YouTube may face criminal complaints in EU for using ad-block detection scripts
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
No, you don't have a right to free service either. Do you pay your other bills while you demand free rendered services from these companies?
Having a disability or similar does not entitle you to an unsubsidized Times Square with no ads.
(NASA is running their own streaming network and competing; it can be done. EU should try to run competing free video streaming businesses before shoving preferred American companies around with anti-competitive claims. EU haven't run a video hosting business that's been prevented from competing by the success, existence, and approved mergers and acquisitions of American media companies; and so EU video hosting businesses haven't and can't have been anti-conpetitively disadvantaged.)
I also run ad blockers for various justifiable reasons; but I don't tell myself that I have a right to free shtuff.
How the heck can you require only Netflix to host 30% local EU content and also demand free video streaming service with no ads?
Just think how expensive YouTube would be if artists started demanding royalties for works that match their video fingerprints (in addition to the payouts according to audio fingerprints that YouTube pioneered).
Encoding, moderation, storage, and bandwidth cost money. I'm sure the YouTube financials and margin are posted.
A video streaming service can afford to operate without ads only if: _____.
You understand this if you've ever tried to host (multiply-reencoded) video on a shared hosting service with a bandwidth quota for $10-$20 a month.
https://WebMonetization.org/ is one proposed solution to advertising-supported media.
Then it isn't free?
Google have no right to make us watch ads either. IP laws protecting their profit is preventing youtube-dl like alternative hosting, since Google got the IP rights for the video. And the network effect is keeping creators trapped in their playground.
But you could also do private caching for a solo user.
Like the VCRs of old people used to skip ads. And later the hard drive equiped variants.
Hopefully someone will make such a service for YouTube if they block adblockers. Worst case, run YouTube in Chrome in a VM and record the screen.
Because they offered it for free.
YouTube can close the doors any time. If they want my money, they can make a service offering that meets my needs. They could charge content providers for bandwidth and storage and meter it with assisted ad-support networks. They could charge a price I'm willing to pay.
But they don't and I will not accept any argument that consuming resources they put into the public sphere for free use means I am under any moral obligation to either give them money or facilitate them making money off of my traffic.
The only time ads worked was when Google made them an unobtrusive part of search. They dominate literally every piece of software I use now. I'm sorry but I say burn it all to the ground. I will either pay for or build its replacement.
You don't want ad-blockers? Shut it down. I was doing the internet before there was a need for them.
As I think that infrastructure should be publically owned, I'm happy to do my bit for nationalization, and use adblock.
I'm as against ads as anybody, in the sense that (1) in general I think ads are unhealthy (2) I want infrastructure that makes access to content without ads possible (3) being able to disable ad blockers is one reason it's bad to let one company control how your browser works.
I can't say I disagree with Youtube's right to monetize, it's more of an "I'd really rather if you didn't" thing, but I think they do in fact offer the affordable plan you are asking for.
The family plan is $23/month in the US. The regular plan is $14/month.
How many other people or services do we use for hours a month for free?
Are we mad at them - and entitled - for offering an ad-supported option?
So if the price of Premium was lower you'd be ok with this? Premium costs about the same as Netflix.
Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on Youtube.
If YouTube would be willing to charge me something in the neighborhood of $5-$10 per month for that I'd happily pay. I have never had a Netflix subscription. I stopped consuming pop content and movies in 2010.
I am serious about this. If you have any way of making recommendations to anyone anywhere within Alphabet that will listen, please offer it up. I would point you to a site like HistoryHit which is far more in-line with what I want. It is $60/year.
Also, I already pay $5/month to the Kevin Richardson foundation and the ad-blocking mechanism on YouTube prevents me from watching those videos (which I paid for).
The Information Service Provider offered it for "free with ads".
Do you otherwise support paying creators for their work, if not through YouTube's system for compensating creators?
If you don't want ad-blockers, shut it down.
Or do you just 'not tell yourself you deserve it?' and take the content none the less?
