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Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

The controversial part isn't the adblocking per se, but the viewing of pages that have ads while using an adblocker.

It's fine to decide that ad networks don't have a "right" to run code on your machine, but the moral response (assuming you don't have an answer to the "consume content question") is to configure your adblocker to close any tab that would otherwise load an ad. If instead, you decide to view the page without the ad, then you need some answer beyond "I don't give ad networks the right to run code on my machine".

(I'm not saying ad blocking is morally wrong, just that your justification for it isn't sufficient. I block ads myself.)

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I believe that for any electrical signals that enter my private space or privately-owned devices, I have the right to do whatever I want with, including decide how to render or display said signals, within the confines of my private space.

If you want to ask me to pay before those bytes will be sent to my private space, that's fine. You can recommend, but you cannot impose that I use a certain way to display your information. If I prefer using Lynx to view your website, I have the right to do that (and it won't show your ads because it's not even graphical). If I prefer using a modified version of Chromium, that's no different.

Ad blocking on a web browser is no different from muting the TV and grabbing a snack when the ads come on.

Yes, I understand advertising is a business model. That business model should take into account that a certain fraction of users are going to block them. If too many users start blocking ads, we can and will develop new business models to drive businesses. For example, perhaps a new form of advertising could be fun for the user, such that they wouldn't want to block them.

Of course you do. We have a long history of modifying content to our liking.

People listen to certain rock songs backwards thinking there is a satanic message hidden.

People watch movie trilogies in orders other than the one the filmmakers intended (Such as the Star Wars Machete Order).

People create mods for games that change the look and some times playing style.

When CSS first came about, modifying styles was outright encouraged.

Today there are numerous browser extensions that modify the experience of Reddit, Facebook, and other popular sites.

Hell, there are several businesses built on modifying Gmail for better workflows.

This, so much this. Let's not forget also that most ad blockers fail to block the best kind of advertising: curated, first-party advertisements that are delivered as part of the original page, and which read like the other articles on the same site. Kotaku does a great job with this and their sponsored posts.

It's not advertising itself that I object to, it's distractingly annoying motion and sound, and it's third party content injection. Advertising can be great, but the current trend is for it to be flashy and obnoxious, and that's not OK.

I believe that for any electrical signals that enter my private space or privately-owned devices, I have the right to do whatever I want with

Not really. You can't spy on your neighbours or decrypt and watch pay satellite or cable tv.

I think he's talking about his moral beliefs, not his legal rights.

Either way, my point is it's an oddly popular belief that's so inconsistent with reality it can't serve as a basis for any coherent argument about adblocking.

Sure it can, the law is neither immutable nor sacred. Just because large corporate interests managed to create backwards laws doesn't mean we can't ignore them or talk about what the law ought to be.

The people who make this argument aren't inconsistent, they also likely believe that decrypting satellite, breaking DRM, or generally hacking or cracking shouldn't be illegal but dealt with through proper security or private contract.

Slightly off topic but I should point out by the way -- I haven't stated my gender so I would strongly suggest the use of a gender-neutral language in referring to HN comment authors. Original poster (OP), parent, grandparent (GP) are common gender-neutral pronouns in forums.

(I do happen to be male, but I just noticed, and just wanted to make a suggestion for the future.)

(If you went through the trouble of looking up who I am via googling me or such, and then wrote the comment, then please ignore this and thank you for your attention to detail.)

I know this comment will be unpopular here but...

Some of this argument doesn't hold up. Websites are not electrical signals that just enter your space". You're explicitly requesting access to them. And, they are not free to operate. Your requests to view them cost the producer some amount of money.

I'm not a fan of ads myself and think they are frequently outright abusive (even without malware). In fact, I pretty much detest the volume of advertising today.

But, I don't get this idea that we have a right* to consume web content hosted on a private entity's servers. There is a choice not to consume at all. Yes, companies like CNN shove so many ads in their vids that they are now more ads than content. So, I no longer watch vids on CNN.

