German court throws book at ad blockers

YANAL

In that case we should also outlaw anti malware. I think Adblock plus has a bad defense because they themselves benefit from ads, so it can be argued that they are just stealing revenue. uBlock origin might have had a better case, because ads are not part of the copyright holder’s code and are also not something the user agreed to when downloading the website. I don’t think you can blanket agree to ads. Say randomly some ad shows you CSAM for whatever reason. Are you now a sex offender? Do you not have the right to remove it promptly from your computer? I’m sure that if you sue the copyright holder for showing you CSAM, they will quickly tell the court that they have no relationship with the advertiser and that the user was explicitly informed via TOS that any interaction with 3rd parties are ruled by their TOS. So if you show me content that you aren’t liable for, in parts of your software that you do not control, I sure as hell retain the right to remove it, like any other malware. Finally, ad blockers are tools, and it is the user that should be sued since Eyeo is not changing anything anywhere. Should we now sue gun maker for building tools that kill?

Our lawmakers, courts and judges are just clueless about anything that has to do with "computers". While the digital ate most of our societies in the last decades their framework did not fundamentally evolved. And open source made things way worst for them.

Their biggest success has been to limit the use of digital/cryptocurrencies for now. But now that the US has picked that system as an ultimate outlet for the survival of the dollar, I don't believe there is gonna be much resistance anymore.

Add to that the whole AI can of worms...

Why would the status of ad blocking be any different now from when copyright laws were originally framed (which was well before the internet)?

I could always skip ads in, say, magazines and newspapers and just concentrate on the content and I still do. In fact I've become very adroit at it, I can read a mag from cover to cover without being able to recall the content of any ad.

Copyright law was framed in an era when it was just not possible for advertisers to actually interfere and interrupt a reader's train of thought/reading pattern. Of course, their aim was to distract readers' attention but they couldn't force readers to actually read ads.

Nowadays, ads not only regularly interfere with the reading of content but they cause many adverse effects that were not possible in the days of printed material—spying on reader's privacy, slowing page loading (a reader's reading), being vehicles for malware and a rich source of illicit data for sleazy data brokers, etc.

It seems that there's no end to the inventiveness of those who wish to pervert the law. The fact that this matter has got as far as it has in German courts one has to wonder the motives of those in the court system. It would be interesting to see how many within that legal system have shares in ad and data broker companies.

I for one would ignore any such ban. Fact is, I do not use a dedicated ad blocker per se but take other measure such as using blocking lists in combo with blocking JS, etc. and my web browsing experience is essentially ad-free.

If the Law were to deem my actions unlawful then I'd posit that'd be sure evidence of a totalitarian state at work.