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Comment by Gracana | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather just go a level up... You don't want users to tamper with your ads? Ok, we'll block your entire site. No tampering.

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I like your style- maybe hard initially but if we could just stop using pages with intrusive ads, firms may finally listen and stop using those ads

> I like your style- maybe hard initially but if we could just stop using pages with intrusive ads,

Why stop at intrusive ads ? Just block everything that features commercial ads.

Though the real issue is not ads per se but the tracking that tags along.

That would be neat as an experiment. Like, see how far you can go and what you can get to with a "total blocker."

If it turns out that this type of DMCA use is legally valid, adblockers could be modified to reject pages that embed URLs that have filed such requests.

So if a particular site uses admiral to protect its ads, it loses traffic.

I've done this with FB.

users of your list will not get this. And will stop using your list. This ending up not serving your purpose nor theirs.

For instance, let me go out on a limb and point out how some distros of linux insist on shipping without any non-free software. So, a user ends up having to go through hoops to just get an audio of video file playing. I think the analogy Im going for is, you don't want to play by our rules (our license, etc), we'll not use your software (or correspondingly block your site).

I'm trying to point out what I think is likely consequence of such an action

/impassionate comment

> users of your list will not get this. And will stop using your list.

I don't think that's universally true. For me, if a site is broken because blocking ads also makes the content inaccessible, I just close the browser tab and move on with my day. (For a while the LA Times was blocking content in this way, so I just refused to visit their site. I guess it worked; they don't do this anymore.)

I don't claim to be the common case, but frankly I don't know what the common case is, and I suspect you don't either, so it could go either way.

You're definitely right. Our ability to ignore our ideals when we're slightly inconvenienced is why content paired with invasive ads is so effective in the first place.

What common audio/video codecs/formats require non-free software to play?

DVD, MPEG-2, Flash, MP3 (at least, until all of its patents expire by the end of the year).

What non-free code is required to play back DVDs or MP3s?

Flash I will give you, though it has been an irrelevance to me since YouTube went HTML5.

I believe he's talking about this[1]:

> Many GNU/Linux distributions do not contain libdvdcss (for example, Debian, Fedora, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu) due to fears of running afoul of DMCA-style laws, but they often provide the tools to let the user install it themselves. For example, it used to be available in Ubuntu through Medibuntu, which is no longer available.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss#Distribution

Perhaps, but I think it's important to note that libdvdcss is perfectly free software.

> users of your list will not get this. And will stop using your list. This ending up not serving your purpose nor theirs.

I disagree. Users use adblock lists to protect themselves. This company has proven that they are actively hostile to users. Blocking their entire site, all of their domains, etc, is a sensible precaution for users to take. I have no doubt that this company serves JavaScript (i.e. executable code) that serves their purposes, not users'. And any other sites that insist on using their services are also hostile to users, and blocking them is sensible as well.

If some users just have to see that site, they can either find another list (who cares, no one's doing this for Internet Points), or they can click the "Add Exception" button.

We need not submit ourselves to be effectively held hostage by hostile content providers. It's just content.

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