I’m not sure what you mean about the UI, but I pay for YouTube Premium exclusively so I don’t have to see ads, and for that purpose alone, to me it’s worth it.
I glance away from billboards, I refill my drink during commercial breaks, I show up when the movie starts instead of when the preview starts. These are normal behaviors, not leech behaviors. The ads are not very sophisticated, so I don’t need sophisticated measures to avoid them. On the web, the ads have ratcheted up the intensity (tracking, targeting) with technology and in response I have augmented my ability to ignore with technology. That’s fair.
You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers. It is perfectly fine if you want to guzzle Kiwi Black, but understand not everyone wants to do that.
> Additionally, Fox alleged that Dish infringed Fox's distribution right through use of PTAT copies and AutoHop. However, mentioning that all copying were conducted on the user's PTAT without "change hands" and that the only thing distributed from Dish to the users was the marking data, the Court denied Fox's claim. Citing Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., the Court concluded that the users' copying at home for the time shift purpose did not infringe Fox's copyright. Then, Dish's secondary liability was also denied.
> You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers.
This is not rational debate, but activism and emotional manipulation. Recommend flagging and not engaging.
I don't think it's that extreme, but it's always hard making comparisons between physical and digital.
>You have framed this as a contrast between leeches and normal people, but this is actually a contrast between normal people and bootlickers.
I prefer the framing that doesn't chastise those who are simply ignorant or have their own morals. I recognize adblock is technically "theft" so I don't want to go on a high horse insult the "normal people".
Blocking ads and trackers is no more theft than blocking crypto miners. Malware is malware. You'd be crazy to consider running it as some bizarre form of payment.
You can track a bunch of metrics for software and perceive ad blockers, so the loss is more explicit.
>You'd be crazy to consider running it as some bizarre form of payment.
I wont say reality isn't crazy, especially these days. But that's the reality, yes.
In any case, why would I care about how people who are trying to scam me set up their business deals? If I don't run their script, they didn't "lose" anything. Their malware was never allowed to run on my machines in the first place. They failed to steal something from me.
>why would I care about how people who are trying to scam me set up their business deals?
1. Because you are spending much of your energy and time getting around them. Because by silent consensus people would rather consume ads than pay for their content. Keep your friends close...
2. Because it's an indirect contract. I don't care if you don't care, but I'd at least wish people would be honest and admit that they aren't in some moral high horse for evading such a contract. People get so pompous as if they are combatting the behemoth by taking 10 seconds to download a program.
The house always wins. We're allowed to steal because the cost to catch us is less than the cost to lock the doors. And the company is profitable anyway. The main downside to this is similar to hardware: pricing is a bit more expensive because stores expect X% theft/defects/refunds. I'm sure the same thing happens where content creators get paid a bit less, and YT premium costing a bit more to offset adblock users.
There is no contract with me at all. It is not theft. It is preventing others from misappropriating my computing resources, and in fact the US government recommends citizens use ad blockers. It's basic computer security.
>There is no contract with me at all. It is not theft.
Hence my wording:
>Indirect contract are those where there is no direct contract between parties but the law presumes that there is a contracts between the parties and such could be enforced.
>is preventing others from misappropriating my computing resources,
You chose to access their servers, I don't see how YouTube is "misapproiating your resources". You're basically getting a service and refusing to pay for it. That's theft.
It's like I said, I don't care if people still from a trillion dollar corporation. But people who really only think software can't be stolen really shouldn't be considered a software "engineer", as many here claim to be.
>in fact the US government recommends citizens use ad blockers. It's
1. The fbi is not the government. For good reason given their history.
2. Their context was for malware, not for getting around undesired ads for an otherwise "free" service.
On misappropriation, do you think it's okay if e.g. a blogger puts a crypto miner on their page? If you choose to request a web page, is it okay for them to run background workers on your computer, and in fact it is theft of service if you do not allow it? Do you also need to give them e.g. location, accelerometer, microphone, and local filesystem access if they'd like to have it? Why are ads special among malware payloads in that you must run them? Why are computer ads special unlike physical ads (e.g. in the mail or inserts in a free newspaper) where people toss them in the bin without opening/looking at them? Or an ad-blocking DVR?
Many of e.g. Google's tracking domains are simply blocked on my network. I don't have any idea of what web pages are going to try to get me to load them, but it doesn't matter because none of them are allowed to. It's ridiculous to say that I must allow my computers to reach out to malicious servers and run scripts they deliver. Must I allow random North Korean servers to run scripts too?
The FBI is part of the government, and the context was that certain search engines (e.g. Google) were presenting ads for scams, and so to protect yourself from fraud, you should install an ad blocker so that you do not see ads.
On morals, I'll put forward that if you have children, it is in fact a moral imperative to remove as many sources of advertising from their lives as you can. Ads attempt to shape them into worse people (pushing them to embrace materialism and hedonism), and their influence should not be tolerated.
1. Because you are spending much of your energy and time getting around them.
2. People get so pompous as if they are combatting the behemoth by taking 10 seconds to download a program.
Edit: I’ve posted this argument on HN before, but if you insist on expanding the accepted definition of theft, then malware, crypto miners, video ads, and other garbage that is frequently served via ad networks are also stealing from me, by wasting electricity and possibly also taking my personal data. So I block ads to prevent this theft. Who is in the right in this case?
I hope YT Premium is a step in that direction, but only time will tell.
1. less annoying for non-desktop devices. Especially when casting content onto my TV
2. moral niceties: Premium viewers apparently help give more revenue to content creators, and I tend to watch smaller channels. It's nice knowing I can disproportionately help those kinds of creators out.
Also, apparently Google is in the middle of its latest clash with adblocking so even that can get unreliable.