- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- firefox@lemmy.ml
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34873574
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In that case, make sure the judge gets to watch 4x 10 minute ads for every 30 minutes of watching anything in 720p after having paid in full for the highest tier 4K subscription plan.
The wealthy people will just pay to have the ads removed.
As always, this law doesn’t exist to benefit workers like you and me. It exists to benefit our rulers and should be another example of how government representatives do not represent their populace.
This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.
Dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard of.
Will they make Reader Mode in browsers illegal, too?
What about “dark mode” or “resize font” when the website doesn’t offer those accessibility features?
Will they make the “mute” function on browser tabs illegal, since it modifies the website author’s intention to play audio upon page load?
I will continue to block ads, spyware, trackers, unwanted elements, popups, and social media links, “illegal” or not.
This is exactly it. It has always been up to the browser to decide how to render a website. There have always been differences. The idea that a browser can honour or ignore parts of the content has always been part of it.
If anything should be illegal, it should be websites 's constant attempts to bypass user preferences. Some of that shit is plain malware.
We are all criminals on this blessed day.
At what point do we just redo the web? I’m thinking Gemini but with more geo cities
I’m already getting into self-hosting.
It’s surprisingly easy, and can be done with a VPN that has port forwarding.
Wouldn’t be surprised with how shittifed the web is becoming that we end up with alternatives to DNS since it requires forwarding on port 80.
You can make ad blockers illegal, but you can’t actually enforce it unless you have a dystopian totalitarian government with a secret police to track down anyone using one. Does Germany have that?
Working on it
Had that
longer in the eastern part
This is truly dystopian. A ruling in Springer’s favor here could imply that modifying anything on a webpage, even without distribution, would constitute a copyright violation (EDIT: only for material in which the copyright holder does not grant permission for the modification; so not libre licensed projects). Screen readers for blind people could be illegal, accessibility extensions for high contrast for those visually impaired could become illegal, even just extensions that change all websites to dark mode like Dark Reader could become illegal. What constitutes modification? Would zooming in on a website become illegal? Would translating a website to a different language become illegal? Where does this end?
This needs to be shot down.
Dystopian, yes
Also Fascist
Something we never want to see in German politics in particular
I don’t see a reason to have a preference for a specific geographic region to not be influenced by fascism. Fascism should not be instituted anywhere, in any scenario. Unfortunately, it’s on the rise globally, and I’d personally prefer it not be present anywhere at all, not just in an area in which it has had previous influence.
It’s like cancer.
It’s never good. But when it’s already taken hold once, you want to be extra vigilant.
Right? It’s especially worth at least a second or even third glance in places that have a historical predilection to metastatic fascism.
New ubo feature: if page does not grant permission to block ads then entire page is blocked.
When I come across a paywall that is not circumvented by simple script blocking I don’t even bother to try anymore and I remove these suggestions from my feed.
Wouldn’t it make browsers illegal? They’re modifying the html code in order to present a webpage that is useful to the end user.
AFAIK, this is unlikely to lead to a ban on ad blockers. Worst case is probably that the judgment will imply some way to deliver ads that is illegal to block.
In any case, there are exemptions for certain assistive technologies. Those might not be much affected.
How can it be illegal? Makes no sense whatsoever.
How? Simple. A parliament of sort writes the law, it gets accepted. Then, the thing, whatever it is, is illegal.
It have no bearing on your ability to use the thing, of course. However, people providing the thing, people that are found out of using the thing, and people that facilitate using the thing are now easier to arrest.
I know I’m gonna get a lot of hate for this because everyone here despises ads, but I can see an argument for it. I don’t know if it is legaly sound, but morally, it boils down to the fact that you are literally using a service without paying for it. The website is offering you a product and the payment is ads. If you don’t want to pay for it, don’t use it, otherwise you really are just stealing it (even if that “stealing” costs very little to the site). I personally use an adblocker and agree that ads on most sites are obnoxious, but I also feel like people make adblockers out to be completely black and white, which they are not.
The server is sending me data and I’m choosing what program I’m using to interpret that data. That shouldn’t be illegal, regardless of the purposes of the data.
It’s ilegal to photograph people in Germany but it will be fully legal to gather everything about their psyche to serve them ads
Ads that hide the content, ads that hijack your navigation, unwanted ads that consume your bandwidth which may or may not be on a paid plan, ads that will slow down your device, increase battery usage, or plain crash the site you’re trying to see, all of these are just malware. There’s no excuse for malware.
For a time, adblockers had a provision to allow non intrusive ads. The mere idea is so dead that the option doesn’t even make sense anymore.
‘using a service without paying for it’ alright. do you want us to sign contractual agreements before visiting websites? Most companies want people to use mobile apps these days because of the legal implications of editing those apps. The ads are baked in.
it comes down to the philosophy of internet systems you ascribe to.
I’d like to see your reaction to that television patent that forces people to stand up and clap after the advertisement.
I’d like to see your reaction to me placing sticky notes on my physical screen over the advertisement’s location such that I never perceive the content.
I’d like to see you kneel, subordinate human worker. Do my bidding. Watch my ads. It’s the moral thing to do.
