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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

You are also not obligated to insert any URL in your browser's address bar, or to install any app. While you aren't obligated to read a billboard, it is illegal to vandalize it.

And spam email is unsolicited, as in email you receive without consent from an entity you've got no relationship with. Not sure what argument you're trying to make, but requesting a URL that then serves ads does not qualify.

Also, by blocking countermeasures to ad-blocking, we've gone from gray area to illegal because of the anti-circumvention laws. This is going to be fun.

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> vandalize

What a huge sense of self-entitlement. Your rights as a publisher do not extend to my computer and what I do with the data after you send it to me. You may request that I run some software with a <script> tag, or request that I download an image with an <img> tag, but if you want to guarantee any of those things you better get me to agree to a contract first.

It isn't vandalism when someone modifies something you gave them. Vandalism is a criminal charge - are you also going to claim I'm a criminal if I use some scissors to cut ads out of a magazine after receiving it in the mail?

> illegal

What law, exactly, are you claiming is being violated?

A script that detects if I don't download an ad is not DRM, and a TOS posted somewhere on the website is absolutely not a contract.

> What a huge sense of self-entitlement. Your rights as a publisher do not extend to my computer

But the content itself isn't yours. You are not entitled to view that content. The creator put it up with the expectation that people would/will be viewing the ads right along side the content. It's that expectation and assumption that supersedes everything else.

It seems like this whole debate has been boiling down to semantics and "technicalities". The anti-ad people are looking for anything to justify their entitlement. I say it's load of rubbish. The content creators (publishers) are the ones who get to dictate terms, end of story. You're not paying anything to consume that content and you didn't create it, so your "rights" are minimal (if they exist at all). You're entitled to absolutely nothing.

Let me ask you a question: If instead, a website says "I have this content you want to see. In order to view it, you must view this ad first. Click "Yes" to accept and view the ad. Click "No" to go back to Google.com." is that any different to you? It shouldn't be. Also, that's where the internet is headed if more people adopt your entitled mentality. If I'm a publisher, I'd be doing something similar. No, if I were a publisher, I'd be trying to get all the big name publishers/advertisers to do that too. They need to remind our entitled generation just how content subsidization works. :P

> But the content itself isn't yours.

Correct. I never said it was mine. That still doesn't give you rights over what software I run on my computer.

> You are not entitled to view that content

Correct. You can choose not to send it to me.

The difficulty you seem to be having is that the you don't seem to understand what your rights are. You can choose not to do business with me. You can also prevent me from distributing extra copies of your work (copyright).

You do not have the right to control how someone uses your work after you hand it over. This is known as the doctrine of first sale[1]. In spite of a lot of people trying to pretend they have rights over how content is used, wishful thinking doesn't create rights contrary to past court decisions.

> expectation

For the 100th time, an expectation is not a contract.

> It seems like this whole debate has been boiling down to semantics and "technicalities".

What you call "semantics and 'technicalities'" are the law.

> The anti-ad people are looking for anything to justify their entitlement.

Advertisers and their apologists are trying to cover up years of legal missunderstanding and business models that depend on an incorrect understanding of the alw. It's easier to accuse others of "entitlement" than admiting your business model is going to fail.

Oh, and that "entitlement"? We are entitled to something - the law.

> Let me ask you a question: [click-through model]

Yes, that would be fine, assuminng the click-through makes a proper offer (which shouldn't be hard).

> It shouldn't be.

But one of those makes a contract, and the other is wishful thinking and in some casses a deliberate attempt to mislead.

If you think that creating a proper contract is too much of a burden and will drive away traffic, then you might want to realize that the market is trying to inform you what the actual value of your "content" is.

> They need to remind our entitled generation just how content subsidization works.

Do you really think people simply don't understand this? I've never met anyone who didn't understand that some things currently depend on advertisements for income.

Now when are you going to start understanding how contract law works?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

You don't know where the websites you request content from are located, and so you have no idea whether they're operating under US law or not.

1) The US has been very effective at exporting its IP laws.

2) Jurisdiction.

> Correct. I never said it was mine. That still doesn't give you rights over what software I run on my computer.