I also think the analogy between ad blocking and grabbing a snack during TV ads is lacking. In the former case, there is a "set and forget" tech that guarantees that no ads will be seen...ever. In the latter case, one must actively avoid each advertisement, and do so with near perfect timing.

>...business model should take into account that a certain fraction of users are going to block [ads]

The reasoning here reminds me of that employed by people who believe music should be free. But, I can't figure out why people who presumably appreciate an artist, think that artist should work for nothing. The answer is that they don't actually believe that. Instead, it really boils down to "let someone else pay for it".

> I believe that for any electrical signals that enter my private space or privately-owned devices, I have the right to do whatever I want with

Radar detectors are illegal in some places.

I have a confession.

I rode the bus last week and the entire time I was reading my book. I never read any of the overhead ads before getting off the bus.

You're paying for the bus, correct?

No. The bus is paid for by taxes and ads. Lots of places have free public buses in big retail areas.

When websites are paid for by taxes and ads it becomes a good comparison

It's still a good comparison.

For some websites (like cbc.ca) it's a perfect comparison.

Whether the bus is paid for or given to me freely, what I do with my eyes is not under the bus company's purview.

I want to build an augmented reality app (that runs on, say, HoloLens) that blocks all ads in real life and replaces them with historic works of art.

Just a thoight, but in all likelihood it will be the exact opposite. With the eventual proliferation of functional VR tech that is available for everyone, we're likely to see every surface turn into an advertisement space. Every surface being re-painted in interior designs, and other content from the future VR advertisement conglomerates. Thus, with adblocked augmented reality, we may indeed be looking at a dystopian future of a world of plain and clean [morphing] surfaces that only exist to be augmented.

They live!

That is why I won't trust VR from Facebook. Imagine VR ads!

I'm thinking of that every morning when I enter the subway. Oh man, I wish I could use that advertising space like giant windows with live feeds of beautiful landscapes.

Something similar has been done. Real-world adblocking:

http://jonathandub.in/cognizance/

Many years ago, after the University of Toronto installed ads in the bathrooms, Steve Mann set up his Eyetap system to replace the ads with pictures of waterfalls.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/science/scientist-at-work-...

Wonderful idea. Show how it will transform some horrible highways like New Jersey Turnpike? But augmented reality and driving are a bad idea. Uber drivers can hand out the viewer

Sorry, but that's crap. I have the absolute right to request data from other websites. If they choose to send me that data, that's their decision. If they choose to include ads, that's also their right, but I in turn have the right to ignore or block those ads and not run that Javascript on my computer.

If they don't like this, they don't have to send the content to me. If they want to try to make it difficult for me to see the content without also seeing the ads, they have that right. I have the right to take extra measures to block the ads anyway and still view the content.

Again, if they don't like this, they don't have to send the content to me at all. If they really want to make sure I view the ads, they are perfectly within their rights to only show ads first, and then make me take a test to ensure I looked at the ads and understood them and remembered things about them, and only then show me the content after having proved I viewed their ads and paid close attention to them.

They could also devise measures to detect ad-blocking, and then block my IP address from viewing content in the future until I pay a fee or prove that I've viewed ads as above.

As long as websites willingly send me content, I have every right to view it, however I choose to, and I do not care what a bunch of pro-advertising moralists in discussion forums think about it, and I utterly reject their insane idea that some unwritten contract exists that somehow requires me to not view content without viewing ads.

Before Netflix, did you sit and watch every commercial intently, never breaking concentration? I don't pay for Hulu without ads and I turn down the sound and go about my business while they play.

While driving do you pay attention to each billboard or ignore them?

Do you switch radio stations when commercials begin and the content you wanted to hear is over?

My response is that it has always been my right to decide what I see and pay attention to. Adblockers are the extension and automation of my will.

I shed no tears if you don't get a +1 in impressions according to the metrics your advertising network keeps, because if they took the time to gather the same statistics for other advertisements I encounter in my life, they'd get the same result.

