
German judges explain their decision that ad-blocking software is legal - Tomte
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/german-judges-explain-why-adblock-plus-is-legal/
======
TheAceOfHearts
Since this submission relates to blocking ads and trackers, I think it's worth
bringing up that uBlock Origin [0] is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways
(see the README for more details). I migrated to it a few years ago and
overall I've been very happy with the outcome.

I'm opposed to all tracking that isn't opt-in by default. I haven't thought
about the topic at great lengths, so there may be cases which I'm failing to
consider, but I've generally found "opt-out by default" to be highly hostile
to users. e.g. In the US you're only allowed to digitally opt-out of credit
card prescreening [1] for five years unless you're willing to mail something
out. This considerably raises the burden on the user, even though I'd
conjecture most people are not interested in receiving this kind of mail, and
they'd largely consider it spam. I make a point of blacklisting any service
that mails me spam, and I encourage others to do the same.

Additionally, I'm also opposed to ads because I've found they're generally
against the user's best interests. Humans are more important than companies.

[0] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

[1] [https://www.optoutprescreen.com/](https://www.optoutprescreen.com/)

~~~
morgante
> is better than Adblock Plus in (all?) ways (see the README for more details)

That's only if people agree with your ideology. Instead of making blanket
statements which are inherently subjective, just explain why you prefer
Adblock Plus.

Personally, I vastly prefer Adblock Plus. I have no ideological objection to
advertising or tracking in general, I just don't want intrusive ads. ABP does
an excellent job of filtering out intrusive ads while still allowing me to
support the sites I like where advertising is minimal.

I love the ad-supported web and strongly disagree with the notion that it's
against users' interests. Getting free content and services in a competitive
marketplace without switching costs is invaluable.

~~~
PerryCox
Read the README. ABP sold out a while back and now shows ads on certain
websites who pay money to ABP. uBlock Origin doesn't show ads on any website
unless you specifically allow it.

~~~
lttlrck
This was also mentioned in the article. ABP still allows you to block those
whitelisted ads.

~~~
dawnerd
Why use an extension that white lists ads by default when there's an open
source alternative that you have full control over?

~~~
a3n
Because, as mentioned higher up, you might actually want to support ad-based
sites. This is an easy way to do it with no effort.

I use uBlock. But I approve of the existence and success of ABP and similar.

People differ.

~~~
Thrillington
You can support ad-based sites with either tool by whitelisting a site.

uBlock requires you to do this explicitly for each site you want to support
through ad revenue. I suspect most novice users will never do this.

ABP is now using their user base as leverage to extract payment from some
sites to show ads by default. I don't think that is a good idea at first
blush, but there may be arguments for the practice I haven't considered.

~~~
morgante
A lot of quality content I find is on niche blogs where I might only read an
article or two. These blogs are often advertising supported.

I'd much rather outsource the work of whitelisting to ABP than having to do an
individual consideration on every single site I visit.

There's also the fact that I _never_ want to see malicious/intrusive
advertising. If I maintain my own whitelists, I have to experiment site by
site. If I use ABP, they do that experimentation and enforcement for me.

The thing that totally frustrates me is how many people in this thread seem to
be totally incapable of grasping that ABP in fact offers _exactly_ what I
want: someone blocking intrusive advertising, but not all advertising, with me
having to do zero work. As a bonus, there's even a business model attached (so
they're less likely to randomly sell out their install base to a malware
provider).

~~~
bigbugbag
This argument makes no sense at all, a niche blog generates very little
traffic which means it has very little advertising revenue, and this revenue
goes to the hosting company which offers hosting for free in exchange of
putting _theirs_ ads on _your_ blog.

Those niche blogs could choose to pay for their hosting and it costs less than
10$ a month ($5.99 or $8.25 at wordpress.com[1])

If the advertising based business model failed overnight, I highly doubt
finding 75 to 100$ a year to stay online would be out of reach.

You do know that about 10% of the advertisers get in the whitelist by paying
instead of conforming to the acceptable ads program ? You probably know that
the acceptable ads is very limited in scope and most non intrusive ads never
get whitelisted but surely you know that adblock plus has now evolved into an
ad selling platform.