When running any piece of software, you can't modify that software unless either its license permits (open source) or otherwise we are talking about copyright infringement. This is usually a take it or leave it thing, as unless the EULA is in conflict with copyright or contract law, then you have to respect it, otherwise you can't use that software. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention

So you know, I don't really understand your argument because nobody is forcing you to load those websites in the first place. It's still a gray area because users don't get proper warning before having those cookies set or before being shown those ads. But then again, we are discussing FuckFuckAdBlock, a circumvention mechanism for websites that block ad-block users with proper warnings.

> Yes, that would be fine, assuminng the click-through makes a proper offer (which shouldn't be hard).

On one hand the anti-adblock functionality is precisely this, because we are talking about websites that say "Hey Bob, we are ad-supported, so if you want to consume our content, then you have to agree to viewing ads". And you know, for me that seems reasonable. And here we are discussing FuckFuckAdBlock.

But then the far bigger problem is that you want a "proper offer". So basically if you don't receive a proper offer, you're fine with infringing on the publisher's rights. Now given that you've received proper warning of what you're going to receive, how is that in any way justifiable?

So what's that about self-entitlement?

> you can't modify that software

That's offtopic. Some random website does not have the right to force me to run any particular software simply because I requested a page.

> EULA

...is not a contract! (in most cases)

> forcing you to load those websites

Nobody is, and I never claimed anything like that.

> proper offer

I'm saying that publishers don't get to simply invent new law. Contracts have hundreds of years of history, and they require certain elements to be present.

> Infringing on the publisher's rights

No rights are being infringed. You are simply refusing to understand that their rights end after they hand over the content... unless they have a contract that says otherwise. Sorry, but just because you don't like the doctrine of first sale and wish it didn't exist doesn't mean you get to make up "rights".

If I write a creative work, I have the right to not give or sell you a copy, and I have a temporary monopoly granted by the government that gives me the right to decide who can reproduce my work. I absolutely do not have the right to decide what you do with that work (besides making copies) once I hand it to you.

The self-entitlement is on the part of the publishers who want to invent a new right that covers use.

Note that publishers can try to detect adblocking all they want, and use any results of that detection (or lack of results) when they decide if they want to send me anything. The catch is that there is no guarantee that their request that I run a particular script, or that I even have a Javascript environment to run that script in the manner they are expecting. I suggest that it may be a bad idea to base your business model on an unreliable source.

As for "justifiable" - the advertising industry and the publishers that involve themselves with the ad industry are not exactly standing on moral high ground. If they don't like the hard line some of us are taking regarding ads, they should consider why we are doing so. Tracking is a malicious attack. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The EULA is a contract and as long as it exists then nothing else gives you the right to use that software. Not sure how you can argue otherwise.

You also keep mentioning the doctrine of first sale, but it doesn't apply in the way you think it does. You absolutely do not have the right to do whatever you want after something has been distributed to you and this is because the copyright owner can impose usage limitations on distribution. For example this is why non-commercial agreements in EULAs are legal.

On having an environment that can run the script, the law can distinguish between doing it on purpose versus having technical limitations. You don't have a defense when you cherry pick what Javascript to run on the same webpage.

And as a final note, the moral high ground of publishers is completely irrelevant to the issue of you infringing on their rights. If you don't like the law, then push for changes. Or otherwise vote with your wallet (or eyeballs). Otherwise this is a fallacy used to justify your own immoral actions.

> The EULA is a contract and as long as it exists then nothing else gives you the right to use that software. Not sure how you can argue otherwise.

For the 100th time, I'm not running their software. They don't have the right to force me to run any particular software.

> The content creators (publishers) are the ones who get to dictate terms, end of story.

Compelling argument there.

> You're not paying anything to consume that content and you didn't create it, so your "rights" are minimal (if they exist at all).

Well, they're not paying me to view their ads, so their "rights" are minimal (if they exist at all).

> Compelling argument there.

I don't know if you're being facetious, but it's not an argument, it's a simple fact. If I create a painting, a movie or a song, and I don't want anyone to see those things, that's my choice. If I instead want to charge $20 to see my movie or view my painting, that's also my choice. It's my content, not yours. Therefor, everything with regards to that content is done on my terms.

I mean, I even legally own the content and it's automatically protected by copyright laws. So... I'm not sure what else to say.

> Well, they're not paying me to view their ads, so their "rights" are minimal (if they exist at all).

Huh? Why should you get paid at all? Did you create the content? Did the website come knocking on your door? No, you went to its door, and you want to view its content.

