it would be time consuming.

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they can, if they want to.
Licenses can't just override laws willy-nilly, for example you can't contract people into slavery.
That means that it is perfectly possible to write laws that overrides GPL.
While one assume that such laws would exist in China or Russia the only real world example I can think of would be the laws regarding exporting cryptography algorithms in the US.
To circumvent them the PGP algorithm had to be printed as a book.

Essentially you can already end up in situations where the GPL says that you have to send someone the source code but it might contain information that isn't legal for you to distribute.
Either you violate GPL or you break the law.
Chances are that if you choose the violate GPL in that case you can use the law as a defense should someone decide to drag you to court over it.

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in the EU (article talks about Germany).

Oh sure, they claim so in the EULA. Who cares, you didn't sign the EULA up front. You bought the software, and then the EULA tried to add restrictions after the sale.

The exception is things like Office 365 and Steam[1], where the license is presented before you pay.

[1] Steam itself. For some reason, the additional license many games provide is still provided after the sale.

Re: Still

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam has a no questions asked refund policy of you played the game for less than two hours though. So if you don't accept the additional license you just ask for a refund.

Re:Still

[Anonymous Coward]

easy enough. for example

your claim about not signing the EULA up front means that the EU says you can't be bound by it.

no problem. microsoft/apple sends an update to you telling you that you have to print this page acknowledging that you read the EULA and agree to all its terms. you have to sign it in front of a notary and have it notarized. You then have to MAIL it in for processing. Once processed, the special tracking number that prints on the sheet and is associated to your computer's unique ID generated from hardware info along with your license key, is entered into the update system, you'll continue to receive software updates.

don't send it in? you don't get updates from that point on.

MS and apple could include this at the very start of the boot process for a new computer, or fresh install of the os, once it's up and running.

don't have a printer? no problem. they have a partnership with local print shops across the world who will print the sheet for you for free (so no excuse).

The EU can't force software vendors to let you get updates. then, if your system gets compromised and causes issues, YOU get sued for not taking responsibility for your computer.

sure - don't want to sign anything like that? you can use linux. but to use linux, you have to accept the licensing that comes with it. and since something you didn't sign agreeing to abide by the linux licensing, you're in the same boat.

Re:Still

[apoc.famine]

Which is why everyone is making an app for everything these days.....

Kohn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a break.

Muller? How about at least Mueller.

Trump? How about at best crook.

Re:Kohn?

[Anonymous Coward]

ur mom.

Source Link

[Anonymous Coward]

So the source link won't let me read the article.....because I have ad block running. Ironic.

Re:Source Link

[RandomFactor]

There is no perfect solution.

In this case, NoScript + ABP and the article comes up fine, if in German.

But really, if you are blocking ads for safety, why are you still running scripts?

Of course they are!

[EzInKy]

I can't think of any reason they wouldn't be. After all, my computer is my property, not yours.

Re:Of course they are!

[gweihir]

German law is fu**** in the head in many regards. This is just one of them. Not that Germany is somehow exceptional in this regard.

Re:Of course they are!

[EzInKy]

Can't see why anyone would have anything against this law. Yes, at least in the US anyway, there is the right to speak your mind. But there is no right to make anyone listen to what you have to say.

Re:Of course they are!

[Anonymous Coward]

German law is fu**** in the head in many regards.

Any example where German law actually is messed up?
We see a lot of shit on the net, but usually it is just stuff brought to court and then shut down because it wasn't actually illegal.

There is the whole deal of censoring Nazi propaganda that was forced on them by the allies after the war, but from the discussions regarding it when the last Wolfenstein game was released is that they probably don't have to censor the games but no game company is willing to try it out since it is a lose-lose situation.
In the unlikely scenario where you lose you have to recall you games to replace them with a modified version, but regardless of if you win or lose you are still the company that went to court to defend your right to distribute Nazi imagery.
It is just a better option to make a censored version to begin with and not have to prove that you are in the right.

Rather it seems to me like German law has the most things right, but that people have gotten the idea that they are messed up in some regards.

Re:Of course they are!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people in the USA think germany is fucked up. Almost all of them because in germany they ban holocaust denial and glorification of the nazi symbolism and state.