That lack of impressions implies something important: your mode of advertising/revenue generation is shit and it should be changed. Luckily, it seems enough people think the same way that it can't be ignored.

Advertising is ugly, it is an unwanted distraction and it is often visual pollution. Take a drive through districts that ban billboard advertising. The obstruction of natural beauty and assault on the senses becomes offensive on your return to areas that have no such restrictions.

Computers make it easier to track who views ads, something that's hard to track in real life. Computers also make it easier to automatically apply that mental adblock, something that's also hard to do in real life.

I call bullshit. We are force-fed advertisement on the way to work, to vacation, and while browsing the web. Your primitive reptilian brain has been sold to the highest bidder.

What right do these corporations have to manipulate people into buying things, making them feel incomplete for they do not have the abs, the breasts, and phones and the shoes that the sexy models of these ad boards have? Burn them all, I say.

Too bad nobody campaigns for elections with stating they will get rid of all and every advertisement not closely tied to a local or nearby business.

I did not suggest that corporations have a right to advertise. I suggested that you don't have a right to consume content while blocking ads within, and if you don't want those ads, you shouldn't view the page.

Your failing monetization strategy is none of my concern. Run a Patreon or allow me to donate once every while instead of potentially hurting me psychologically. If you hold the opinion that i have no right to your ccontent without paying, use a paywall or similar. But your suggestion that I have no right to something is utter hogwash. Where are your basis for such claims? Where have I signed anything regarding this?

People calling out others and saying that another person has no right to this and that is nothing but forceful catering. You see others live happily and call them out on it. Go live in the pit of your misery if you will, but cease telling others what they can or cannot do.

>Where have I signed anything regarding this?

By accessing and continuing to access a website, you agree to their terms.

HTTP is not a contract; there are no "terms".

By the same logic, hacking is just sending bytes over a network, so it can't be illegal. Unfortunately for you, the law is smarter than that.

An HTTP request is not hacking. It's a GET followed by a 200 OK. The server has the option to redirect to a paywall, or respond with 403 Forbidden, or do any number of things. That they are responding with 200 is not a bug that we're exploiting maliciously.

Exploiting a server that exposes a root console by mistake would also be fine under the same logic. You haven't given any principled distinction between the two.

Yes, I have, one is intentional and the other is not.

By installing an adblocker, you're intentionally blocking access. Is your argument that you didn't realize the website didn't allow it? You think that will hold up in court?

yes it will. that's why no ad company has ever sued people blocking ads. it would be a very bad advertising...

Ad blockers have been sued before. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/27/german-broadcas...

That was in Europe, and for "non competition", not breach of contract as I'm suggesting.

Also, "nobody will sue me" does not mean you're doing the legal or moral thing.

> Also, "nobody will sue me" does not mean you're doing the legal or moral thing

It means there is no legal basis to do that. You were asking if those arguments could stand in a court, they already did. So the answer is: YES

1. You said no one will sue because it would be bad PR. There are plenty of reasons not to sue beyond being wrong.

2. When has ignorance of TOS being upheld in court to invalidate a contract with regard to ad blocking?

I'm blocking it once it reaches my computer. The website doesn't have any say with what happens on my computer. I'm not hacking their servers or doing anything their servers disallow. My web browser is sending them a request and they are responding with content. That's their only point at which they have a say in what happens.

The same applies to the ATT hacking I linked elsewhere https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer

The court did not agree that "the server sent me the data so it's legal" is valid.

I don't know why you have such a hard time understanding this. The case you linked to involves someone exploiting a bug in a server.

There's no bugs or exploits involved with the ad-blocking scenario. Sure, the website intends me to view the site with the ads, but what you are failing to understand is, they have no moral or legal right to tell me what I do with the bytes that they purposefully, in full awareness, sent me.

How is "bug" defined, and why does it make a legal difference in liability?

What does "in full awareness" mean? If they knew you were blocking ads, they wouldn't have sent it. The bug is that they didn't detect it. Why is ATTs thing a bug and this not?

