Ad Blocking Infringes Copyright? Ancient Sony Cheat Lawsuit May Prove Pivotal
Reminder: Install Ublock Origin
Once again, copyright maximalists fail to understand the medium they profit from, and propose to destroy it.
The display of hypertext always involves the active participation of both clients and servers. It has never been dictated solely by document authors. A given hypertext document (e.g. a web page) may involve resources drawn from many servers, including ones not under the control of the document’s author. In addition, client behavior may vary from that expected by the document’s author; in matters as minor as the selection of font size, or as major as whether to display images or execute script code. This separation of control is a fundamental feature of the medium, and gives rise to many of the medium’s strengths: for instance, the development of servers, clients, and documents may advance semi-independently, serving different interests.
Users may choose clients that they believe will better serve their needs. In many cases, users have chosen clients that take steps to mitigate the power of advertisers to control the medium: see e.g. the adoption of pop-up blocking (pioneered in Netscape plug-ins and minority browsers like iCab and Opera) and the later adoption of anti-malware technology such as Google Safe Browsing by Firefox and Opera as well as Google’s own Chrome. These choices have strengthened the medium, making it more usable and thus more popular: imagine how unpleasant the web would be today without the pop-up blocking developed 20+ years ago.
When the web pages are called up by the web browser, the HTML file is transferred to the RAM on the user’s device. To display the HTML file, the web browser interprets its content, creating additional data structures. The plaintiff sees the influence on these data structures by the ad blocker as an unauthorized modification of a computer program
This has to be the most idiotic thing I read this week.
“Wearing eye glasses modifies the text in a copyrighted book”
The curl command is a hacking tool for copyright infringement.
Gotta make curl illegal now. Or why stop there? All Http clients! Nothing could go wrong 😊
How very very dare you to modify the contents of this media to your liking, you horrible soulless excuse for a human being.
This has to be the most idiotic thing I read this week.
Landgericht Hamburg enters the room to agree with the plaintiff.
The original idiocy here is the DMCA, this and the other idiocies practised in its name are consequences. Over time the idiocies build up as case law precedents until new and ever more egregious cases are made, some of which stick (as in throw shit at the wall and see what sticks) and the cycle continues. Eventually the only way to root it out becomes new legislation.
That’s all well and good, except this is a German court case and the DMCA doesn’t apply.
I’m not American either, but law precedents are contagious, once enough judges think it’s reasonable, others start to as well, even across borders. A lot of the world runs on Scottish common law at base. If you really want to get to root causes, I’d go with greed, the tendency of the rich to seek rent, and Late Stage Capitalism.
And they’ll do everything to push some kind of DRM to force their crap down our throats.
I wonder when they will start going after screen reader companies for changing how the page looks like for their blind users.
US Supreme Court: “Hold our beers”
Hey there! They are simply being inclusive, blind people are potential customers too and should not miss on any “opportunities”…
Forcing my computer to display ads infringes on my actual property rights as owner of the machine.
It’s beyond the pale that we’re even contemplating letting Imaginary Property “rights” (read: temporary privileges) trump actual property rights, let alone actually doing it.
How dare they use glasses when reading book?
All color blind people are guilty of copyright infringement for every website they view.
Well that’s dystopian as fuck, ads are a legitimate security threat with the amount of malware, scams, and other shady stuff advertisements online frequent contain.
One would think that this is very thin ice for a counter suit, in that how may advertising houses have looked at the source of adblockers to work around them?
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