This is because either they are nazi racist fuckwits who hate the idea that the state suppresses THEM. That's not what it's for! Or they are American Exceptionalists and the USA has a constitution which makes "free speech" a right (ignore that there are many loopholes, and many laws ignoring it entirely, see cryptography bans, and many cases it's just plain ignored by fiat, see NDA legality), so that any place that puts a law banning SOME speech must, because it is proof it has no primacy for freedom of speech in some piece of paper, it must be fucked up, and not american and therefore not good, therefore BAD.

As you point out, that was forced on them by the allies. But it is also a good idea: those who ignore the past will repeat the mistakes made in it. But since the USA did it, the merkins whining about it won't accept that fact and will just ignore it and continue as if you hadn't pointed it out.

Re:Of course they are!

[angel'o'sphere]

what is wrong with allowing users to block adds?

Re:Of course they are!

[Anonymous Coward]

Banning of pro-nazi speech is particularly problematic because pro-nazi speech is political speech. For the same reason that a nazi state banning anti-nazi speech is a problem a non-nazi state banning pro-nazi speech is crossing the line into punishing people for disagreeing with the govenment.

The main reason the US constitution protects free speech is so the government can't pass a law criminalizing dissenting with the government. In a democracy it's pretty important that people can speak their mind on matters of state. That for any given political opinion somone will find the very idea abhorrent, and thus freedom of political speech is guaranteed to result in pretty much everyone being angry about something somone said is considered a necessary evil because if you start letting the state draw boxes around certain off-limits opinions there's no way to prevent the state drawing those boxes to it's own advantage against the interests of whatever set of people are not presently in power.

Ironically the well known saying about bystander problem and the holocaust is also relavent to this issue:

First they cam for the nazis and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a nazi...
Then they came for the gays and I didn't speak up because I wasn't gay... ...
When they came for me there was no one left to speak up for me.

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: Websites usually don't bother to actually "detect" that you're using an ad blocker.

How it works: The website's static content is the message claiming that they detected that you're using an-ad blocker, and then javascript served from an adblocked domain alters the page to hide the message. (User thinks: "OMG! They know!")

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[bobbied]

Doesn't matter to me how they do it or even if they know or not.. If I don't think their content is worth the effort, they won't be sending me anything..

It's so obvious..

[fluffernutter]

We need ad blocker blockers! And ad blocker blocker blockers!

Re:It's so obvious..

[Uberbah]

I think I saw that movie

Something smells funny about this decision

[squiggleslash]

The Oberlandesgericht Koln (Germany's Higher Regional Court of Cologne)

I'm guessing this is the perfect court to raise a stink about ad blockers.

Re:Something smells funny about this decision

[antek9]

The company that developed AdBlock has its offices in or near Cologne, so that is indeed the perfect court (or, your only option) if you want to sue them, so what?

Re:Something smells funny about this decision

[Anonymous Coward]

eau ye of little humour

Re:Something smells funny about this decision

[squiggleslash]

Does it issue damages proportional to the number of times the plaintiff got angry, or, I guess, to put it another way, per-fume?

Re:Something smells funny about this decision

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing this is the perfect court to raise a stink about ad blockers.

Yeah, well all the computers we've got down in the 'ole factory are not going to suddenly give up their ad blockers, no matter what they say about it in Cologne.

Re:Something smells funny about this decision

[Zontar The Mindless]

*whoooooooshshshshsh...*

Irrelevant

[duke_cheetah2003]

Lawful or not, I am going to employ the most aggressive ad-blocking setup I can get my hands on. Try and stop me.

Re:Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

site owners can do this easily. plenty of ways to detect ad blocking and when detected, just show you a big, bright pink pages saying "white list us to see content"

when a vast majority of the internet does this, and you can't see stuff you're interested in, you'll wise up.

of course, annoying ads need something done about them. blocking takes care of them for sure...but also takes care of the non-annoying ones.

Re:Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

when a vast majority of the internet does this, and you can't see stuff you're interested in, you'll wise up.

This won't happen, though. For every site that displays ads, there are dozens of alternate sources for similar, if not the exact same, content that will gladly serve it ad-free. Ad revenue isn't always the primary objective of putting something online.

If they served ads online like printed...

[ffkom]

there would be no ad-blockers.

For the younger of the readers: When stuff was published on paper, publishers of course took responsibility for the whole of their publication, includings advertisements. If you wanted to publish an ad, you had to go through the publisher's ad department. You could not just book a slot from some 3rd-party, and have them deliver a bag of Anthrax spores or poo-poo with every newspaper.