It seems to me that adblock plus does not fit your stated ideological stance
as well as Brave[3] does. You should consider ditching ABP and using Brave
instead which blocks tracking and replaces all ads by other non-intrusive ads
and also offers and option to pay websites directly so you could contribute to
the hosting fee of those niche blogs.

[1]: [https://wordpress.com/pricing/](https://wordpress.com/pricing/) [2]:
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-
now-...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/13/12890050/adblock-plus-now-sells-
ads) [3]: [https://www.brave.com/](https://www.brave.com/)

------
ThePhysicist
IMHO, by choosing to provide their content as an HTML data stream via HTTP to
the user, "Der SPIEGEL" implicitly allows to consume this content in whichever
way the user sees fit, as HTML is simply a markup language that can be
interpreted in various ways, and could even be read in a text editor.

By trying to force the user to consume this data through a specific channel
(e.g. through a standard-compliant browser with no ad-blocking abilities),
they implicitly try to deny him/her the right to use the content in accordance
with the HTTP specification.

Per se there's nothing wrong with forcing people to consume information/media
through a specific technological channel (some people might disagree here of
course), and companies like Netflix and Amazon have been doing this for many
years already.

The difference here is that "Der SPIEGEL" explicitly chose to use an open
medium, the world-wide-web, and an open protocol (HTTP) to disseminate their
content, probably with the intent to reach as many people as possible.
Unfortunately (for them), both of these technologies are built on the premise
that the information can be consumed in whichever way the user sees fit, using
his/her own software of choice, be that a desktop browser like Chrome, a
terminal browser like Lynx, or even just a text editor.

If they really want to force people to consume their content in a specific
way, they should simply ask users to enter an agreement with them, which could
state that the user needs to consume the content in its entirety
(advertisements included). That they don't do this is probably due to the fear
of losing market share, as probably many users would not be willing to enter
into such an agreement.

~~~
alkonaut
A logical step if a news outlet wants to show news+ads is to just offer their
paper as PDF on the site. No click bait headlines, no Facebook trackers - just
a newspaper, with ads.

The catch? The ads in the PDF are images without scripts and tracking.

Good.

Does the income from such ads not generate enough income?

Then GET OFF THE INTERNET or just close down the newspaper and take a long
holiday. But don't tell me how to consume a http response please.

~~~
criddell
> The catch? The ads in the PDF are images without scripts and tracking.

PDFs support scripting. Wouldn't that suffice?

~~~
majewsky
But you can use a PDF reader that does not support (and thus ignores) scripts.
[1] Of course, the publisher could build the script such that it displays the
article text only after the ad has been displayed, and we get the next arms
race of adblockers and adblocker-blockers.

[1] Fun fact: Okular has an "Honor DRM restrictions" checkbox in its settings
dialog that you can actually uncheck.

------
Hermel
Any other verdict would be a potential legal risk to Google and everyone else
in the ad business for the following reason: if Google can force its users to
see ads, this basically means that they are not providing a free service any
more, but that Google and the user engage in an exchange: Google provides the
search service, and the user agrees to look at a few ads in return. Legally
speaking, this could be seen as barter trade and result in two taxable events:
Google selling the search service to the user, and the user selling some of
his attention to Google. The consequence of this interpretation would be that
Google would have to pay VAT on ad revenue in the country where the ad was
seen. Also, receiving these "not-free-any-more" services could be classified
as income for the user. This sounds absurd at first sight, but you should not
underestimate the creativity of desperate tax authorities.

