Now the thing with websites is, there is no contract. You just ask them for some content and they give you the content + ads. I'm free to ignore the ads. A good parallel would be a local newspaper that gets send for free to everyone, but also includes ads. I'm completely free to ignore the ads in this case. I would also be allowed to build a sorting machine that sorts out the ads before I ever have a chance to look at them. That's obviously no theft, after all they gifted it to me!
And this is exactly what most websites are. They send me free content and include some ads, without any contractual obligation. If they don't want me to just see the content without looking at the ads, they can always set up a contract requiring me to look at the ads. Or only show me the content after I've seen the ads. Or do anything else, that isn't just sending me content and ads without any obligations.
But until they do that, it's definitely morally right and legal to sort out the ads, just like I do with my local newspaper.
And something that I want to touch on seperately because it really annoys me. It's completely ridiculous to speak about "theft". Theft always requires actively taking something. The taking part is really important when speaking about theft. But I'm not taking something from websites, I am asking for it and the website freely gifts it to me. On HN I'd really expect people to know how HTTP requests works. I'm not evading access controls, I'm not forcing them to give me the content, I'm not sneakily taking it away, I'm not hacking into their systems to take it.
I ask via the official way to ask for the content and they decide to send it to me. What I then do with the content on my local system is completely irrelevant and I have to right to modify it however I want, as long as I don't make it public or use it commercially obviously.
Of course you are. That's a very different scenario. I get junk mail all the time. It goes in the trash. Always.
It is UNSOLICITED.
> It's completely ridiculous to speak about "theft". Theft always requires actively taking something.
Exactly!
You are destroying your own construct here.
The very first time you visit a website, you see ads. If you disagree with advertising and you visit that site again with an ad blocker, you have made a decision to steal their product.
They did not force you to visit a second time and you know they use ads to finance their existence.
They did not send you unsolicited content.
This is theft, because, to use your own definition, you "actively take something", by explicitly going to their site and blocking their potential revenue streams.
You might say: Well, since I have an ad blocker I have no way of knowing who has ads.
Right. Sure. Let's add that to the series of delusions supporting such thinking.
> I ask via the official way to ask for the content and they decide to send it to me. What I then do with the content on my local system is completely irrelevant and I have to right to modify it however I want, as long as I don't make it public or use it commercially obviously.
These sites support jobs, families, businesses. You think you are entitled to take their work product for free because you think so, because you think so, because you think so.
That's what it comes down to at the most basic: You think someone should work for you for free because you don't like what they do to pay for their salaries. Instead of not consuming their work product, you happily steal it. What do you think lies behind these sites? Robots? Picture a family having dinner next time you enable your ad blocker, perhaps that will introduce some humanity in your thinking.
I find that issues sometimes become much easier to understand when we explore the limits. In this case the obvious limit is 100% ad-blocking. The world-wide consequences would be severe way before we got to 100% blocking. The internet would likely collapse very quickly without advertising. People like you find all kinds of creative ways to rationalize stealing the work of others. If you don't agree with how they generate cashflow to pay for their salaries, don't consume their product.
The other thing I find is that people having such ideas, generally speaking, are folks who have never in their lives launched and operated a non-trivial business where they had to be responsible for the payroll that supported dozens of families. It is way easier to think of a website as a URL with no humanity behind it when you have never had such experience in life.
Who made the determination that visiting the site is "stealing"? Most sites don't forbid ad blockers in their terms of service, and even if they did, it probably wouldn't be legally enforceable.
Nobody is obligated to donate their time and attention to support people who work in the advertising industry or anyone else. It is the responsibility of the business to maintain a sustainable business model. Businesses are not entitled to success, nor do they have the inherent right to allocate the time and attention of their users and customers.
Are you required to sign a contract for this exchange to happen? In that case, you would be breaching a contract, which is not the same as theft. If there's no contract, then I am free to go into a restaurant, plug in my earphones, keep my eyes glued to my laptop/phone and focus on whatever I want & ignore whatever else might be going on in the restaurant. While I sip my free pizza. If they have a problem with that, they could ask me to leave or not give me a pizza next time, but I most definitely haven't stolen anything.