Of course web sites could still take responsibility, and publish just still images integrated into their layout, served from their servers. But they opted to let others annoy you with all kinds of malware and distraction - and now they get punished as deserved.

Re:If they served ads online like printed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Best post ever in an adblocking discussion.

Re: If they served ads online like printed...

[houghi]

On the other gand, if it were possible to block the ads in magazines, newspapers, on billboards, clothing and on every item i buy, I would.

I already black out or remove the branding on my monitors and other things if possible and buy clothes without branding on them.

Re: If they served ads online like printed...

[tlhIngan]

On the other gand, if it were possible to block the ads in magazines, newspapers, on billboards, clothing and on every item i buy, I would.

It's not hard. Either some black marker pen, some paper and glue, or a pair of scissors will easily remove the ads from magazines and newspapers. Billboards are harder and generally fall on private property, so painting those is harder. But you are free to block ads in newspapers and magazines, and it's quite easy to do so.

Anyhow, what I see happening on some sites is the ads are served up by the webserver themselves - the javascript, the assets, etc, are served by the main web server. I don't know how they do it, but it's dynamic - it appears the web server is retrieving ad information and embedding it in the webpage directly.

Of course, traditional ad blockers don't work since as far as they're concerned, it's part of the page and not an externally loaded asset.

You can't disable javascript because it'll disable site navigation, and most ad blockers have a hard time removing that part of the DOM...

Re: If they served ads online like printed...

[houghi]

The removal needs to be done by a third party for the magazines and newspapers. Technically possible. Not realistic.

Or to say it with the words of Banksy:

People 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 buses that imply you'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. It'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 don'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, don't even start asking for theirs.

Re: If they served ads online like printed...

[nukenerd]

I already black out or remove the branding on my monitors and other things if possible and buy clothes without branding on them.

That's crazy. I have no objection to companies putting their logo or name on what they have made, as long as it is not over-obtrusive, and that is not what we a talking about here.

It is useful to know who made your stuff : for example I buy a pair of walking boots and they fall apart after 3 months, so I check the maker's name and don't buy them again. OTOH another pair is lasting fine after a year (I use boots heavily) so I note the name and buy them next time. I'm not talking about big fashion brands BTW, this is utilitarian stuff.

Ad Blockers should me mandatory

[gettin2old]

They should be viewed in the same way Anti-Virus software is. Especially in today's Ad-verse.
Few of the sites place their own ads. It's mostly 3rd party ad services. It's a crazy bidding process for a lot of companies on both the ad seller end and the display side. There's plenty of broken, abusive or malware infested ads that pop up even with the big player ad services.
People should almost be required to block them.
I don't mind ads. if they aren't interstitials, don't autoplay video, don't cause 4 cores to spike, don't infect my desktop and aren't 20M in size.
Unfortunately i run into all of these all too often.
Good for them that sanity prevailed in this instance.

Re:Ad Blockers should me mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd go as far as to say if you have an adblocker you don't need antivirus.

Re:Ad Blockers should me mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be viewed in the same way Anti-Virus software is.

I don't know about that, but letting web-browsers pull in content from third parties without the users explicit consent should probably not have happened to begin with.
First it lead to plenty of pages having hotlinked images in the 90's resulting in broken links everywhere.
Now we have the current situation where pages pull in javascript code from dubious sources that I don't trust.

When I pull content from a specific page that is a matter of me trusting that page. That doesn't mean I trust any other page.
The funny thing is that they want me to trust my computer with third party scripts because the ad-network doesn't trust the page owner to report the number of views correctly so they want their own scripts for it.

So essentially the page owner and the ad-network have already established they they don't trust each other and their solution is that I should trust the ad-network enough to run their code on my computer.
Well, if they trusted each other to begin with then I might be more inclined to do so, but if they established that trust they could just serve me the scripts from the page I went to and not have them on a third party server.

Stealing

[110010001000]

If you are using an ad blocker you are STEALING! Look at all this great content! Where do you think it comes from? Everyone should be forced to watch 1-2 hours of mandatory advertising per day in order to support the content creators!

Re:Stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 1-2 hours? What are you - a communist?

Every waking moment should be full of mandatory advertising.

