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dsr_

Do you also think that leaving the room or changing the channel when the TV or radio plays an ad is unethical?

Is using fast-forward on your DVR unethical?

Is skimming past the ads in a newspaper or magazine unethical?

Is it ethical to let your eyes glide past the ads shown in a browser?

Is it ethical to read books from a free library rather than buying the right to read a copy from a store?

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None of those situations are very comparable.

TV is paid on viewership numbers. Newspapers are paid on circulation. Gliding past ads on a site is factored into the CPM values. Books in a library are paid for and covered by the first-sale doctrine.

They are completely comparable.

You don't think people who change channels to avoid ads/who use DVRs is factored into the price per viewer for TV ads?

Your individual impact might be harder to track than with ad-blockers, but on the aggregate you are driving down the price per viewer by switching on channels during ads, using DVR, etc.

(Imagine a world where 100% of people used a DVR and skipped ads. Obviously the price of TV ads would plummet. By using a DVR you are contributing to making our world, that world).

Suppose someone offered you a free TV to sit through a 2 hour presentation about a timeshare. Does that entitle you to just take the TV and leave without sitting through the presentation?

You chose a particularly interesting example: as far as I can tell, to a first approximation, all timeshares are scams designed to separate a fool from their money.

So if I had the free time, I would consider attending in order to ask pointed questions and warn other people away.

You could also make the argument that ads or ad networks are potentially dangerous. That doesn't make Ad Blocking ethical, just justified. The ethical thing to do would be to either not use an Ad Blocker or not visit sites that are ad supported, neither of which is realistic if I'm being honest.

I think we're at a very Napster moment for content websites.

So ad-blocking is unethical. Not ad-blocking is dangerous. Not using the services is impractical. So which is it then?

That's a choice for the individual to make but lets stop pretending that Ad Blocking is ethical. It's about as ethical as Napster was, but given the alternatives it's the obvious choice.

Additionally you can use things like Patreon or Google Contributor.

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