~~~
id
> This sounds absurd at first sight

Yes, companies paying their fair share of taxes is absurd.

~~~
briandear
Please define "fair share." That is such a loaded term because it implies that
the only benefit of a company to people is in the tax revenue it provides a
government.

We could reframe that argument to say that Google should provide a fair share
of jobs to the unemployed. Billions of revenue but far fewer employees than
some companies half the size. Clearly Google isn't hiring a 'fair share' of
workers right?

We can ride this all the way into absurdity. We shouldn't be judging companies
by opinion-based metrics like "fair share" but instead on their net economic
contribution to the economy -- not their contribution to a government.

If Google paid zero tax, the economy is far better off with them than without
them; look at the jobs it provides (and the economic activity those generate,)
look at the return on investment to shareholders (which helps those
shareholders earn money they can invest in other ventures.)

It isn't all about taxes. Google spends money far more effectively than
government. Google should pay taxes at an amount commensurate with the public
goods they consume -- not a cent more. Remember, taxes aren't ever paid by
companies -- they are paid by individuals. You raise taxes on Google, you
raise taxes on every person with any sort of relationship with Google.

~~~
majewsky
> We could reframe that argument to say that Google should provide a fair
> share of jobs to the unemployed. Billions of revenue but far fewer employees
> than some companies half the size. Clearly Google isn't hiring a 'fair
> share' of workers right?

Actually, you can take this argument to the end and arrive at the UBI model
advocated by German economist Jörg Gastmann. His model has a sales tax (and no
other taxes) that starts out absurdly high (e.g. at 200%), but well-paid
employees are tax-deductible, to the point where you don't pay hardly any
taxes at all if you employ about 7 employees per million € in revenue.
Companies that don't need that much employees can instead pay a basic income
to someone in order for them to count as employee. (There are some more rules,
e.g. every person can only count as tax-deductible employee for one company,
and a tax-deductible employee may not work more than 40 hours a week, but
that's the basic gist.)

------
pmontra
Some interesting facts from the article

> As of August 2015, Adblock Plus was installed on approximately 9.55 million
> browsers with German IP addresses. That's about five percent of the
> computers in Germany used to access the Internet.

> About 3,500 websites are on the Adblock Plus "whitelisting" program that
> allows for "acceptable ads" to be viewed by default. About 90 percent of
> those sites don't pay, but the largest 10 percent make payments to Adblock
> Plus for the white-listing.

> While Adblock Plus users can easily turn off even those "acceptable ads,"
> about 75 percent accept the default settings and allow the ads. Eyeo
> determines what is an "acceptable ad." It bars all moving images and many
> types of still images, allowing mostly for just static text ads.

I prefer something like ublock that doesn't ask money to let ads through. I'm
puzzled by the morality of that.

~~~
muninn_
I prefer something like ublock as well, but I wouldn't call what AB+ is doing
a morally ambiguous question. I think this is actually pretty straight forward
all around. I can install or uninstall software on my computer. Websites can
serve ads. Websites can block me from viewing their site if I have an ad
blocker installed. AB+ can whitelist sites. A website can or can not pay AB+
to be whitelisted.

~~~
fritzw
What you described isn't complex logic, it makes sense, but that's not where
the moral ambiguity enters. Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals
to slip through as long as they pay on the side... that's the moral issue.

Granting access for paying members simply means ABP has become a gatekeeper
with its own power and it is now offering access at a price, unethically

~~~
msandford
> Abp is basically a cop that allows some criminals to slip through as long as
> they pay on the side... that's the moral issue.

Only if ABP states that they block ALL ads, full stop. But their website
doesn't say that, it says "Surf the web without annoying ads!" which wouldn't
exclude non-annoying ads.

Maybe that's not how the extension/service was initially introduced but at
this point they're not lying to new users. The website even explicitly calls
out that they do let some non-intrusive ads through.
[https://adblockplus.org/](https://adblockplus.org/)

If they didn't have the qualification language front and center on their site
but rather had a bunch of asterisks to tiny, tiny footnotes hidden on a
different page I might lean more towards agreeing with your assertion. But
this information isn't hidden, it's readily available.

~~~
DiabloD3
I'd like to comment on the non-annoying part.

I use uBlock (and previously, ADP) because of the fact that parts of the
Internet will give you ADHD, no matter if you started with it or not.