You can't be serious with this. You think it's a bug that a website doesn't know what I'm going to do with the bytes they send to me?

I think the fundamental issue you are having is that you don't believe in property rights. Namely you don't think that my computer is mine, and that stuff that gets transferred to it; assuming the transfer was done legally in good faith, belongs to me.

I highly doubt you feel this way about meatspace; I doubt you think someone who hands me an apple has the right to tell me how to eat it. Yet when it comes to computers, you do feel this way.

pdkl95 has done a much better job than me of arguing this point, so I should probably just stop. But it bears repeating:

HTTP is not a contract. Sending me your content is not me agreeing to do stuff that is linked on some other page. If you want me to agree to view ads, or paypal you $20 first, or give you my first born child; you need to send me to another page first where I agree to it. TOS is not a gotcha. You can't trick people to agreeing to something; there has to be a "meeting of the minds".

>the transfer was done legally in good faith

This is precisely the point that I'm disputing, not the notion of property rights.

You still haven't given any definition of the terms you're trying to use to justify a distinction between the two. You claimed that any time someone requests something over http and the server sends data back, the person cannot have been doing anything illegal. You have not given any principled difference between that and the cases where courts found differently.

I've linked to lawyers making the same argument as me; I don't believe you've found any lawyers who agree with your claims here.

Re contracts: as I've said, that applies to scenarios when you've agreed to TOS. If you know a website has certain terms, then accessing it is agreeing to them. So your point is only valid if you can credibly claim that you didn't know the website doesn't allow ad blocking. If you think you can convince a judge that you had no idea some websites don't allow ad blocking, and that you therefore had no intention of breaking any agreements by browsing the web with your ad blocker installed, do whatever you want. But the very fact that we're having this conversation and you aren't telling me "no website would ever outlaw ad blockers in their terms" means that you recognize it as a possibility. It would be an interesting legal question as to whether mere probable knowledge (i.e. negligence) can suffice to be liable, or one would need to demonstrate actual knowledge: if the latter is found to be the legal interpretation, then I suspect ad blockers could be required to recognize when a site refuses to be viewed with an ad blockers, and not show the site at all then. Installing an ad blocker that doesn't do this would then be malicious.

This is admittedly speculation, although it gets closer as to what the actual legal question would be here. If you can cite precedent that bears on this directly, that would be better.

"In full awareness" means they know they are sending you data and that you are free to do whatever you want with it. You could view it with Lynx, or some other text only browser, or with a modern browser with Javascript turned off, or with an ad blocker, or with a computer program or script. There's no contract or agreement that says you have to display the data returned from the web server in any specific manner.

> If they knew you were blocking ads, they wouldn't have sent it. The bug is that they didn't detect it.

No, they have no way of detecting it. That's not a bug, it's how the medium functions. You might as well say radio stations wouldn't transmit if they knew I turned them off for a few minutes during commercial breaks, and claim that that is a bug, and that I am illegally exploiting that bug for free radio.

Oh my goodness, I went to the bathroom during a commercial break when watching TV last night. How much should I pay the TV station for stealing that show from them?

>You might as well say radio stations wouldn't transmit if they knew I turned them off for a few minutes during commercial breaks, and claim that that is a bug, and that I am illegally exploiting that bug for free radio.

Radio stations inherently can't selectively broadcast. Websites can.

The fact that websites already attempt to prevent ad blocked users from viewing content means that they would block it if they would know. Exploiting the fact that they don't know in a particular case (by using ad blocker blocker blockers, which are a thing) is exploiting a bug.

Plenty of websites have a contract or agreement about data they send you. See e.g. Youtube's terms of service, section 5.C.

> Plenty of websites have a contract

For the 1000th time, SHOW that contract. Do you even understand what a contract is? Youtube et al have a document they call the "terms of service", but that is not a contract.

