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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.
> 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.
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?
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.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Lynx! No ads, no funky JS/whatever....Yeah, baby!!!
the computer owned by the user. The user still has control over their computer and browser :)
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I can't think of any reason they wouldn't be. After all, my computer is my property, not yours.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm guessing this is the perfect court to raise a stink about ad blockers.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Lawful or not, I am going to employ the most aggressive ad-blocking setup I can get my hands on. Try and stop me.
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.
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!
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.
....because I have An Ad blocker on. The Irony of it all...
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
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.
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, 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.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.