Maybe I can simplify it for you with this question:
Does Google have the ability to legally compel you to only use chrome?
Im guessing you would say no- Antitrust and whatnot. So the next followup is, Does Google have the ability to tell blind people they cannot use screen readers? Or that people on linux cant browse the site in lynx?
Again, I am guessing the answer is no- Theres anti competitive, antitrust and 230c reasons why. Legally, ad blocking is fine to do. Heres a great article going over it : https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
HOWEVER- I disagree with the premise that Youtube cant try to stop adblockers- They just need to do so in a way that doesnt target specifically target a user. Twitch did a system where they would not send the video stream to you until the advertisement was done playing (which was embedded in the feed itself)- So if you blocked the ad somehow, you would just look at a black screen for 15-30 seconds. This, in my opinion would be completely compliant.
Is this really what consumers prefer?
Logged-in users necessarily carry state in some way such that they are identifiable as a logged-in user. "Session cookies" (and 'super cookies' etc) are standard practice for tracking which users are logged in.
YouTube does not and has not required login to view creators' videos and shorts.
And now don't they - just YouTube, hopefully - have to require login for their TOS to be a recognized agreement that authorizes determining whether the user is logged in and not stealing hours of free services.
That they offer an ad-supported service does not entitle us to an ad-free service.
Limiting playback without ads is not beyond the rights of the information service provider.
In other words, the issue is not that YT fights back, it's how they do it.
Are you familiar with keggerator systems with usage quotas? ("Free as in beer")
How can a computerized keggerator system (or a bartender) limit a person to a specific number of drafts from the tap? Is that spyware, or what you agree to when you draw from their kegs?
Google already has a definitive solution: close down the free access under a registration+payment (reasonable one). Why they are still serving free content? Why they don't get the moneys from the viewers directly?
I think that the reason is that they are inflating the number of viewers to everyone (content creator, stakeholders, etc.). You can fake viewers, you can't fake revenue. So, Google wants us to get more advertising so that they can claim that the number of views in ads increased, to earn more.
Isn't this about privacy!? How can free video plays have privacy if login is required to prevent freeloading hours of free service that others pay for?
That would be a significant pivot away from free video that democratizes video, and from video URLs that people share to walled garden video URLs.
Because Google has been monopolistic in their strategy to become the no.1 video platform and crushed alternatives.
This behaviour comes at a cost, pushing alternatives and now forcing adverts on everyone?
I can't do much to stop their monopolistic behavior but I can block adverts.
Isn't Times Square public property? NYC could absolutely make that a thing if they wanted.
> How the heck can you require only Netflix to host 30% local EU content and also demand free video streaming service with no ads?
Nobody's asking to make Netflix free. YouTube could absolutely charge for access if they wanted. Ads aren't the only way to monetize a service.
With that said, I'm generally in agreement that Google has a right to run ads on their platform and to try to block users who are blocking ads. The "spyware" argument seems pretty weak to me.
Does he work for Google? For Youtube? More than a few people here on HN must, right? But there are so many like him, it can't be the explanation all the time. Does he worship big tech companies to the point that if he shills for them, he believes that career success will rain down on him, like some sort of occupational cargo culting thing? Is he some amateur Deviant Art person, who shills for obscene copyright maximalism for similar reasons? Is it just that he does the one sort of 4chan-level shitposting that people can get away with on HackerNews, for the same reason the 4chan people do their thing there (whatever that is)?
It's weird. It's both the one topic you can see that stuff here on, where it isn't wished away to the cornfield. And the people doing it seem confident they can get away with it.
Here's this: "I hate ads. My time is valuable. I want free things. What I do is justifiable. Especially when you consider moral relativism and their practices."
And this: "I hate war, but the corporate media of the 2000s sold it to me and then didn't pay the bill; so we need citizen media."
