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Comment by Lerc | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it is piracy. Most advertising supported content is made freely available to you with the expectation that you will view the advertising. That expectation is not a contract and was a decision made without your involvement. You have no obligation to perform to someone else's expectations. If the content is made freely available you are free to watch it whichever way you choose. Choosing not to view the advertising might mean they don't get paid for producing their content, but you are under no obligation in the absence of an agreement.

Piracy involves you deciding to acquire content that has not been made freely available.

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Morally, it is piracy IMO. If you applied the rule universally, the site would go out of business and then there would be no video to see.

I find this argument fascinating overall!

I don't really use YouTube, but when ads play on random videos and it irritates me, I just close my eyes, the simplest version of content-blocking. (If the ad is painfully loud, I may also cover my ears in contexts where this is not extremely socially awkward)

Can we say it's immoral for me to close my eyes? Can someone's business model be the basis of an argument that it's immoral for me to exert this simple bodily function?

Is there some contract that I've signed where people have the right to my attention in any context? If they've based their business model on the assumption that this consent exists, and it does not, is it fair to say that the business model should fail?

It was fascinating to me for a bit but it gets old fast...

consumer: I want to fill my content hole with content someone made through hard work right now and for free and how dare they delay that by 5 seconds after which I can press Skip. I will employ sophisticated tricks and run untrusted code in my browser to work around that delay.

also consumer: I will totally not be pissed at all if there is no free content for me anymore. Their business model should fail because I did not consent to ads. How dare anyone consider and live within an objectively true reality that things have costs?

Is not you since you said you don't use youtube. but it is what many youtube users seem to think.

This smells like psychological projection.

I just point out double standard

perhaps it should be out of business then? it captured its market share on an ad free model... it would not have gotten to this size with this model from the start.

if tomorrow youtube decides only paid subscribers can view videos... do they maintain that market share?

Many people used to go to the bathroom during commercial breaks while watching a movie on TV. Was that considered piracy? Was it immoral?

I didn't look at the billboards when I was driving today.

Did I just pirate my drive to work?

Do the billboard ads fund the road maintenance? I didn’t think they did. I thought people just bought land next to the road and installed signs there.

Does Google pay for your PC, power or internet connection?

No, but they do pay the costs of hosting/serving the videos, which I thought was the relevant analogy to the service being used when driving on a road and there being billboards next to the road.

Is the department of transportation owned those billboards and used them to fund the roads I would feel 0% more obligated to look at them.

Sure, but it would make the analogy valid.

Is it piracy to pirate a pirate? Most of the content that I view on YT is old live concerts uploaded by fans. Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings? Who should goog pay? The label? The pirate who uploaded? The OG pirate who recorded the show? So doesn’t this make them pirates too?

These are honest questions and it seems way too fuzzy to me to be making moral judgments about the whole mess.

I think saying that it is morally piracy is a little bit of an overstatement.

I think one does have the right to block ads on one’s machine if one chooses.

However, personally, because of the “if ad blocking was universalized, the services I appreciate would likely not exist” reasoning, I choose not to block ads.

As for other things like “muting/covering ads on screen”, yeah, that does seem a bit fuzzy. Sometimes I’ll even use a browser extension to fast forward an ad somewhat.

I do think this is something for the individual to decide how they will deal with ads. When I mute an ad, I don’t think I’m really free riding? For one thing, I don’t think it is contrary to the expectations of those being sold the ad slot. Me fast forwarding the ads a bit probably is contrary to their expectations, so I don’t have as good justification for it, but I don’t feel like I’m cheating when I do it. (Or, if I do, it is because the particular ad is objectionable enough that I’m willing to stick it to the advertiser)

Kants Categorical Imperative is a terrible way to model reality. People are too stocastic.

It's the same mistake libertarians make when they assume a fully informed and rational society.

> Kants Categorical Imperative is a terrible way to model reality.

It's not a way to model reality, terrible or otherwise. That’s not what it purports to do.

I didn’t say others are obligated to do the same. I said the opposite , actually. Rather, for the services to remain viable, some people have to not block ads, and for this reason, I have chosen to be one of those some.

How how-well-things-work depends on the number of people doing a thing, varies from thing to thing. For some things, as long as one or more people behave in a particular way, a thing goes well. For other things, if even one person does a particular thing, things go badly. And there are plenty of situations in between.

These different situations call for different responses, I think.

>Did goog pay a license for those pirate recordings?