Parts of the Internet are quite literally unusable without ad blocks. This
should be a much larger discussion than it is, given how shitty sites don't
get lots of views, ergo, who's actually viewing the ads to begin with?

~~~
Freak_NL
Ads apparently work. Either by impression (you notice the ad, and the brand
gains a tiny bit of reputation in your unconscious mind) or by directly
engaging you (“40% off on 'item'! That's actually a pretty good deal!”).

Large corporations wouldn't advertise online if they didn't have metrics that
back up that claim. If advertising online in November meant a significant rise
in sales, then apparently buying the ads worked. People are viewing them.

This doesn't mean that ads work equally well with every viewer, and it
certainly does not imply that ads are beneficial to the viewer, but it does
mean that ads do generate income.

I agree that ads can be part of a problem for a lot of folk, and I recommend
anyone I see browsing without an ad-blocker to install one of course.

------
seviu
Me and my business partner did get hit by Springer in Germany due to an iOS
content blocker. We lost the part that relates to damages and won the one that
touches copyright.

Springer bases its claims on two principles:

1) Ad blockers are damaging their business money-wise.

2) An article and an Ad are an indivisible entity. And from a copyright
perspective, removing the Ad means violating the copyright of the article.

We lost 1 and won 2. Now we are on the second round. In Hamburg too, which
relieves me. Hamburg is tough. If Eyeo won there we have a good chance to win
as well. And now Eyeo decided to support us. Things are getting a bit better
for our case.

Because of that I am truly grateful to them. If it was not from Eyeo Ad
blockers would be now banned from Germany.

Our case was the typical one that I thought only happens in the movies: Big
company crushes small company (and crushed us indeed they did) to build a case
against a bigger company than us.

From what is worth I am very happy that Eyeo won the case. If they win they
will have a legal precedent. And they will go for against all the others.

And what about our ad blocker? We had to take it out from the App Store.

I wrote an article a few months ago regarding this case would somebody be
interested.

[https://medium.com/@iPhonsoGmbH/](https://medium.com/@iPhonsoGmbH/)

~~~
ThePhysicist
Honestly, win this, then sue them back. This behavior should not be tolerated.
The whole ad blocking wars are even more bizarre than the
"Leistungsschutzrecht", where publishers tried to force search engines (mostly
Google) to pay for the fact that they show content from their websites (and as
a result drive traffic to them!), which sounded very similar: Instead of
simply telling Google not to index their openly available content (e.g.
through robots.txt), they explicitly allowed it, but then tried to dictate how
exactly Google should use it in order to maximize their profits.

Seriously, if you don't want your content to be freely downloaded, viewed and
processed, simply hide it behind a paywall or invent your own proprietary
format, and leave the open Internet alone.

------
koolba
> "The Claimant [Spiegel] argues that the Defendant’s [Eyeo's] business model
> endangers the Claimant’s existence," reads the judgment, which isn't final
> because it can be appealed by Spiegel. Because users aren't willing to pay
> for editorial content on the Web, "it is not economically viable for the
> Claimant to switch to this business model."

In what situation _is_ endangering someone's business model grounds for their
illegality?

Also, I don't get why larger content owners don't self publish ads. It should
be possible to have an appliance running on your own infrastructure or cloud,
that gets proxyed requests from your own domain. That way the content it
indistinguishable from the ads (or at least heavily merged). If you randomize
the placement of ads / content images and both come from opaque URLs (ex:
[http://media.example.com/:some-uuid](http://media.example.com/:some-uuid)) it
wouldn't be apparent which should be filtered.

Biggest issue I can see if that ad buyers would have to either trust the
publisher or control the appliance. I suppose the latter is possible as if the
request is proxyed you can align the counts of "Requests I've sent you" with
"Requests you've received" to reconcile if there's cheating / lying happening.

This may be too complicated for a smallish site, but well within the technical
capabilities of Der Spiegel, NY Times, etc.

~~~
guntars
Because it's not just about showing an ad to the user, it's about knowing
which user to show that ad. The ad networks track you across the web, and in
the process learn a great deal about your demographics and interests. This
alows businesses to target you specifically.

Spiegel can only track you across their own site which might not tell them
much about you, making the ad space less valuable.

~~~
koolba
> Because it's not just about showing an ad to the user, it's about knowing
> which user to show that ad. The ad networks track you across the web, and in
> the process learn a great deal about your demographics and interests. This
> alows businesses to target you specifically.