I don't think we're entitled to free video streaming; maybe because I remember how much it costs to host an .mp4 without HLS on a shared hosting account without nginx-rtmp-module (C and ffmpeg, not yet Rust) and how long it takes to encode video without buying custom hardware video encoding accelerator cards and low-volume ASIC/FPGA TLS load balancer accelerators because now video over HTTPS, and because I don't want to pull media from your MediaGoblin tube site.
I don't support artists suing fans listening from the streets.
Artists are entitled to proceeds from their work if that's how they want to run the show.
I do support paying artists with the audio fingerprinting that YouTube pioneered.
(As an artist and a visual artist - it doesn't matter what kind - I don't want to ruin YouTube with payout demands; but if musical artists are due their cut for their plays, then visual artists are too. No musical artists have yet stood up for the plight of visual artists. Nobody has yet determined how to pay everyone on a production with a smart contract that gives them their fair cut for their contribution to the collaborative ari project.)
It costs money to encode, host, and moderate video, live video, comments, and live chats.
It costs money to stream video.
Good content costs money to create, in an ad hominem-d influencer-affected landscape devoid of critical thinking and media literacy.
Artists don't get paid when you stream for free without ads or premium subscription.
How can we pay artists and content producers and privately bootstrapped infrastructure if the marginal cost of a stream is not offset by the marginal returns of a stream?
Content creators have real costs.
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Copyleft is my decision as an artist. Open Source is my decision as a developer who can't donate their services to charity.
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Anti-competitive anti-competition context:
What's not fair, anticompetitively? Tying, Bundling, Exclusive agreements, Price fixing, Colluding cartels (for non-essential commodities), Bribery, Kickbacks, Becoming a lobbyist without waiting a fair amount of time first,
What is fair? Selling to the highest bidder. Approved mergers and acquisitions. Strategies against hostile corporate takeover. Taking the bank's money and your creditworthiness and bootstrapping. Penny-pinching to scale and gain market share. Appeasing shareholders/owners. Charging people when they use hours of free services per week.
What is different to you between these scenarios?
That they've agreed to sell their content on a network with ads (which in particular enables low income folks to be fans) does not entitle me to free shtyff from them; though I may also have a justified medical reason for tuning out ads entirely unless they're funny.
If a monopoly uses it's monopolistic powers to squash all competition, then forces model a don't want, then the idea of a free market and my choice in provider is a deliberate illusion.
So no, I'm not entitled to free stuff, but neither are they entitled for me to play by their rules. You're on the web? Great, good luck in the adblocking arms race.
Yes, there's a eu-wide 30% content regulation. No, YouTube adblock detection scripts are/could not be legal because of not having EU competition. YouTube and Netflix are also entirely different, because on Netflix it's always required to pay. Not sure how this helps staying on topic, this thread is about ad blockers.
- A case that was in German media: Bild.de tried to take AdBlockerPlus off the market because of "circumventing complex anti-copyright mechanisms". It took some years & instances, but ABP was now deemed legal. - This case (Ireland) and some concerns in Germany about this are more about privacy (GDPR) and tracking. They are browser fingerprinting and tracking how often you are using the ad blocker. This may or may not be legal. Who knows.
This is nonsense.
They are the gatekeepers to what is effectively a captive market. And they don’t exactly play fair to content creators (professional journalists and amateur video producers), do they?
He’s simply gone to the Garda (Irish police) and reported a “crime” (that Google have apparently broken the law). The Garda will “investigate”, inevitably find that, no, the law designed to arrest blackhats breaking into computer systems does not cover this scenario despite its vague wording, and inform the complainant accordingly.
A small waste of police time and taxpayer money, reported on by trashy clickbait websites as though it’s some meaningful event in order to drive arguments in the comments on the legitimacy of the complaint.
I'm alright watching adds to see that resource remain free. I'm even alright with them not showing me videos if they detect I have my ad blocker on. That seems fair to me.
I use firefox and have ublock origin turned on everywhere else on the web.
I do think though that they should be separated from Google.