Do you think you should get paid for watching regular TV because there are commercials between breaks of your favorite show? Of course not. Because those ads pay for the show. That's right. That toothpaste commercial that aired during the 3 minute break of The Big Bang Theory paid for the show. That's where the phrase "The big bang theory was brought to you by...." you hear at the end of TV shows comes from.

Much the same, the ads on websites pay for the content in a similar way. It's absolutely shocking how people don't understand this concept. They actually believe all this stuff is and should be free to them. Wow, just wow.

> I even legally own the content and it's automatically protected by copyright laws.

You seem to have a poor understand of how this works. This is understandable, because a lot of people use incorrect terms like "intellectual property". Creative works are not "property", because they are not a scarce resource. The entire concept of "property" rights is an attempt to solve the problem that two people cannot use the same scarce good.

Freaking out when other people reuse your ideas - which are infinitely copyable without depriving anyone of their copy - is a childish reaction. However, to "promote the sciences and useful arts", we invented a government-granted temporary monopoly on certain types of creative works (which we call "copyright" and "patent"). These monopolies do not create "property"; they merely grant you the exclusive right to sell or distribute a given idea for a period of time.

> I even legally own the content

No, you don't. You have a copyright on some creative works. This copyright creates a few rights related to distribution/etc. It does not create "property". These temporary monopolies follow an entirely different set of laws than property rights. For specific information on those laws, I suggest talking to an actual lawyer.

> the ads on websites pay for the content

You've repeated this a lot in this thread. I guarantee you that nobody here misunderstands this point, or is confused where the funding for some websites (or TV shows, etc) currently comes form.

> They actually believe all this stuff is and should be free to them.

Making up straw-man opponents is an easy way to argue, and helps you avoid cognitive dissonance. It might help if you stop ascribing the intentions you think some of us have, and start listening to the facts we're trying to tell you.

I have suggested alternative ways of funding (ads are only one way to fund creative works). I have also tried to explain that there is a difference between your distribution rights, and what someone can do with your creative works once you hand them over.

You must get really annoyed at the very-large number of people that use Tivos to skip commercials on the TV they watch. That is their right. Technology has simply advanced far enough that the average person can start exercising their rights to consume the creative content however they want.

Unfortunately, quite a few people have been ignoring our warnings over the last 20+ years that these advances in technology are probably going to change certain business models that relied on people not skipping commercials. These changes in technology also enable new business models, including some that nobody has even thought of yet because the internet is still "new".

Some people (Netflix is a canonical example) have explored new business models and have adapted well to the new market landscape. Others... have not. I suggest exploring new business ideas in your endeavors - I'm sure there are ways you can adapt.

On the other hand, if you insist on following this incorrect model of the world where you make up contract law and legal obligations, and pretend ideas are property, you are going to have a harder and harder time. This is a fact of the market, not a cry for "free stuff".

> Vandalism is a criminal charge - are you also going to claim I'm a criminal if I use some scissors to cut ads out of a magazine after receiving it in the mail?

That's a strawman argument.

> What law, exactly, are you claiming is being violated?

A good summary is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention

> A script that detects if I don't download an ad is not DRM

Except that such a script is DRM by definition.

> That's a strawman argument.

No it isn't. Running an adblocker is exactly instructing my computer to use scissors and cut out the ads from the page. What is the difference in your opinion?

To make it easier to compare, assume I am Trump/Koch wealthy, and I ask my butler Jeeves to cut the ads out of every newspaper I receive. Did I or Jeeves vandalize or violate any law? Now, times have changed, and JeevesBot is a robot rather than a person. Does that qualify as vandalism or violation? And now the newspaper has been replaced with an on-line one, and JeevesBot has been replaced by AdBlockPlus. How is it any different? How is it a strawman?

> Except that such a script is DRM by definition.

The DMCA requires an "effective" DRM. I'm not sure if there is a body of law about what constitutes "effectiveness", but I'd be surprised if "please show this ad" can be considered "an effective DRM.

Furthermore, the DMCA does NOT prohibit me from editing e.g. DVDs - it just prohibits me from distributing those edited copies. And all AdBlockPlus does is edit pages so that they are more to my liking - just as my user CSS does, and as my preselected fonts do.