Sure if you're not clearing your cookies, obfuscating your User-Agent, and
rotating your IP address regularly. All that aside, the real baseline of
comparison isn't a targeted ad, it's no ad at all. It doesn't matter how great
third party ad networks are at tracking users, if their third partyness is
what makes them so easy to block then they're going to go the way of the dodo.

> Spiegel can only track you across their own site which might not tell them
> much about you, making the ad space less valuable.

I wonder if that even matters. They already know what article I'm reading and
possibly what other articles I've read (again assuming logged in / tracking
cookies / etc). Should be more than enough. I really think a steady income
stream of un-blockable but not quite as effective ads will win out over
blockable but hyper targeted ones.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I wonder if that even matters. They already know what article I 'm reading
> and possibly what other articles I've read (again assuming logged in /
> tracking cookies / etc). Should be more than enough._

I agree. I mean, I would react _much_ better to ads relevant to what I'm
actually reading just now than to random crap based on stuff pulled out of
some tracking database.

------
Fiahil
> The judges took note of the fact that Spiegel could have done something
> about ad-blockers. For instance, it could have shut ad-blocking users out
> from the Web content, _linked advertising directly to the website 's HTML_

I don't think that's a good idea. Doing exactly that would mean: the ad
auction has to be closed and content injected server-side into the HTML page
before sending the first byte to clients. And even if you're just inserting a
JS snippet at the bottom of your body, it also means that you're giving the
advertiser control over your entire page/website and of the clients' browser.
Given the cluster of shitty and deceptive content pipelined by ad networks, no
wonder they're not going to do that.

~~~
ComodoHacker
>the ad auction has to be closed

Absolutely not. It would take some more time for your ad campaign fine tuning
to apply, and to count clicks, that's all. Ad networks would install their
boxes in datacenters and hosting providers' networks. Ads would cost a little
more.

>content injected server-side into the HTML page before sending the first byte
to clients

Injected, yes, but why before sending the first byte?

>it also means that you're giving the advertiser control over your entire
page/website and of the clients' browser

I'm sure WhatWG will quickly find a technical solution to this problem too.
Say, a special HTML tag attribute that tells the browser "treat content inside
as third-party", which eventually will be exposed to ad blockers.

Spiegel is right, "it would not be a long-term solution"

~~~
jamiequint
"Ad networks would install their boxes in datacenters and hosting providers'
networks. Ads would cost a little more."

You're vastly over-simplifying the technological problems involved with site-
serving ads. The bids don't come from "ad networks" \- I also assume you mean
ad exchanges not ad networks? - they come from a federated collections of
bidders (generally called DSPs or other custom bidders, which there are
hundreds or thousands of). They also rely on extensive client-side cookie
matching in order to determine who the user is and how valuable they are. Not
only that, but then the ad itself lives on a different server from the one
doing the bidding, and is often generated dynamically based on that specific
user as well.

You can't just dump these either; real-time bids from many sources, user-based
advertising, and dynamic advertising, are some of the key contributors to the
continuously increasing value of remnant ad placements over the last 5-10
years.

------
a_plastic_bag
I think it would be pretty hard to argue that you serve a "unified offer" (at
the moment at least). The user requests the content without any promise of
downloading and rendering all of the content linked, and the server happily
serves the content. The fact that almost all web browsers by default (rather
naively) obeys every instruction from the web server doesn't imply that the
user actually agrees to render (and get tracked by) everything linked.

------
baybal2
Google has chosen a wise stance on adblock: "they are not a threat, so we
don't bother" (while it is, and they spare no effort to get precise stats in
how much ads is blocked and where.)

This alone was shutting down the conversation that adblock is threatening the
market for long 10 years since industry people and sharehokders started
raising the red flag.

