Yes, who cares about the ad-dollars that TechCrunch relies on to survive, right? What a great innovation. Do you also have a workaround to use UPS without any charges? How about avoiding a way to pay utility bills?
This is why I read sites like The Economist (finite number of articles, released weekly) and RSS feeds. So tired of the attention economy.
When I think about such things at all, my train of thought tends towards pursuing only two ideas:
1. That advertising in general is either the worst outcome in some prisoners' dilemma game theory game, in that it never seems to inform potential customers and business spend inordinately trying to outspend everyone else.
2. That advertising may not actually meet the criteria to be considered speech/expression either in general, or when performed by corporations instead of individuals.
I think this is pointing out that the content theft has a harm here. Harming other people is the typical reason we are meant to not steal things. You aren't "obligated" to care about supporting their business model, but the comparison clarifies that it's in the same way that you're not "obligated" to care about the impact of shoplifting.
If that website allows him to download the pages without a 401 or a 403, then how is it any of their business how be prefers to consume that content?
No theft has occurred. Not even in the half-assed "copyright infringement is theft" meaning that some slack-jawed quarterwits have started to use the last decade or two.
It is not harming you to decline to buy something from you, not even if you really really want me to buy it from you, or even if you need me to do that. But if that is true, then it must be especially so that I am not harming you when I turn down your Amway or timeshare sales pitch.
The only moral obligation, the only actual contract that is relevant here is the peering arrangement. Don't put things on the public www unless you're willing to serve them up to everyone. Definitely don't serve them up and then whine that they weren't allow to make the http request.
No shoplifting occurred. Just better software.
* downloading and transforming a document for one's own consumption (as with e.g. ad blockers)
and
* rehosting it with no permission from the writer?
The absence of 401s and 403s indicates tacit permission to me.
It seems to be a primitive perspective, as if I had transported some 7th century scribe through time to the present day. That man, were he here, could not help but imagine that words had been copied from one codex to another, as if by quill pen. No?
All I see is a different client.