I think your interpretation of the law is wishful thinking. It's not that DRM/DMCA cannot be, in some form, used to make some forms of ad blocking illegal. I suspect it can. But I am also quite sure that DMCA does not apply to web advertising (and ad blocking) as they are practiced today.

The analogy is weak. You are not vandalizing the ads if you're blocking them. When you vandalize the billboard, no one else can read it. When you block ads on your own computer/network, no one else is affected.

The analogy is extremely strong. Why shouldn't I be allowed to vandalize a billboard, please? It's just some paper on some scaffolding. It's a social construct that I can't vandalize it.

Now when we get down to the technical level with HTTP, yes, you can make requests and the server can answer them. The basic idea of ad-blocking must be OK, I think. I mean you can't force someone to ask for images from an ad server. running a hosts file and so forth must be fine, in my opinion.

But that's not what we're discusisng now. We are now talking about tampering with a server's software that it's trying to use to see if you block ads, in order to trick the server into serving you contents that, based on the fact that you are running an ad-blocker, the server has chosen not to serve you. I really do think this is too much.

> The analogy is extremely strong.

The analogy is either a serious misunderstanding of how the internet and web browsers work, or is a deliberate attempt to confuse these concepts.

> Why shouldn't I be allowed to vandalize a billboard

Because it's not your property. If you order a billboard and have it shipped to your house, you can do what you want to it.

> tampering with a server's software

What are you smoking? Do you not understand that a userscript runs on the client? The server isn't involved at all after it sends the HTML and JS files.

What makes you think you have a right to run software on my computer? You don't - I'll run whatever software I want on my computer. It's your business if you want to send me a page, of course. Just like it's my decision if I want to run some program.

Not that I agree with the guy above you, but I also don't agree with your comment here:

> What makes you think you have a right to run software on my computer?

What makes you think you have the right to consume the content I worked hard to create for free?

Just because you can hide ads, or sneak into a concert to listen and consume that content, it doesn't make it morally permissible. Do you think you should be able to sneak into a theater and watch a movie for free? Should you be entitled to that? This really isn't any different. And here's why:

These content creators and publishers are creating their content with the expectation that people will view the ads right along side the content, and they will make money. It's an inherent expectation. So once you hide those ads, you are making an effort to cheat the content creator. It's just become so ubiquitous to web browsing that you actually think it should be "the norm" and that you're on some moral high ground here. You aren't and I'm flabbergasted that intelligent people actually think this way. Either hackernews has changed within the last year or two, or it's demographic has gotten a lot younger over the years.

From my experience most people are fine with ads, they want to support the content creators. What they're up in arms about, is "intrusive" ads. That is completely understandable. However, this fight now has become about all ads in general, and I have to take a stand there because I understand how content subsidization works. Without ads, there would be no internet. At least, not in its current form. It would be a vastly different place, and not one I'd be eager to see.

> What makes you think you have the right to consume the content I worked hard to create for free?

I don't! Misrepresenting my position is not a good way to argue.

Unlike your offensive concert and movie analogies, I am not advocating breaking into a server to copy content. Requests are made to the server, and you can choose to send me data or not.

Also, just because you worked hard at something doesn't mean that it has value. Why do you think you have a right to be paid regardless of what the market says your content is worth?

> This really isn't any different.

Only in your self-entitled world.

> Without ads, there would be no internet. At least, not in its current form.

Yes, thank you very much - that's the goal.

> It would be a vastly different place, and not one I'd be eager to see.

I'm sorry you have such a limited view of the world. There is more to the world than profit motive.

> Yes, thank you very much - that's the goal.

I don't think you're doing much critical thinking here. You don't seem to realize just how much innovation is directly the result of advertisements. You get rid of advertisements entirely and about 90% of the internet (perhaps more) goes with it. We're talking companies like youtube, facebook, google, poof gone. These are companies where their entire revenue streams are ad revenue. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Once google is gone, who are you going to use to search the web?

I challenge you to consider the full implication of that statement. I fear you're not following that logic all the way through to its logical conclusion, you're only looking at the short term goal of "Yay no more ads". without considering the butterfly effect it would have.

> I don't think you're doing much critical thinking here.

I think you're seeing what you want to see. I have been thinking about this problem - and have had these arguments about on the internet - for over 20 years. Just because you don't like what someone says doesn't mean they haven't thought about it.

