Blocking ads is not stealing. It's not even in the same boat.
You don't get to dictate to your users how they should be consuming content on the web. All you can do is present the ad and hope that it shows up.
You don't get to dictate to your users how they should be consuming content on the web. All you can do is present the ad and hope that it shows up.
Name one popular website that explicitly states you can browse their website ONLY if you look at ads.
The notion that your users will look at ads isn't an obligation; it's an expectation. In contrast, wages are a contractually-bound obligation. It's not morally wrong to refuse to live up to someone's expectations.
If you owned a website, would you refuse to serve anyone browsing with Lynx? They sure aren't going to be looking at any ads.
Sure, if you're using Lynx, you really don't have an option. That's fair enough. But in many other cases, it seems disrespectful to me to use somebody's site and tell them, "No, you can't have anything in return for giving me this even though you clearly wanted to." You have the option of doing your part, but you decline to do so. That isn't how I like to treat people I appreciate.
I guess I basically just don't like mooching.
It's not telling the client (the browser) "here's a bunch of HTML, but you can only use it if you show ads". There is no contract or agreement to display ads, implied or otherwise.
In the end, all you can do is simply ask the user to display ads. If you want to enforce that the user views ads, the web probably isn't the right medium for your product.
Exactly, and that costs money. Electricity costs money, servers cost money, webdev costs money. That data that is being sent to you wasn't magically discovered and offered up for free.
I dunno, jrock.us is free. I subsidize those costs for the readers.
It's not as good as the New York Times, though.
If adblock usage ever became mainstream, it'd become an arms war which advertisers would win.