Now, when everybody downstrean, including publishers, realised just how much
money they loose to blocking and started talking openly about it, the genie is
out of the bottle

~~~
owenwil
That's not Google's actual stance. I went to a Digital News session held by
the company last year wherein they had a "ad blocker" session - they basically
said they're "just watching and waiting" for now but have "ideas" for fixing
it in the future.

------
greyman
It seems to me that Spiegel looks at it from a ridiculous premise, that
Internet somehow should provide a working business model for them. I just
can't imagine how something like ABP could be illegal... I made a http request
to get a public resources, and it is up to me how I will display it, I can
filter everything but a text, or if I want I can render the page so only ads
will be displayed. :-) I have no obligation to render the page a certain way.

Now with ABP taking money to pass certain ads, that something different, I
myself don't feel it is ethical, so I uninstalled the software.

~~~
summarite
It would be pretty sad if the web really can't provide a working business
model for quality news.

I prefer ads rather than high-cost paywalls, and then ideally a "use as-free"
option for a small sum (think android apps). I want to read diverse sources
and can't cough up €50-160 for 10-20 different sites that i use more or less
frequently. I'd pay €5-10 for each good site that i use frequently to see it
ad free and am happy to accept unobtrusive and non-malicious ads on all other
sites.

We can't act as if everything must be free and painless - then we'll end up
with a truly broken internet. The ad pendulum swung far too much to one
extreme with horrendous intrusive and malicious ads across the web, but if we
let it swing too far the other way we'll end up with a truly dead web where
only exploitative (virus-spewing, manipulative (eg paid/planted "news" and
propaganda a la RT & Xinhua) and commercial sites continue to exist.

My impression is that if i want the internet to remain valuable i will have to
accept 'good' ads or start coughing up funds myself.

~~~
int_19h
But paywalls _are_ a working business model. Your dislike of them is
understandable, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes.

As for reading diverse sources - well, how many people subscribed to 10+
newspapers at once, in the heyday of paper? And why should it be any different
in the age of the Internet, if the amount of human labor required to make one
newspaper (or equivalent) remains the same?

That said, I do think that the current subscription models are also broken
(which is also why they're unpopular). What we really need is a seamless
micro-transaction protocol, so that I could pay, say, 5c to view one article
that I'm interested in. And the browser should provide a consistent UX for the
website to request payment, and for me to approve it or not; and also to
clearly distinguish links to paywalled resources.

------
zuzun
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. This court is a broken clock when it
comes to Internet-related rulings. Recently they found a website owner guilty
because a single link on his website lead to a third-party website that used a
CC picture without proper attribution.

------
tmnvix
Am I missing something? If Der Spiegal doesn't want people to view their
content while using an ad-blocker can't they detect and block those users
(assuming those users also allow JS)?

~~~
matheusmoreira
Sure, they can detect ad blockers and present a nag screen. The ad blocker can
respond by defeating their detection feature. For example, it can delete the
detection function before it even executes. They could circumvent that; ad
blockers could nullify their fix; they could fix it again... This could go on
forever.

In my experience as an user, no website has ever beaten an ad blocker. It's
like trying to secure a computer against an adversary with full physical
access. The content has left the server and is on the user's machine. Nothing
can stop a sufficiently determined user from consuming it, with or without
ads.

I answered a question on User Experience.SE about this:

[http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437](http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/96907/3437)

I tried to express just how big the power disparity between the developer and
the user is. Looking back now, I think I came off as too extreme.

I think the other answers are excellent; they address the UX aspects in a way
I wasn't able to. Definitely learned from them.

~~~
anonymousab
If a site declares that you should not access it without disabling your
adblocker, and they go as far as to explicitly try to prevent your access with
direct messaging (interstitials, pop-up/light boxes, etc.), yet the user then
works around those protections and accesses it - wouldn't that qualify as
illegal access in some form?

~~~
shakna
How so?

A user requests a data stream, and receives it. That the user chooses not to
execute or render a part of that stream is up to them - the data has already
been delivered.

Interstitials, pop-ups and the like are simply contained within the stream,
and aren't even guaranteed to run inside the browser. If the data connection
is incomplete, modern browsers often discard data that is incomplete. Is that
also illegal access?

The data stream is in the user's hands - and it is delivered _before_ any
Terms and Conditions are given.

It's similar to someone giving you a burger, saying it's free, waiting till
you take the first bite, and then demanding that you eat the rest whilst they
photograph you, and then use said photos to pay for making the burgers.