> facebook, google, poof gone

You say that like it's a bad thing. The one regret I have in life is giving some of the top people at Facebook their first programming lessons many years ago. The damage that company has cause - and is still causing - is incredible.

> youtube

Funny you mention that. There is quite a bit of content on youtube I would miss.

For example, I've watched a lot of Minecraft-based shows over the last five years. While that worked ok being funded by ads for a while, youtube basically decided a couple years ago that they don't care about the people that use their service to publish their content[1].

Today, most of the people that previously relied on youtube for income are now branching out to other funding models. I've bought tshirts from some (which easily gives them more money than they would have gottene from me watching their ads). Others have moved to the subscription models available at twitch.tv, while others have been very successful asking their audience for funds (patron).

> I challenge you

I challenge you to coinsider that this isn't some poorly-though-though whim, and to expand your thinking about the internet and publishing. Ads are only one way of funding content creation. I'd even bet we haven't even thought of the best methods yet.

[1] a good discussion of one of the first big screwups that youtube did to alienate publishers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt1ubSVMwaw

> We're talking companies like youtube, facebook, google, poof gone.

You do realize that the internet and even the web existed way before all of those companies, right? And while you might not have been around then, it was great back then. Not saying some things haven't improved, but all things considered, I think we would be better off if none of them had ever existed.

> Once google is gone, who are you going to use to search the web?

Another search engine?

> You do realize that the internet and even the web existed way before all of those companies, right?

And just how popular was the internet back then?

> And while you might not have been around then, it was great back then.

I'm in my 30s, I definitely was around then.

> it was great back then.

But clearly you weren't. The internet today is AMAZING compared to how it was in the late 90s. Spending 5 minutes to load up a single web page? No thanks. You also couldn't watch videos (can barely load a gif in a reasonable amount of time) and there wasn't many people. A 5mb MP3? Yep, took a half hour to download. Streaming? Hahaha. Yeah, didn't exist. Except for maybe real player. But only if you were lucky and had a 56k modem, and even then, spotty at best.

I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The internet in the 90s sucked compared to today.

> Another search engine?

Who is going to want to run a search engine for free? You forget, you just killed off 90% of the revenue of the internet by killing ads. How would a search engine make money? More importantly, who would want to fund the creation of a search engine that wouldn't make any money?

> And just how popular was the internet back then?

Erm ... non sequitur?

> Spending 5 minutes to load up a single web page? No thanks. You also couldn't watch videos (can barely load a gif in a reasonable amount of time) and there wasn't many people. A 5mb MP3? Yep, took a half hour to download. Streaming? Hahaha. Yeah, didn't exist. Except for maybe real player. But only if you were lucky and had a 56k modem, and even then, spotty at best.

And what does that have to do with any of the mentioned companies? None of them are in the telco semiconductor/equipment business, as far as I can see. And all of that is pretty much exclusively about transmission speed.

> I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. The internet in the 90s sucked compared to today.

I think I did mention that some things improved, right? What totally did not improve is the openness and privacy, which I both value far higher than transmission speed--and the erosion of both has to do all with the companies you mentioned. Also, I don't see how improving transmission speed would depend on losing openness and privacy.

> Who is going to want to run a search engine for free?

1. Who is running a search engine for free now?

2. Who said it had to be free?

3. Who is "running" streets "for free"?

4. Who was "running" Linux for free before Google came around and built their business on it?

By your logic, would it be illegal to install a browser plugin that replaces every instance of the word "keyboard" with the word "leopard"? Is that "vandalism"?

And as you point out, I must first request the information. So I request a URL to a webpage and receive and HTML+CSS+JS document, containing more URLs which, via adblock, I decide not to follow or make more HTTP requests to. Similarly, the page has JS code which my browser may decide not to execute, or CSS elements which the browser may, at my request, decide not to display. Pretty sure all of the at is well within my right.

The browser is supposed to be the user's agent. In the early documentation it was explicit that both the user and the browser were expected to apply their own styling to web content. IMO a lot of bad web design has come out of the wrongheaded idea that the designer should be able to lay out the page pixel-by-pixel and expect the browser to render it exactly the same way. If you want that, use PDF or Flash or some such.

If somebody hands me a free newspaper with ads in them, it's not vandalism for me to cut out the ads so that I can read the newspaper without them. Nobody sane would call "modifying a copy of something" vandalism.

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