Videos that take a shitton of time and resources to make and are actually useful information-dense content don’t usually get enough viewers to pay for themselves with ads — their audience is way too small by definition — but some stupid low-effort viral shit that gets viewed by billions does.
But the platform does have their costs to cover, they contribute to discoverability & host all the videos. But yes, creating good quality videos is a full time job that isn't compensated simply by relying on ad money.
And where exactly will these creators publish their content if not on a platform? YouTube solves their techology problem, delivery problem, storage problem, costs problem for all the previous things and gets them access to advertisers that pay for their content and handles payments across the world for them. (Patreon is a platform too, which also works on handling a subset of those problems).
I don't see those creators rushing to cover 6-7 figure AWS bandwidth, transcoding and software development costs themselves for their self hosted videos. They seem to be happy double dipping into YT ad paid service costs and adding sponsorships and patreons on top of that. I haven't seen a single one move to their own AWS hosted machines and paying 5-7 figures in badwidth and CPU costs to get their content delivered to people who want everything for free.
Well, states are already involved in the EU due to the GDPR, e-privacy directive, and other things. But the case is interesting from a legal perspective. Note that the complainant refers to Irish criminal law, but there is also Directive 2013/40/EU, which contains rather similar mandates.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A...
My concern for govt choosing what can be displayed in terms of ads is a concern that the govt would then move into choosing what must be displayed, once some sort of agreement on what is "fair" to display is reached. I'd prefer the antagonistic free-for-all to continue, as it's pretty easy to block ads everywhere at the moment.
If the govt reaches some sort of agreement with tech companies that results in some things (that we can already block) becoming illegal to display on their end, but other things now becoming illegal to block, that would be a worse result than the govt just doing nothing. Historically, when the govt gets involved, this is the result. Back when cable TV was relevant, Tivo lost a lawsuit filed against them for auto-skipping ads on recorded content.
Although looking at the article, it just says "A privacy consultant based in Ireland says he is in the process of filing a criminal complaint against YouTube for alleged unlawful surveillance" so I would be surprised if anything came of this anyway.
I'm concerned with the mindet that we shouldn't punish criminal activity because the response from the criminals may be more criminal activity.
I think that if we put criminals in jail they will have less opporunity to commit crime, both while they're in jail, and afterwards when they are released and still have a criminal record.
Criminals should go to jail for criminal activities is not a controversial opinion.
As far as data protection laws go, those could always be stricter and are a much better area of focus.
Just a couple days ago I was watching YouTube and the videos kept defaulting to 480p quality and not automatically increasing to a higher one. This was on my home network that is definitely able to handle a higher quality stream. I was able to manually set it to 720p (good enough for watching on my laptop) and it didn't flip back. This happened a few times in a row that I found it odd. I then thought it might be ad blocking related so I disabled uBlock Origin for YouTube and then everything worked fine after that. Coincidence? Maybe, I need to try this a few more times to see.
There's also other features like automatically expanding the video, converting Shorts to normal videos, automatically expanding the description, automatically hiding chat for live streams, etc.
I would love to see other streaming services offer access to videos on YouTube for cheaper. YouTube‘s premium tier is exorbitantly expensive.
If there is no law against that, then there should be. Let’s face it, the advertising and data harvesting revenue model of the Web has done so much damage, it deserves to be dismantled. If need be through legal enforcement.
I think you could even make a good argument that YouTube MUST take appropriate measures to ensure that they display ads that have been paid for. To count impressions so they are able to bill their clients they need to do more or less the same things required to detect ad blocking.
In fact, given that their interest is in higher count, the argument that "they must count correctly to avoid under-counting" doesn't make any sense.
Ads are often loud and obnoxious. An ad blocker that turns the volume down (rather than blocking an ad entirely) could be seen as a means of improving accessibility.
[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Blind/comments/13zr8h2/reddits_rece...
Its the same as when a group bully you, you only need to bring down the big one
I don't think Youtube will lose this, but you'll have a lot more luck convincing a judge that Youtube is breaking the law than some blog spam news site.