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Comment by jsgo | Hacker News Reader

Okay, but your agreement with Spotify on the free tier is "we provide music, you agree to be subject to our ads." If you block the ads, they can then yank the music.

Personally, I haven't jumped on the streaming music thing (iTunes Match is about as close as it gets for me with buying CDs or MP3s to add to it in time), but I don't think what they're doing is a bad thing.

Now, if you have some means to force the various ad networks to prevent hijacking a device and then telling me congratulations for being an Amazon customer and some random item blinks on my screen, I'm all ears. But ads in and of themselves, I don't have a problem with.

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>> your agreement with Spotify on the free tier is "we provide music, you agree to be subject to our ads." If you block the ads, they can then yank the music.

Companies have a habit of trying to squeeze all kinds of stuff into their ToS/AUP, hoping they can get away with it.

Who'd want to bet Spotify's bans would survive both a) the courts, and b) public opinion? Remember they'd need to win in both.

a) absolutely - they are not stopping you from doing whatever you want on your machine, they are just not allowing to use their service. I don't think anyone would advocate making "ad blocker" a protected characteristic alongside race, gender, sexuality etc

b) absolutely - most people either don't use ad blockers, and of those that do, most people are not militantly committed to them. There will be a set of people who stop using the service out of principle, but almost all of them weren't making any revenue for spotify anyway.

The only risk to spotify I can see is if they use somekind of nefarious method to detect ad-blockers (eg root kits) and I 1) don't think they're that stupid 2) don't think they would be necessary or useful anyway.

I guess another risk is if they force people to turn off ad blockers, then accidentally serve them malware, but afaik, various other sites have done this and nobody seems to care.

I would advocate for legal rights to use an adblocker! If we don’t, it’s going to be banned under CFAA in the future. Ads suck! Nobody has the right to force these on me!

You don’t have to listen to Spotify right?

nobody has the "right" to use a service, conversely.

And why exactly is that considered a fact?

The closer you are to a monopoly, the more required you should be to serve all. We don't allow the electric company to kill your power because you made disparaging emails or bad messages online.

And if you're a monopoly, you should be dealt with heavy handedly. Because power and money only further power and money. Anti-competition laws stem that to an extent.

There are plenty of music streaming services at the same level of quality and within the ballpark of paid subscriber base as Spotify. It wouldn’t qualify as a monopoly.

Music streaming isn’t the kind of good that falls under common carrier so I don’t think the analogy of the electric company fits. People can easily go through life not subscribed to one. I for one only have iTunes Match which isn’t the all-you-can-eat style of Spotify/Apple Music/Play Music/Amazon Music/Tidal/etc.

No they don't. And I think that we have a right to block ads that to block any and all ads that we receive.

Conversely, any (non-critical) service has the right to stop showing us ads or serving us in any other way.

Actually, it's "you agree to allow us to run code on your device with no ability to audit it or analyze it ahead of time for malware". If they want to "play" an ad, they certainly have the ability to do it.

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