If they continue to offer me free pizza despite the fact that I don't give a shit about all the ads in the restaurant, that's their choice. Hardly any different from websites that continue to serve me despite the fact that I block ads.
I've never signed a contract with a website where I agree to view ads.
Behind all of this there are businesses, which consist of people with jobs who have families and responsibilities. Just because you don't see the effects of your actions it does not mean there are no effects. You are stealing something that costs money to create and support and you have convinced yourself that you are entitled to that something.
Few people enjoy advertising. I don't. And yet I understand that most of what's on the internet is financed this way. If everyone ran ad blockers the internet would collapse overnight.
I have friends with small businesses who's families depend on being able to find customers through online advertising. Ad blockers have consequences for families just like theirs.
The content provider is free to stop providing the content at any time
Ad-blocking users think of sites as being completely devoid of any humanity. In most cases, nothing could be farther from the truth.
You might have rationalized that you are not stealing anything. Yet, you are, you are stealing the work product of dozens to thousands or tens of thousands of people.
Beyond that, you are likely costing others money. Your usage has consequences. A simple example is the cost of bandwidth, servers and support personnel. A loss of revenue due to ad blocking has to be compensated by raising rates to others, laying people off, etc.
This isn't a victimless activity. I know folks try to convince themselves they are on a righteous path of some sort. That's a fantasy. You are stealing.
It's no different from downloading free books from the many bootleg websites out there. Why go to Amazon and buy them when you can steal them. Hey, I ask for the content and they send it to me! I am not stealing!
Sure.
I'm not obligated to pay for cable when Netflix is cheaper and better. If your family depends on that Cable money to survive, well that's sad but not my problem. Make a better product, change your business model, do something.
Again, content providers are free to stop providing content at any time. There's not much else to say here. It's not my problem of they deliberately decide not to do that
These "please sir, have pity, think of the children" appeals are futile
There's a fundamental lack of morality in a philosophy that does not recognize and respect property. You know that you are interfering with the ability of a site owner and their employees earing money for their product. You know this well. This is what ad blockers do. And yet, as a result of the principles you purport to uphold, rather than choosing NOT to consume their product as a demonstration of your commitment, you take it and interfere with their business.
You can jump around as many hoops as you wish in trying to justify this. The bottom line is that you claim to have principles and yet behave exactly as if you had none. People work to provide you with valuable content and services and you take it for nothing.
This isn't an argument about Netflix or some other streaming service. This is about taking from others while actually promoting a complete negation of revenue. If your ad-blocking utopia comes to pass, none of these sites will have income. So, you'll take and take and take, until you kill them.
The only people who say things like what you and many have said on this thread are those who have never started, run and managed a non-trivial business. Being responsible for payroll makes you learn things you can learn in no other way.
When I see a business, a site, I see the people behind it. After all, we are likely not talking about junk sites and content farms here.
I am sure you are not using an ad blocker just so you can visit that wonderful content farm you love to frequent. No, you are using ad blockers on sites that actually deliver valuable content and services to you. Content and services that, precisely because they are valuable, time, money and take effort to create, support and maintain. You know they use ads to finance the operation, and you block them. That is a morally putrid position to take and even worse to work so hard to justify.
Most websites that provide free content don't require visitors to consume ads. The sites' terms of service don't forbid visitors from blocking ads in most cases, and the sites don't make visitors agree to view ads on the site before the visitors enter the site. As far as the visitor is concerned, the site owner's property is recognized and respected even if the visitor chooses not to load, display, or consume all of the content on the page.
It doesn't make sense for a site owner to be outraged about their lack of revenue, when they themselves decided to provide content without charging for it or monetizing it effectively. Business models that rely entirely on advertising are not guaranteed success, and internet users are not obligated to make ad-supported websites successful.