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Comment by duncan-donuts | Hacker News Reader

I hate to be that guy, but I'm going to guess you probably _do_ consent just by accessing certain sites. I'm sure if you read the terms they disclose that. I'm not saying that's right, and I also have a similar stance of trying not to be profiled, but don't delude yourself thinking your ad blocker is stopping organizations from gathering your metadata.

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> I'm sure if you read the terms they disclose that.

As an average person, if you spend 8 hours a day reading all the terms and conditions you 'agree' to, it would take you 76 days to just read them, nevermind understand them.

http://techland.time.com/2012/03/06/youd-need-76-work-days-t...

I'm not actually sure how we ended up living in a world where those terms and conditions are legally meaningful. But I'll reiterate that they can fuck right off and there is absolutely no moral dilemma about blanket filtering of ads and trackers. As to how effective they are - effective enough to prompt anti adblocking measures such as TFA.

Would be nice to have a government standard Meta-TOS with things grouped in sections with plain language and the service specific TOS could be required to reference the sections from the standard that they want to apply, even with a simple standard system of logos.

> I'm not actually sure how we ended up living in a world where those terms and conditions are legally meaningful

IANAL, but as an European I'm pretty sure they aren't legally meaningful. To be honest, I don't consider any online T&C's to actually affect me, and only pay attention to explicitly mentioned licenses for content. I have no idea how far from actual reality this is.

According to German law those T&C are meaningless for just browsing the website (they neither ask you to agree nor offer the possibility of reading the terms in advance). And as long as you aren't acting as a business, those "I agree" checkmarks don't bind you to any "surprising" terms (in other words: not even the law expects you to read them)

(IANAL)

Cool, thanks for the confirmation!

It is literally nonsensical to tell someone who is explicitly not consenting that they are in fact implicitly consenting.

If you are explicitly not consenting, then surely the correct way to do this is to not visit the site. If I go to a shop and want a product but don't like the price I am within my rights to refuse the contract and not buy the item. What I am not entitled to do is unilaterally change the contract, and walk out with the item without paying full price. I use an ad blocker because so many sites are barely usable without it, but I don't pretend it's a morally justifiable thing to do, and I try to disable it for sites that I use a lot, unless I pay for them.

The actual analogy is walking into a store and being forced to buy something for walking in. I don't feel the store owner should be entitled to do that.

As for moral justifiability, I find it unacceptable that a website operator can sell data about me without my consent just for following a link to their site.

Data about you is not necessarily owned by you.

I don't necessarily agree fully, but even then we can discuss the morality of selling the data to trackers without informing the user, let alone not giving them a choice to opt out before viewing the content.

It is in Europe

Do you read the content on the website? Because in that case yes it is fair for the "store owner" to force you to pay the price.

I would agree, if only I were given the choice. As it is, I have no way to know what the terms of a website are until I visit. The intent of the ads are also usually not made clear. If I don't view the ad am I allowed to read the content?

I guess it boils down to what you think the Internet is. I feel I should be in control of my computer, and thus I get to decide which bits I allow onto my network and which of those bits are then rendered on my screen. If you've made content publicly available, it's mine to consume in the way I see fit. I don't see why I shouldn't, for example, be allowed to use a text based browser to view content or browse with JavaScript disabled.

Payment for content is of course difficult for websites, but I just don't feel an ad based revenue is feasible on an open web, precisely because the web is open. The platform does not support the notion of content creators implicitly dictating terms.

In any other situation in society, the content owner is responsible for controlling access to the content until a price is explicitly agreed upon. An artist can’t display a painting in a public place and charge everyone whatever they want after they happen to view the painting.

To extend this analogy, it's more like they have cameras in the store and you are covering them up.

Where this analogy breaks down is when those cameras start following you from store to store.

Even for in-store cameras, the store owner doesn't have free reign over what they can do with that footage, certainly under EU data protection laws.

It is more like they require you to place cameras all over yourself, and the cameras are yours, not theirs.

I don't really know if one could require this. Seems complex. But add that the cameras are hidden (you don't know they are cameras) and it becomes a very simple issue.

Societal norms for theft of physical property have been fairly clear for a long time, and shared across nearly every culture (every one I’m aware of). It’s a huge leap to apply those norms to downloading and running software on your own computer.

You’re claiming that, by choosing to visit a website, I have implicitly agreed to and am obligated to download every resource and execute all code that website’s maintainers decide to include, and to do that recursively for each downloaded resource. That is preposterous. It could, for instance, obligate me to download a literally endless amount of data, which might be very expensive for me. It might also obligate me to perform limitless computation on my machine, if for instance the website includes a script to mine Bitcoins.

I try to avoid making moral arguments, but I will certainly point out logical consequences of other people’s moral arguments that to me seem absolutely ludicrous.

Since when is visiting a specific domain falls under the "I'm allowing 3rd party as well"? If that is in fact the TOS that needs to be shown before any content OR 3rd party, tracker, ad, etc. is loaded.

I don't think they can enforce their TOC just by opening the page. I need to open it just to read the TOC in the first place. By reading this comment you consent to agreeing with it.

It doesn't work that way.

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