Re:Stealing

[Zontar The Mindless]

You left out the God-given right of website operators to use 95% of your CPU to mine $coin...

Re:Stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the last decade I've really reduced my personal exposure to advertising. Now I think I'm down to just podcast ads and billboards.

Re:Stealing

[nukenerd]

Over the last decade I've really reduced my personal exposure to advertising. Now I think I'm down to just podcast ads and billboards.

I rarely even see any ads casually. I live in a rural part of the UK and my nearest town is historic and "picturesque" - no bill-boards or other large signs allowed - and I don't go in very often anyway. I never watch commercial TV except by pre-recording and skipping the ads. I don't take any paper media and I use an ad-blocker. I must sometimes see ads on the sides of lorries [trucks], and within shop windows, but I only go to shops with a list aleady of what I am going to buy.

The ads I see are when I deliberately look for them. For example if I want to buy a camera I look at camera makers' websites to see what they offer. I don't think anyone would object to that type of advertising. I would also look at review sites and photography forums. The hype from admen plays little or no part, except if anything to put me off.

Can't RTFA

[schopey]

Because in addition to blocking ads I block JavaScript.

Re:Can't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

View -> Use Style -> None

They're usually CSS-based blocks. The nasty ones use AJAX calls to load the actual content.

Yet the article was blocked for me...

[Earl The Squirrel]

....because I have An Ad blocker on. The Irony of it all...

Not the highest German court

[gweihir]

The translation "Supreme Court" is misleading. The BGH is the second highest German court. The highest one is the BVG, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, i.e. the court deciding things regarding the German constitution. The BHG is however the highest court you can come up to using appeals for concrete things. The BVG only takes constitutional stuff and may decide to ignore you.

Re:Not the highest German court

[dunkelfalke]

If we are going to nitpick, it is actually the BVerfG, not the BVG, simply because there is also the Bundesverwaltungsgericht, that would have the same initials otherwise ;-)

Re:Not the highest German court

[gweihir]

Correct.

Re:Not the highest German court

[Anonymous Coward]

"The BVG only takes constitutional stuff and may decide to ignore you." - Definitely sounds like our supreme court.

Re:Not the highest German court

[Anonymous Coward]

And while we're on the subject, there should be an umlaut on Köln.
Even /.'s Unicodophobic software can cope with that.

Re:Not the highest German court

[gweihir]

Actually, German typing rules still allow the use of en "oe" if you do not have the Umlaut on the Keyboard. (I do not have umlauts, as the ineptitude of the designers of the German keyboard layout has really messed it up. I use the "EU" layout.) It is surprising how many Germans do no know that tough and complain. "Koln" is definitely wrong though.

Responsibility and Liability Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly: Technology is only a secondary, enabling cause of the problem. Fundamentally the problem stems from the abdication of responsibility (or liability) and how businesses and consumers are organizing themselves.

If theres a product we need

[wolfheart111]

We know know how to find the best value, and its quite easy.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Mandrel]

Could you please explain how.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Anonymous Coward]

http://lmgtfy.com/?iie=1&q=product+search

Re:If theres a product we need

[Mandrel]

Without ads, most of these either wouldn't exist or would be a lot smaller. Will it still be easy to find most suitable product if most people block or ignore ads, and don't contribute to independent media that runs on ads and affiliate sales?

Re:If theres a product we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Do ads have to be third party? If not, then why must the existence of adblockers remove the possiblity of adverts entirely? If it doesn't, then your doommongering is invalid. The sites choose to use the easiest for them option and the option that means the customer is most at risk. And even so, the site has the option of blocking and not serving up anything at all if it can't send ads. So it's entirely a free choice of those sites to do as they do, if adblockers would make them fail.

Their decision to throw the toys out of the pram if they don't get their own way doesn't make it my fault that they have to shut down. They could keep the toys and play nicely with me.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Mandrel]

First party ads (and advertorial) are even worse: They force these sites to compromise their independence by doing deals with product makers and sellers, rather than let a third-party handle this. And you still have all this independent material surrounded by spin.

So what's the best way to fund professional independent media if not through ads?

Re:If theres a product we need

[Mandrel]

You've convinced me.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they aren't "worse" except by your opinion which applies to, well, you and you alone. It's different. It isn't perfect. Knock yourself out. Show they're worse. They already have to be acceptable to the advertisers and change their output to let them get the contract. So show that it's worse under first party. Then show it's worse enough to make up the difference in not opening up customers to virus whore adservers.

