What a silly statement. Does the same logic also apply to your TV and radio? You are visiting a site that gives you content for free in return for viewing their ads. If you don't like that contract then don't visit the site and limit your browsing to sites that adhere to your personal contract.
Yes? Or are you saying I shouldn't be allowed to change the station during a commercial?
When you can very accurately determine how many people have seen a web ad and you know how many people haven't, that more directly affects how much value can be extracted from that advertising. In terms of the actual effect on revenue, blocking a web ad would seem to have more impact than ignoring a tv or radio ad.
Unless the advertisers want to publicly (!) admit that they wish they could block TV content from people muting/changing the channel/walking out to make tea during commercials.
If I wanted to hurt advertising, I'd create an extension that would fire a thousand click-throughs on their stupid ad, and vacuum up all their AdSense budget. Get a few million people world-wide doing that, and companies would quickly realize that they are spending an even more ridiculous amount of money on advertisements, and they would stop spending.
As for hurting advertising by your click though scheme - do you really think you're the first one to have thought of this? They have measures in place to identify and disregard this.
No. They are giving me back some form of data than I can render however I see fit. If I want to render their HTML but skip the rendering of the ads, that's my business and not theirs.