Seriously, show where Youtube offered terms, where the user had the opportunity to read, review, and understand those terms, and where they signal their acceptance and intention to be bound by the terms of the contract. The exchange of consideration - that is, Youtube sending a video in exchange for the user giving their time to watch certain ads - only happens after the offer and acceptance.

Documents don't magically become contracts because you wish they were binding. Do I really need to include a link to a TOS for reading my comments to demonstrate why unilateral contracts are an insane idea?

This belief that you get to control what people do with data after you hand it over is highly unusual and antisocial.

> Radio stations inherently can't selectively broadcast. Websites can.

If they can, then there's no problem. If they can't selectively broadcast, or can't do it exactly as they want to, then you're back to the radio case.

> The fact that websites already attempt to prevent ad blocked users from viewing content means that they would block it if they would know.

Fine, but they apparently don't know how to block everyone they want to, so it's their choice to continue sending data to everyone they aren't blocking.

> Exploiting the fact that they don't know in a particular case (by using ad blocker blocker blockers, which are a thing) is exploiting a bug.

No, that's not even close to a bug. You clearly don't know what a bug is. This is a limitation of the transmission medium, known by all parties, where all parties can chose to stop participating at any time. They are in general unable to verify with certainty what any given client will do with the data that the server sends back. This is a property of the protocol used by everyone, not a bug in the server's software.

> Plenty of websites have a contract or agreement about data they send you. See e.g. Youtube's terms of service, section 5.C.

That says nothing about not displaying ads - it's talking about violating copyright. And it's not something it even normally displays to people AFAIK.

> By the same logic

Your "hacking" analogy is irrelevant; hacking and contracts are completely different categories of law.

> the law

I am very familiar with contract law. You might want to read about it sometime. HTTP does not involve an offer, a meeting of the minds about the obligations the contract would create for each party, or anything that signals acceptance of the offer.

If you want to argue that an HTTP request creates any obligation for either party, then you need to show the elements[1] that created the contract.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract#Elements_of_contract_...

There are two different points here. Firstly, the claim that merely requesting data can't be illegal is shown to be wrong by hacking, which is illegal even if it only consists of requests. Second, the comparison to contracts is when the TOS was agreed to. Even the EFF agrees that they can be legally binding, as I linked to elsewhere. https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-t...

> hacking

Asking for a page over HTTP isn't hacking; again, this is entirely off-topic.

> TOS

The TOS wasn't even presented to the client. (an <a> tag to the TOS isn't a the TOS itself, nor is it an offer of a contract. It isn't even an "invitation to treat".

> agreed to

Nothing has been agreed to. An HTTP request sends a GET, and the server volunteered to send a page of content as their reply. They could have sent an offer of a contract, or some sort of "access denied" message, or any other response.

> See also

LOL. That page is a nice example of properly handling a request.

      The use of ad blockers is on the rise, especially...
    </div>

    <div style="font-weight: bold">
      To view the full article, register now.
    </div>

Sorry, no, I'm no going to register for a shady site like that just to read someone's legal fantasies.

See what just happened there? They made an offer, I declined to accept it and didn't receive the content. You negotiate the contract before you exchange consideration.

> /articles/726505/expect-lawsuits-against-ad-blockers

I'm sure there will be lawsuits against ad blockers. That's what failing businesses do. That doesn't mean their claims are valid.

Contracts are not surprises or gotchas. Show how the elements of a contract (an offer, acceptance of that offer, each party's intent to be bound, and the exchange of consideration), or your claims are just wishful thinking.

>Asking for a page over HTTP isn't hacking; again, this is entirely off-topic.

It can be. See e.g. https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer, which as far as I can tell involved only http/s requests.

>Nothing has been agreed to. An HTTP request sends a GET, and the server volunteered to send a page of content as their reply. They could have sent an offer of a contract, or some sort of "access denied" message, or any other response.

Again, as the example above shows, this logic has not been accepted by the courts.

Re law360: I followed a link from Google and didn't realize that it was regwalled.