Re:If theres a product we need

[Mandrel]

Infection from ads is a lot rarer than you imagine. It makes headlines when it happens. Almost all infections are the result of phishing and hacking.

Contrast this with the susceptibility of all but the most ethical and wealthy publishers to being in the pocket of advertisers with which they deal directly. And even the best will pump out corrupting information to all if they employ "native advertising" (ads masquerading as articles).

No, first-party ads are no solution.

Could still be overthrown

[enz]

This ruling was made by the German Federal Court of Justice, which is the highest court unless questions of constitutionality are involved. The plaintiff claimed that this is the case and announced that they will now go to the German Federal Constitutional Court. So the ruling could still be overthrown.

Re:Could still be overthrown

[angel'o'sphere]

they will now go to the German Federal Constitutional Court. So the ruling could still be overthrown.
The federal constitution court will most likely simply dismiss the case, as it is in no relevance to the constitution ...

bild.de went one step further

[aepervius]

It is a german tabloid. They added a script (possibly server side) so that if you have an ad blocker they don't serve the page (well they serve the page then show a blank page with "why I don't see that page").

also

[Torvac]

the most interesting point in this trial was their argument about the webservice main purpose is advertising, not providing news (they run a big yellow press news portal). They are also one of the main reasons terrorism in germany escalated in the 60s,

German guy here.

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all: good for the court! I hope Springer gets smacked similarly at the Constitutional court.

Second: the funniest thing I heard in this context is the words "quality journalism" in one phrase with Springer. For a long time they had the monopoly on fake news here, until they were shortly overtaken by even more disgusting outlets.

Blocking vs Racketeering

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is no clear resolution as basically two issues were raised, yet only one answered.
The overall theme seems to be the question if adblockers were legal. Yet the detail that AdBlock had a whitelist that advertisers could buy into was not clearly handled by the courts.

While I agree that yes, adblockers should be legal, I disagree that AdBlock's business model is thus legal as well. The people hosting the ads are getting money from the advertisement companies. Now AdBlock is trying to force the sites to pay extra so their ads are not blocked.
Basically it's a mob style protection racket.

Not to mention this fact is not even clear to the user, who becomes is unknowingly complicit in the racket.

Re:Blocking vs Racketeering

[Anonymous Coward]

You get asked if you want to use AdBlocker's whitelist, and you get a choice of other prepackaged whitelists too. The product won't complete installation until you either accept one or leave the whitelist empty.

This assertion of yours would mean that including every default application (especially, due to the history of it, web browsers) with an operating system would also be, in your opinion, illegal. Even if you were strange enough to think that, no system in the world thinks THAT, even when "webbrowser" was disputed, it was only considered a specific problem because it killed a competitor by using one monopoly's pricing (therefore the cost of that product had to be high enough so that profits could be diverted, meaning the customer is by default and definition, harmed with higher prices). And THAT was only an issue because you had bundling of the OS with all PCs, and THAT was only an issue because MS PAID FOR EXCLUSIVITY.

Note too that this shows your position would make ANY form of bundling, including BOGOF deals, as illegal or at least equally problematic enough to warrant breaking up into separate products to be purchased.

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI: Websites usually don't bother to actually "detect" that you're using an ad blocker.

How it works: The website's static content is the message claiming that they detected that you're using an-ad blocker, and then javascript served from an adblocked domain alters the page to hide the message. (User thinks: "OMG! They know!")

No, actually many sites these days do a ton of work to detect adblockers and then not serve the content or delete it from the page. These systems are even sold as very expensive third party services to publishers and use incredibly malicious methods to evade and detect the blockers.

It's a constant cat and mouse game. I've kept up with the developments because whenever a page gives me shit about my blocker or manages to display ads, I make it my mission to upgrade my block setup until that page can no longer avoid or identify it. Even though I don't care about their content in the slightest at that point. It's a matter of principle. If I'm feeling petty I might also then proceed to waste their bandwidth a bit.

Free tip: The current king is Nano Adblocker + Nano Defender and a bunch of the most up to date antiadblock lists (on Firefox; Chrome currently has some cross-site scripting style exploits that the delivery services are abusing. They can also detect chrome's developer tools open and proceed to clear the console and hide their nasty tricks etc.)

