He did Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft

[Prorootect]

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James Cridland's blog did Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft .. topic about James Cridland's thoughts ..


A controversial voice in the discussion: Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft: on james.cridland.net: http://james.cridland.net/blog/piracy-and-ad-blockers-are-both-theft/

In comments:
'There’s a reason why people feel it’s OK to use ad blockers – because most digital advertising is monumentally rubbish.
You can equate it to theft, but that idea didn’t work for video piracy, even when legal users were forced into watching those terrible anti-piracy adverts.
Or you can accept that it’s human nature and therefore:
1. Attempt to improve advertising standards.
or
2. Attempt to monetise is less irritating ways.'

- I'm with your thoughts Dan Thornton.
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[Hungry Man]

Except blocking ads is legal... and TiVo is legal... and walking away during commercials is legal... and hiding an advertisement with your hand is legal...

If they want me to stop blocking ads it's the same with piracy - make it more convenient. Ads generally get hacked and infect computers. They're often loud and take up space. I'll happily stop blocking them if I feel that they're secure and light.

With piracy it's the same. If I want to watch somethign I have to either go out and buy it or wait for it to be delivered. This is decent, but I usually just want to watch something right then and there. So they should make a service that incorporates that.

 

[HeffeD]

Ad blocking is not theft...

Unless of course you are talking about how those running the ads are stealing the bandwidth that I'm paying for...

A webmaster has every right to put ads on their page, and I have every right to block them.

If someone is going to argue that I'm stealing their content by reading their page and not viewing the ads, I'm going to point out that I've stolen nothing.

They are the ones that published it on the internet! They are the ones that set up the faulty business model that they could make a living from putting ads on their website. I'm doing them the favor of taking time out of my schedule to read what they've written. (And paying for the bandwidth I've used to read their page, as I've pointed out earlier) I don't have to do this. I can more than likely find several pages that have much the same content.

If they truly feel their content is worth money, then by all means, write a book and sell it! There's likely a very good reason that you're self-publishing your articles on your website...

They could also switch to a paid subscription format and see how well that works out for them. I can't think of a single page (even my favorites that I visit daily) that has info I would actually pay for.

And as Hungry Man pointed out, externally supplied ads are often an infection vector. It's simply not worth it for me to potentially open up my machine to infection so you can make some money off of me...

 

[iPanik]

Ok to start with, there is no theft going on here. By definition, theft is the act of depriving someone of their property so they no longer have it.
By no stretch of the word is that what's going on here.

As it has already been pointed out, this is all about convenience. Most people pirate movies and games because that is more convenient than anything the providers can offer.
In the ad world, most people block the ads because the ads are big, heavy, loud and generally getting in the way (I am looking at you Flash). That is not very convenient and therefore blocked.

The providers do have limited options when dealing with this, so i understand their frustration.
I remember when a danish newspaper decided to block all users who had ad-blockers installed. That strategy only lasted about a week since, as they found out the hard way, people just stopped coming.

Also i have a question regarding this: A lot of sites are using social media plugins as a way of getting more visitors and hence more ad-clicks. If i block those social media plugins, will that also make the sites sharpen their pitchforks?