You could just walk away with your free burger.

------
mehdix
I'm interested in eventual Google's reaction to ad-blocking software. Will
they try to weld ads to web technologies or they'll accept the current
situation?

~~~
Kenji
I guess they'll just raise inconvenience to block the ads higher and higher,
just like they did on Android phones, where Chrome did not have any extensions
and apps serve ads that cannot be blocked without you getting root access to
your phone (which is another inconvenience) and editing your hosts file or
something like that.

~~~
zant95
Blocking ads is the only reason that makes me depend on root. I built a
script[1] that generates flashable zip and from time to time I update it on my
phone.

[1] [https://github.com/zant95/hBlock](https://github.com/zant95/hBlock)

~~~
chei0iaV
If you weren't aware, if you have root there's AdAway:

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=adaway&fdid=...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=adaway&fdid=org.adaway)

~~~
zant95
I know that app, but I have enjoyed creating my own project and currently I
use it not only on my phone, but also on my laptop and router (with Tomato
firmware ad blocker).

------
davidgerard
Has Der Spiegel ever distributed malware via ads? I can't find anything solid,
I can find a few scattered reports of such ...

* [https://plus.google.com/100667046318444095686/posts/brFPEa1j...](https://plus.google.com/100667046318444095686/posts/brFPEa1jeSq)

* [https://plus.google.com/+SaschaEm/posts/K9Uvc6KCHKx](https://plus.google.com/+SaschaEm/posts/K9Uvc6KCHKx)

(TIL: Germans swear by saying "Fuck!!" in English)

~~~
alkonaut
What is malicious? I consider any ad that has any kind of tracking to be
malicous. I think they did that.

~~~
davidgerard
Well yes, but I mean specifically malware infections delivered by ad
JavaScript.

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ddebernardy
> Because users aren't willing to pay for editorial content on the Web, "it is
> not economically viable for the Claimant to switch to this business model."

Speaks mountains of how conscious the newspapers are that they're producing
stuff nobody wants to pay for. Perhaps they should put a bit more effort into
producing things their audience values to read, and a lot less effort tracking
users and fighting ad blockers.

------
pfortuny
Why do they not buy the ads and serve them from their servers in a difficult-
to-guess way? Like a mid-sentence jpg or whatever?

~~~
mioelnir
To serve the ads under the 1st party domain - without ending up in a situation
where the entity reporting the number of ad impressions and the entity
receiving money based on that number of ad impressions are the same - is often
significant effort.

~~~
alkonaut
Spiegel can just say "we can show your banner on the top of every page for a
week for X euros". We have approximately N page views per week and
historically we see that Y% click the banner.

Either someone buys it or they don't - at some price point someone _will_ buy
this (Hell I'd personally buy it at some price).

This is what online advertising should be. No impression charging, no
targeting, no tracking (and of course no automated fraud prevention)

Today, when tracking and targeting is possible, obviously dumb online ads are
hard to sell. Why would I pay $10k to show my shoe banner to everyone if I can
pay $0.01 per impression to 20-30 year old shoe geeks only?

If only dumb ads are possible (as in print media) then they _will_ be possible
to sell again. Perhaps not for the smallest 95% of web sites, but perhaps for
Der Spiegel.

~~~
mioelnir
I agree. These problems only exist for pay-per-impression and targeted ad
models, and the return of dumb ads is a solution to this. I should have made
that clearer.

------
FrancoDiaz
In what Bizarro world could Adblock be illegal?

~~~
criddell
Is it at all similar to how satellite TV used to be decrypted by lots of
people with bootleg cards?

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tscs37
I quite like AdBlock Plus.

I've been using it for a long while and I appreciate the Acceptable Ads
program, nothing is free and I wish to support websites if I can. It's either
that or a paywall.

I also use uMatrix, which I recommend to run in conjunction with adblock, it
allows for a very finegrained permission control, much more finegrained than
uBlock.

~~~
irq-1
> I appreciate the Acceptable Ads program, nothing is free and I wish to
> support websites if I can. It's either that or a paywall.

You can't negotiate with advertisers -- you can't make a bargain between ads
or paywalls. Advertisers want it all.

Only technical restrictions will stop them. Even then they'll try to use
lawsuits, government agencies, moral shaming and worse.