Seriously Axel Springer?

[gchat]

Really something like this has to be expected from Axel Springer Media company. They are literally the worst media company in Europe & US I've heart about. Because of their trashy articles they have a high readership in Germany and because of this high number, they contact public persons and press them for either interviews or pictures of their private life, or else threatens them to publish negative articles about them. Multiple persons have reported these incidents but unbelievable as it sounds, this kind of threats are legal in Germany. Just to be clear if we talk about negative articles, we are talking about First page articles which can go on for weeks.
One famous victim of their trashing was former president of Germany Christian Wulff. After he declined to publish pictures of his private life and interviews with them, they literally bombed him every day with negative articles because of a "legal" lone he took from a business man (seriously). Because of this trashing he had to resign from this position, though he was much beloved in Germany before those articles.
Those people should be in jail and it's a pity that instead of that, they are prosecutors in the Court.
So that shows you have to be a real mafia-style criminal, to push for such restrictive regulations of the internet.

I don't block ads but I rarely ever see them

[MrL0G1C]

I don't block Ads, I don't particularly care if a website shows ads.

What I don't like is

Annoying animated GIFs
Auto-loading videos with audio.
Spyware that attempts to track my every move.

Ghostery blocks the latter and this pretty much results in the former also being blocked because these scumbags can't resist spying on everyone.

Re:I don't block ads but I rarely ever see them

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot ads that scroll with the page, end up covering what you're trying to read and reducing thin clients to a crawl, just like the ones at the top of slashdot pages.

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[Applehu Akbar]

If that were true, you could just reload the page without pausing your adblocker. This does not work.

yup....

[Anonymous Coward]

time for sites to detect the ad blockers and put up big pages instead of the stories telling people to whitelist the site or they won't see anything.

enough sites do this and people will wise up.

Which of course gets blocked too

[Anonymous Coward]

The blank page overlaying the actual page, I mean.

Actually, there is a whole ad blocker warning blocklist nowadays.

They are manipulation for fraud by definition.

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire and sole point of advertisement, is to manipulate you into giving your money for something that is inferior to the best choice. Aka harming you, white collar psychopath style.

Otherwise, you would just find them at the top of your filtered and sorted by numeric properties list of products on a comparison site like geizhals.at/skinflint.co.uk/...

put advertising into the HTML standards

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a problem with ad supported sites. It's the aggressive and sketchy ones that are a problem. Advertising support needs to be in the HTML/CSS/etc standards in a way that makes it useful to advertisers and behave reasonably towards users. Then we can just block advertisements that try to go around that.

Bad translation

[greylion3]

> The Oberlandesgericht Koln (Germany's Higher Regional Court of Cologne)

Köln != Cologne

Re:Bad translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Doch!

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[Anonymous Coward]

No, actually many sites these days do a ton of work to detect adblockers and then not serve the content or delete it from the page.

Bullshit. It's Javascript plain and simple. If it were anything else then I, someone who does not use any ad-blocker, but who does use Noscript, would not be impacted. And yet I am.

Re: websites detecting ad blockers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you've misunderstood. The default content visible is "we've detected that you're using an ad blocker." You have to run the Javascript served from the adblocked domain to instruct the web browser to hide the default message and make the "normal" content visible.

In some cases you can go in and hack the DOM with something like Firebug to see the normal content.

How gracious of them

[wonkey_monkey]

How kind of them to deign to let me decide what I hear and see!

No billboards in Hawaii

[sjbe]

* Scenery -- how many fucking billboards do we need visually polluting our spaces??

That's actually one of the beautiful things about Hawaii. When I visited there were ZERO billboards anywhere. It was lovely. Now I haven't seen the entire state but I've been all over Oahu and didn't see a single one.

BTW you forgot about having zero respect for your Privacy. I have zero interest in being tracked around the internet by advertising companies.

Copyright only applies to a fixed work.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the page is made up on the fly, it is not a fixed work, it is therefore not copyrightable. Your argument fails at the first step.

think twice

[Anonymous Coward]

So those companies say it will spoil their business if we were free to read the main part of the homepage instead getting annoyed by stupid ads?
Well, look at those companies. They all hide behind a front desk or fences, locked doors. When the consumer can show up at the office of the owner of that company to ask, discuss,complain...i would allow ads....