"Blocking ads for these reasons while continuing to use the sites is not unlike eating at a restaurant and leaving without paying because you think their prices are exorbitant"
Do we really have to replay all the arguments we had during the Napster days about the difference between rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods?
These analogies to real-world objects never work. If you have a case, it's not going to rest on "you wouldn't steal a car" type arguments [0].
It's obvious that piracy is also theft. But adblocking is worse: The damages of piracy are hard to measure (and are therefor overestimated by it's victims) because many "pirates" would not pay for the pirated, non-rivalrous good if piracy wasn't available.
However blocking ads (especially when done by prevent them being fetched) directly damages the 2nd party at a known price. Each individual pageview has a cost to serve it, and a revenue gained from it (via ads). In that sense what we're stealing is actually pageviews, which have (IMO) more in common with physical real-world objects (rivalrous) than a digital copy of a file.
> However blocking ads (especially when done by prevent them being fetched) directly damages the 2nd party at a known price.
Now what if I use ad nauseam and "click" on every ad on the site? Is that theft too? What if I'm blind and use a screen reader, am I stealing from the site?
Finally, if the answer is yes, why is stealing the other way ok? I don't recall any sites paying out victims after serving ads containing malware. What about sites (or ads) stealthily using my computer's resources for bitcoin mining? They're stealing measurable resources from me and I am not being compensated.
In a previous comment you called malicious ads "the price of ads" that is "known in advance". This doesn't seem fair. Why does the end user bear all the responsibility for keeping the ad economy afloat and healthy while the sites serving the ads bear none?
Edit: One last thing. If ad blocking is truly analogous to retail theft. Content providers and ad networks should be regulated just like retailers are to make sure they are not ripping off their users by serving malicious or harmful ads or using their data in ways not agreed to in advance (i.e. effectively charging users above and beyond the stated price).
Seems analogous to say it's stealing TV when you don't watch the commercials, or clipping out ads before reading a paper? It doesn't make sense. I have control over what code is run on my computer. Allowing one party to show me content and blocking others isn't stealing or even in a grey area.
Yep- there is a sports chat site I frequent that straight up locks out my browser when I come through corporate proxy- because they are blocking ad pages on proxy.
Do we really have to replay all the arguments we had during the Napster days about the difference between rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods?
These analogies to real-world objects never work. If you have a case, it's not going to rest on "you wouldn't steal a car" type arguments [0].
[0] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime
Edit: well this is hilarious:
https://imgur.com/a/hD3h4Lm