I’m not advocating for you being forced physically to watch ads, I’m saying that as it stands, ads are the payment method and you actively blocking them means you’re not paying for what you’re using. I’m not criticising people for that, I’m simply stating a fact. If everyone on the internet was to use adblockers, most of the web would die out, and first to die would be actually useful sites that provide helpful information that they invested time and money into making, such as news, review sites, etc. Perhaps the threat of adblockers itself is benefitial for the internet as it might force websites to find alternate, better payment methods, but I don’t see what you could replace ads with since people won’t be willing to pay a monthly subscription for every site they visit, and most people won’t pay for donations if you try a donations based model.
If everyone on the internet was to use adblockers, most of the web would die out
Websites existed before internet ads came about, and while it may be true that most would die without ads I’d be happy to see them go because the vast majority of websites have no value and only exist to try and make a few bucks off ads.
Hosting for most websites these days is virtually free. For about 80% of mine I only have to pay for the domain names, and I have no desire to serve ads to my visitors under the guise of covering costs.
The alternatives are directly charging for access to a service, or providing it for free and relying on donations or payment just for extra/bonus features/content. These methods are very successful when something is actually worth paying for.
Hosting costs heavily depend on the type of service, YouTube’s costs are very much not negligible, but it is true that for most sites it is very cheap. But hosting costs aren’t the only cost, many sites provide useful reviews, news, or testing that costs them money to produce, which they pay for with ads. Yes, some sites survive using alternative payment methods, but I’m skeptical that this can scale to the rest of the internet. My fear is that we’ll end up in a situation where 90% of the internet is just YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and other giants and people get all of their news, reviews and other information from those sites, which I think is worse than having ads.
the types of ads that are being blocked are effectively a type of malware
I speak German legalese (don’t ask) so I went to the actual source and read up on the decision.
The way I read it, the higher court simply stated that the Appeals court didn’t consider the impact of source code to byte code transformation in their ruling, meaning they had not provided references justifying the fact they had ignored the transformation. Their contention is that there might be protected software in the byte code, and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.
Sounds more like, “Appeals court has to do their homework” than “ad blockers illegal.”
The ruling is a little painful to read, because as usual the courts are not particularly good at technical issues or controversies, so don’t quote me on the exact details. In particular, they use the word Vervielfältigung a lot, which means (mass) copy, which is definitely not happening here. The way it reads, Springer simply made the case that a particular section of the ruling didn’t have any reasoning or citations attached and demanded them, which I guess is fair. More billable hours for the lawyers!
[Edit: added "The way I read it, coz I am not 100% sure, as explained later.]
and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.
Insanity - modifying code that runs on your machine in no way is even remotely related to copyright.
Cracking code/verification systems on your computer is also code running on your system, there are literally people in prison for running the code that cracks a program, BECAUSE of copyright laws.
So I’m not sure your setting how bad it already is for users.
(What should be, is not what we are talking about, for the record)
Thanks, that’s a super helpful explanation :)
The copy of the web browser is mine, the data I’ve downloaded is mine, I can do what I want with it.
EU please stop, you were suppose to save us from American Tech abuse not join them.
It’s a monkey’s paw situation. Sure, the EU will protect us from American tech abuse… and implement the same policies internally.
We need an African Tech revolution. Unless their tech follows the same path, then we run to an Australian tech revolution. Asian tech is already cooked and has been for a long time.
What could be the reason this keeps happening everywhere???
The PH levels of the ocean
Africa tech is just Chinese tech so they’re already cooked.
Australia basically banned encryption long ago and in doing killed off their tech industry.
We need a New Zealand tech revolution, which is where all the Australian IT firms relocated to following the encryption ban.
Encryption laws are hurting Australia’s tech sector, Atlassian says | Australian security and counter-terrorism | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/27/encryption-laws-are-hurting-australias-tech-sector-atlassian-says
It was never about freedom, but about restoring control of European governments over their citizens’ online presence and their data, so that everything they do on the internet is subject to European laws and regulations, not American ones.
And much of that driven by lobbyism by the same media empires who are trying to get rid of ad blockers.
Good thing my computer isn’t in Germany. I will stop using web browsers before I disable ad blockers.
Eh, next try (Nr. 7? 8?) of Axel Springer, a tabloid that wanted to declare their site as a protected piece of art you aren’t allowed to modify (block stuff).
So much for Europe being more progressive. They’re shilling for corporate on par with the states.
Honestly countries also fight corporations for power. GAFAM have been to threat to the powers in place and it’s essentially a survival match. Countries do spy on their own citizens that’s not news. Internet is a great tool for that.
What we are seeing is probably european countries trying to get rid of GAFAM and puting their own measures in place instead to fill the void, the void being the services, the information, the data the GAFAM were providing to said countries.
GAFAM
GAFAM is an acronym that refers to five major US technology companies: Google (now Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (now Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft.
Looked it up so no one else had to!
I guess the new acronym should be MAAAM
US used to call it FAANG (but then there’s been a bunch of renames)
I prefer AMAMA.
The good old French acronym XD
Germany, progressive? Have you ever lived there? I’m amazed they even use web browsers enough to notice now, compared to their fax machines.
Health care here still uses fax machines.
So basically its “we get to decide how data is processed on your hardware when we send it down the pipe”. Somebody should explain server/client roles to these clowns.
So what happens if the ad blocker is built into the browser?
And what happens if a user modifies the Dom by hand using dev tools?
What about DNS blocks?
