Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal

[lu_chin]

-{ Quote: "Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.

Tomorrow's legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts surveyed this week by CNET News.com to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed. " }-

Full story (http://www.news.com/Web+ad+blocking+may+not+be+entirely+legal/2100-1030-6207936.html?)

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
This reminds me to check for Adblcok updates.
Mrk

[WSFuser]

Blah! Im keeping my AdBlock Plus.

[ccsito]

I remember those lawsuits. :dry: If people can avoid ads entirely, then sponsors will stop paying to have them displayed or air, then the station/website would shut down for lack of revenue, then you will have a PC with a browser that will only display blank screens. ::) :D :P 8)

[Rasheed187]

Yeah whatever man, I normally don´t have any problems with ads, but I do have problems with animated gifs and Flash ads that are very distracting and annoying, you can´t even read text because of this nonsense. So my advise is, make ads less annoying. And besides, who says that people look at all ads on TV or magazines? ::)

[herbalist]

If they want users to stop blocking ads, they need to address the rest of the problem. It's much more than just annoying flash ads and banners. It's the tracking cookies, data mining, and in some cases malware installs that go with them. There is no way they can force you to allow ad companies to track you.

Whether it becomes illegal or not, when they can bypass my defenses and rip Proxomitron from my hard drive, then I'll view their ads.
Rick

[Paranoid2000]

Any attempted lawsuit would seem to have major problems to overcome - all an ad filter does is modify web content as the user desires, in the same vein as browser preferences, CSS overrides and other customisation tools. Since most adverts are images, even a simple image display toggle could be used as a filter.

Ultimately though, it is the advertising executives that seem to be in cloud cuckoo land here. To quote from Mike Zaneis in the article: "People are free to ignore ads, and they often do that..." - hasn't he ever come across popups and popunders, floating ads and Flash that obscure content and interstitials that won't allow an easy bypass? This is an industry that is not only selling, but skating on snake oil.

As for the argument about advertising "paying for the Internet", that is utter hogwash. Sites existed before advertising and the bandwidth demands of adverts often well exceed that of the original content - sites that need an income have other paths to consider (sponsored links, subscriptions) which are far more efficient revenue generators.

[sukarof]

I can recommend Hostsman with Hosts files like MVPS hosts. Maybe psychological but I find browsing faster than with Adblock Plus. On the plus side is that it is browser independent.

I dont know how effective the anti adblock script on this page (http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php) is but hostsman or other hosts files would take care of that problem if many sites where to use it.

[argus tuft]

They might have an argument, if the third party blocking the ads was doing so without the permission / knowledge of the user.
(for instance to replace it with other, competing material)
As it is, the user must manually install the 3rd party blocking software / browser plugin, so this is all BS imo.

I am already paying for the bandwidth I use, which is where the comparison to free to air TV falls over.

Any site which blocks adblock plus, or has "by visiting this site you agree to look not to use advertisement filtering software" displayed somewhere I will not visit.
>:(