If their copyright monitoring algorithm recognises the tracks being performed and the licence holders have opted to receive a share of ad revenue rather than issue a takedown notice, then I think the answer might well be yes.

No one if forcing them to use ads for revenue; they could choose to start charging directly for the content. Seems to be working ok for Netflix.

The same Netflix that started offering an ad-supported tier that's climbed to 190M global users?

Yes, the same Netflix that gets ~90% of it's income from subscriptions.

I never claimed that ads can't be profitable; I was responding to a commenter who implied that ads are necessary in order to have a viable streaming business, which is very obviously not the case.

And you're comparing YouTube and Netflix here, as similar (enough) streaming services that could use the same business model?

All things supported by ads should go out of business. Ads are 100% morally wrong.

Google doesn't care about right and wrong, only what they can get away with. They don't deserve to be treated as a moral subject by you, because they will not reciprocate. You're free to be as shameless as they are in your interactions with them if you can get away with it, you're just playing the game at the same level as they are.

I'm paying for Youtube Premium, but its a plain utilitarian decision after they started hassling me with captchas and intimidations that someone at my IP address was using an ad blocker. So yeah, I'm paying protection money. But I don't feel in the least good about it.

what do you think of people making videos, they deserve to be paid right?

Yes, but ultimately it is not my responsibility to make their business model viable. That's between them and Google - not me.

I am not Google's accountant. They can figure it out.

It's not your responsibility. That's why Google makes you do it (pay or watch ads). Otherwise they can't pay creators and if they don't get paid then you don't get content you like to watch. Lose lose. So I'd say they kinda figured it out.

> Otherwise they can't pay creators

> In 2024 the company made a revenue of $350.01 Billion USD

YouTube made THAT much money? Cool tho I want to know sources.

Now assuming that let's check how much it costs to host/recode/stream stuff. How dare companies want to profit right?

just wanted to show they don't need you to watch ads to pay them

then you didn't did you?

I did by showing that Google has plenty which they can use for payment.

By that logic Apple should give away iphones for free. This is not how things work in capitalism

No by that logic Apple could give IPhones away for free

If they want to eventually fold yes doing things for free is great

Google does not make me do it, I am free to mute the ad and look away. I don't have to watch ads, that is my choice.

If you want to be pedantic: "Google adds video pre-roll ad during which you are likely to see it"

It's not pedantic at all: if I look away and mute, which is perfectly allowed, versus use an ad blocker, what's the difference?

The outcome for me is identical. I don't see an ad, and I won't buy something.

It's the same reason why DVR recording was never piracy. It's the same thing as if I watched the show, except the DVR does it.

> if I look away and mute, which is perfectly allowed, versus use an ad blocker, what's the difference?

The difference is you still see the beginning of the ad and some people see a big part of it because they don't have the habit of muting and looking away out of fear of missing the beginning of the video for example.

> The outcome for me is identical. I don't see an ad, and I won't buy something.

You still see the beginning of the ad. Whether you buy something or not is not always what the ad is trying to do sometimes it's just raising awareness

> if they don't get paid then you don't get content

[citation needed]

You're saying no content would be created if there were no payments?

Have you never met a real artist?

Yes, real artists need time, supplies, space to work, etc. If you don’t pay them, they’ll have less of everything they need to make the art you like.

Have you seen a well produced YouTube video? It can take days sometimes months and a lot of costs.

Why is it automatically assumed that just because you post a video on youtube that you deserve to be paid? None of my videos made me any money and I’m fine with that.

In most cases of adblocking, that would be a good thing.

99% of internet content is complete crap, the equivalent of email spam, that only exists because each piece makes a few dollars a month from ads. On the old internet, without ads, there was plenty of useful content and much less spam.

And the spam crowds out good content, as seen in recipe sites for example.

I do apply the rule universally, they haven't gone out of business.

If they were unable to gain any revenue from advertising, they would go out of business if they could not find an alternative source of income.

I feel that they are more likely to find an alternative than go out of business. That alternative might not motivate people to make content that no-one wants and trick viewers into watching. If it were a system where the users being happy dictated their income perhaps the service might be better than a system where the happiness of advertisers defines how much they get

Right, but objectively, ad blocking is equivalent in outcome to muting and looking away - you don't see the ad. And YouTube allows that. So, in my view, it's the same.

Similar reason to why DVR recording is not pirating.

Kant isn't the sole authority on morality.

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