AdBlock Plus Now Illegal in Germany
translate.google.de
translate.google.de
So this only concerns Eyeo and its "pay us, or nobody will see your ads" business model. Adblocking is legal. Even using ABP is legal.
Much ado about nothing, unless you're Eyeo.
Edit: This isn't even about adblocking, but about anti-competitive behavior: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...
The lawsuit has been going on since at least 2014. Here are some comments by a German lawyer on it: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A...
Does that count as an "ad blocker"?
See:
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Someone told me it was pretty effective to do this.
If the ruling is upheld by the Federal Court of Justice, that is.
«Das Gericht hält die Blockade von Werbung an und für sich jedoch nicht für wettbewerbswidrig, wohl aber das Whitelisting, das Eyeo zu seiner Finanzierung betreibt.»
Translated into English by myself: However the jury doesn't regard the blocking of ads as basically anti-competitive, but arguably the whitelisting done by Eyeo to finance itself.»
I've done this with my local HOST file and its only moderately effective. The problem is that 127.0.0.1 never replies and the timeout period causes the page load to stall.
If I knew how I'd redirect requests to a local IP running a webserver that replies 410-Gone, 202-Accepted, 200-OK (or whatever code necessary) to any and all requests so the requesting page moves on and doesn't stall. If I was even more talented I could set up a public webserver and share it with the world so we could all point to it and block these ad servers that are ruining the internet.
NB: I'm not opposed to ads but the marketers need to realize the WWW is not TV and stop forcing unwanted, irritating and obnoxious ads and auto-play videos.
You could try 0.0.0.0.
-- Edit -- funny to find out this bothered somebody enough to down vote. Probably some German bureaucrat unhappy somebody's flagging dead laws before they are pushed through people's throats :-)
Nothing in that translation says that the use of an adblocker is illegal.
> And what will prevent community from developing same thing under different name?
Nothing. This isn't about whether the adblocker itself is illegal or not; it's 100% about whether creating such a piece of software with a goal to make profit is legitimate or not.
From the article:
> However, the court does not consider the blockade of advertising in itself anticompetitive, but probably the whitelisting, which operates Eyeo to finance it.
As an aside, complaining about downvotes 30 minutes after something is posted is silly. For all we know, the downvotes are automated. Throwing out vague ad hominem attacks against perceived enemies makes you sound goofy.
And likely, it's not that your comment bothered anyone, it's just that it's inaccurate and adds nothing to the discussion.
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