The answer is the same as why you are morally justified in skipping commercials on your DVR, or ripping ads out of a magazine. Content creators do not get to decide how you view their content.

I notice you did not include pirating movies. Do you think there's a difference?

Of course, pirated movies are not acquired legally. We can debate the (moral) legitimacy of the laws, but that's a different animal than modifying content that you have legally obtained.

So if websites sent you a license agreement before serving content, which required you to load the ads for that content as the condition of viewing it, would blocking ads at that point be illegal?

If this became a standard, automatic component of the web and of browsers, known at install time, wouldn't that move ad blocking into poor legal territory?

IANAL so I can't answer your question. But I think we can posit a world in which advertisers have garnered enough political clout to enact anti-ad blocking laws and that would shift the conversation.

At that point it still wouldn't be equivalent to pirating, IMO, but rather more like using DeCSS to circumvent DVD scrambling.

>At that point it still wouldn't be equivalent to pirating, IMO, but rather more like using DeCSS to circumvent DVD scrambling.

You're not paying. This seems more like borrowing a DVD from a library or friend, then ripping it using such software and watching it after you return it.

It's not, the creators (the website) directly gave it to me. I'm not borrowing it from someone that paid. My browser sent them a GET and they replied with 200 OK and some content. Whether I paid or not is irrelevant; they voluntarily gave it to me.

Do you read every sites' TOS first to make sure they don't outlaw ad-blocking? If they do, it may be illegal under the CFAA, although there seems to to be conflicting precedents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Drew says TOS aren't CFAA, but the law that tried to make it explicit failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#A... In any event, it would be breach of contract.)

IANAL so I don't know whether I am required to read or obey a site's TOS, or which parts of a TOS are legally binding or not. My intuition is that they cannot restrict me from blocking ads with their TOS, but again IANAL so it's possible I'm wrong here.

See http://harknesslabs.com/post/133804756984/are-adblock-compan... and HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10615889

BS.

There is no contract if I have not signed anything. Viewing a website does not constitute a contract.

Websites can take their TOS and shove them up their asses.

If they don't want me seeing content without blocking ads, they are free to refuse to send me that content without me proving I've viewed the ads.

It depends. See https://www.eff.org/wp/clicks-bind-ways-users-agree-online-t...

That's talking about "click-wrap" agreements. That's where they show you a bunch of legalese, and then you have to click on a button that says "I agree" after it. Clicking "I agree" assumes the user has read that and agrees to the terms.

Just browsing to a website is not like that. There's no place where you have to read any TOS and click "I agree" when you go to abcnews.com or whatever.

It discusses both. "Nevertheless, some courts have been willing to make browsewraps enforceable under certain circumstances. " The link is broken and should be https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/decision-23jan04...

Contracts are formed by offer and acceptance, a signature can be a method of documenting acceptance, but, except for certain kinds of contracts specially designated in law, are not required for a contract to be formed.

A TOS on a different page that you didn't present before sending any "content" such that there is an opportunity to either accept or reject the offer is not a contract. Contracts are not a "gotcha" that you can surprise people with nor are they established without an understanding by both parties of the obligations that would be created by a contract (the "meeting of the minds").

If you present reasonable[1] terms first, then receive some type of notification that the terms were accepted (as you say, signature is not the only option), only then will a contract formed that could obligate someone to not run an ad blocker.

[1] unconscionable or misleading terms are unacceptable and can get the contract - whole or in part - thrown out.

There is one important difference.

The user paid for their cable subscription beforehand.

The user paid for the magazine beforehand.

That is not necessarily true for pirating movies.

But they didn't pay the website to view the article. If that's the difference, the ad blocking analogy fails.

Sure, free television and magazines exist. I can get rid of ads in those too.

Pirating movies has more similarities with stealing magazines than with ripping ads out of them.

That's an interesting idea. I'd support an ad blocker which took a certain set amount of money per month and divvied it up amongst the sites whose ads it blocked. Heck, I'd probably throw $50/month into it.

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