You request something which is when sent to your house. Sure it is via http, but that is irrelevant. It could have just as well been via snail mail.
Even if someone does it without your consent, the dispute is with the copy owner not the magazine publisher.
This would be an issue if an unauthorized party took it from your mailbox, but that still has nothing to do with the publisher or content.
Publishers and adtech might not like the fact that I am in control of what happens on my device and do things they dislike, but then they seem to do exactly the same when it comes to controlling how many ads are displayed and what personal data they collect.
Maybe if the industry can come to an agreement for a reasonable amount of ads, respecting privacy and taking responsibility for the ads they serve (aka compensate the user in case of scam or malware) then people might be more inclined to consider it.
I don’t think it’s an incorrect argument. We’re free to seek out ad-free content, or paid content, or whatever, but unilaterally rejecting the implicit terms of an interaction is ethically grey at best imo.
Edit: this would mainly apply to sites that detect and block ad-blocking. Other sites are a little less clear imo.
But I see the point in the sentiment. People pay for advertisements to be seen. On the other hand, a good businessman calculates this into the cost - like if someone prints 1000 flyers, they are sure not every single one of them is read. Like it's part of the flyer business that many go into the bin without being looked at.
For a while I thought they might notice that they are hurting themselves just as much as they are hurting the publishers, since ad blocking is part of the reason the time of freely reading thousands of high-quality sources is coming to an end. But there is really zero appreciation for the work of journalists. Local papers are already gone in rural areas and it took maybe five years until nobody remembers what they’ve lost.
Personally I think there is a stronger argument that dirtying up the Internet with advertising is more immoral than piracy.
And if they're afraid that a paywall will cause people to bounce, then deep down they know what I already know: their content isn't worth paying for.
I block ads to save myself from buying things I don't need, to save myself from being tracked over the internet, and because they are often annoying and sometimes contain malware. I see nothing wrong with this.
I'm not the one that is abusing some sort of "deal", in my opinion.
It only gets fuzzy when you start to argue about how surveillance capitalism let's them deny payment when ads are avoided on a Web browser but not when they are avoided with television. But "I don't get paid because they spy on you and the process more effectively than in other mediums" is already far more morally dubious.
And at the end of the day, brand or product awareness is only one part of the reason for an advertisement to exist - and the reason to pay for someone to run your ad. Another big part is an expectation that users will click on the ad, that they may buy the thing. So I take even more moral umbrage with content creators who show ads and argue that users should have to view them and are bad for not doing so even if they knowingly will not click or buy them; the content creator tacitly acknowledges that they are fine with only delivering part value to the advertiser while receiving payment in full. At that point it becomes "I am mad at my readers/viewers for being parasitical with me instead of helping me be parasitical with the advertiser" and any arguments about morals have become bunk.
So... unless they also demand that every user should fully read each ad and at least click on them in good faith with an open mind to open the wallet, I see it as a bit hypocritical to question the morality of Adblock users.