~~~
tscs37
>You can't negotiate with advertisers

Well, seing how websites actually sign up for this and I've personally found
it very pleasant, you can negotiate with some advertisers.

Just not the cancerous ones that would shove more malicious malware down your
throat than not-malware.google.not-malware.ru using internet explorer 6 on an
unpatched Windows XP without Service Pack.

------
ommunist
Well, is closing my eyes legal?

------
godmodus
i use uBlock AND ABP and Adblock for youtube. still some things bypass them
sometimes.

------
senior_james
Adblocking has indirectly created many of these fake news sites we see today
and will only create a more cluttered and product-filled user experience.

Most news sites rely only on advertising for income. Real reporting and
investigation costs money. Since their main money source is now drying up,
news is starting to become hearsay, rumors, and things you see on Twitter
(anything you can find from the comfort of an office chair). This quickly
leads to a race to the most clicks, which may or may not be factual.

We also are now starting to see blogs and many other news sites switch from
advertisements on the side or top (which can be blocked) to entirely sponsored
articles written around a product or service. We've always had sponsored
articles, but not as prevalent as it is now.

Real journalism costs money. When you remove the only way to fund it, we end
up with what we have now: fake news passing as real journalism and fake
articles which are actually advertisements.

~~~
cyborgx7
Quite the opposite. Ads led to all these fake news sites. Ads disable the
concept of people paying for something they consider valuable. Instead all you
need to make profit is to get people to look in your direction long enough to
show them something they might actually consider spending money on. You don't
need facts and journalism for that. You only need facts and journalism to
build trust with your customers so they might consider paying you directly.

~~~
senior_james
"Ads disable the concept of people paying for something they consider
valuable"

Nobody pays for news anymore, so sites are forced to get money through ads.
The concept that everything needs to be free has also led to the abundance of
advertisements.

"You only need facts and journalism to build trust with your customers so they
might consider paying you directly."

In the past 5 years, many local, paid, newspapers have gone out of business.
It nearly destroyed the entire industry. People don't pay for news anymore
because of the Internet. It had the same shakeup the music industry had a
decade ago.

I seriously doubt you would be happy paying a fee for every website you visit.
This is what would need to happen if we get rid of advertising completely.

I feel like many people want it both ways: a quality product for $0 dollars
and no advertisements of any kind. It's just not realistic.

~~~
cyborgx7
News had the same shake-up the musicindustry had and now people are paying for
music again. If news are valuable to people you will get them to pay for
quality. It's not my fault they can't figure out a working business model that
doesn't involve selling the trust they built with their readers and viewers to
corporations.

------
galfarragem
System is funded by X.

One day, some smart people fed up of paying X invent a way of evading. «It's
not fair to pay X!» they say. Most people follow them, why wouldn't they?

Next day, same smart people: «Humm, how about people paying X/? to us instead
of paying X to the system? Let's make a compelling argument explaining the
fairness of it as some people feel that evading is somehow immoral. They will
bite.»

\-- Devil's advocate

~~~
int_19h
The reason why people feel that it's not fair to pay X, is because they don't
perceive the value of what they're getting to be worth that. And the reason
for that is that there are many other places they could go to, to get a
similar thing (as far as value perception goes).

In other words, it is an oversupply issue.

If ad blockers do indeed make this business model unprofitable, the size of
the market will shrink rapidly, and at some point supply will become lower
than demand. And at that point, the remaining content suppliers will be able
to charge X, and people will pay it, because they won't have anywhere else to
get their fix from.

So this all is one case of the market working things out on its own. There's
no reason to interfere here - it'll find a balance eventually. The only reason
to complain is if you dislike what that balance will look like (e.g. if you'd
prefer more sources of content than the market can actually bear). But the
only way to maintain a different balance is by subsidies, direct or indirect.
If ad blockers are banned, for example, that is, in effect, a government
subsidy to the content creators.

