Under a strict reading of copyright law, this actually makes sense.
The problem is that the fundamental concept of IP is nonsensical and insane. When applied rationally, it will of course result in wacky results like this.
Betteridge's Law, they aren't on the brink of banning ad blockers; German courts are just going to hear the case again. There's no indication they intend to rule differently, only that the original decision needs more
information.
Who could possibly be in favor of this? Like sure industry lobbying is strong but could any politician really argue they're acting in the interest of their constituents with this?
If the user is legally obligated to allow the ad on their device then the site owner must be legally accountable for what the ad does, for example if it's malware. No passing this on to the ad-network. Their code, their copyright, their malware distribution.
I can't judge the legal aspects. But a significant point here is that Adblock Plus allows you do pay them to get preferential treatment for your ads.
I don't know how much this part affects the legal issues here, but for me that is quite a different situation than a pure ad blocker. There is a coercive element here, if your ad blocker is used widely enough and you take money for preferential treatment.
A friend raised what I consider a very valid point, that ad blockers are assistive technology for people with ADHD. They prevent the web from being an unusable mess of shiny distraction. And as such, in America, blocking ad blockers is a violation of the ADA.
I’m being completely serious here and so is he. I can barely use the web without ad blockers. They make it possible for me to participate in online life. Remove them and you largely remove me. An attack on ad blockers is a direct attack on even the slightly neurodivergent, and should be treated as such.
My question is how do you enforce anything like this? Cookie banners, the accessibility ruling, and now this.
We've had to adhere to the rulings at work; but when I ask the lawyers; "how do you enforce this?" they say as long as you make a best effort you are fine.
Much like the old "piracy" nonsense, I wonder if banning ad blockers would be a net gain for advertisers (if it was possible). Personally I wouldn't go to a site that had any remotely intrusive advertising, even if I wanted to I get too distracted to read the real content.
Less views means fewer network effects - for a small example, fewer people posting and discussing on sites like HN or reddit. And therefore less pull in of those unfortunate people who don't block ads, and less views overall.
I don't know if it actually works out that way, but I do think forcing people to accept the full bore of your annoying site or not use it at all is a double edged sword.
I would rather only see websites without ads, or that explicitly allow ad blocking. Websites with ads are shit anyway, clickbait and slop all the way down. The whole internet has been enshittified by the battles for user attention. Nothing of value is lost if we never see these sites again.
Germany is trying more and more shitty stuff and it wouldn't be far from the government (this one, or the previous one, or the next one) to implement something like this, whether aware of the consequences or not. Lobbyism here is very strong and they try over and over again their tired old lines "fOr ThE cHiLdReN!" and "but, ... but, ... tErRoRiSm!". We can also not trust in our courts to have sufficient expertise or listen to experts, when it comes to these things. We must stop them before they happen.
It is scary to watch, because with Germany's slow bureaucracy, they probably only need to get such a thing through once, and then it would take years of effort of fighting against billions Euros lobbies by the people, because our politicians are so corrupt and bought by them. People would probably have to get to the streets in millions, which is unlikely to happen with "advanced" digital rights topics like ad blocking.
Germany is very much in danger of becoming even worse of a democracy than it is already. I am not quite sure where I read it, but somewhere I recently read that Germany has moved down in democracy ranking to a tainted democracy. Which it is. If politics don't change soon, AfD will get even more votes next time around, and then Europe will have an enemy of Europe in its heart, which as well is the most populous country. Not sure I want to go further into the future of this imagination.
Many countries in the EU or elsewhere, which are still democratic for the most part face similar challenges. I just wish people would finally punish these opportunists and criminals we have in our governments and political parties, by voting for something else. But I guess the average German person is too disconnected and too uninformed and eats it all up every 4 years, instead of voting for progressive parties, to bring some fresh air.
Say what you say but EU/Europeans are overregulating everything with UK trying to end privacy. Regulations like USB C on all electronics is nice but these are not.
Ads have been an arms race for awhile now. If ad creators stop making overly intrusive, CPU sucking ads then perhaps people would be less inclined to use ad-blockers.
Why should I as a user get exposed to garbage that I don't care about in addition to the actual content I'm interested in?
Well, one possible answer is that the content provider only actually provides that content under the condition that I look at the ads. After all, a lot of content providers are businesses and they don't like to give out content for free.
My stance has always been that for 99% of the stuff I consume on the internet, my condition is that I can access it the way I, as the end user / customer, prefer. And if you as the provider insist otherwise, my reaction will almost always be that I won't look at to your garbage ads but instead I'll just go somewhere else for content.
There is not much need for a company like the one selling adblock plus to springer etc. I don't see any court going after ublock origin and there is no reason that ublock origin would be threatened by this in any way. However, the actions from google with manifest v3 are a real threat, as well as any obligation to use real name accounts to access services like newspapers or youtube.
The supreme court actually has rejected most of Axel Springer's² arguments and limited the revision to a single question (AFAICT, IANAL): Are the news websites in question some kind of computer program (protected under Section 8 of the UrhG³). The supreme court argues that the lower court did not sufficiently discuss this question in their ruling.
The supreme court explicitly notes that the lower court should also consider whether Springer actually has the sole rights to the 'computer program'.
Some thoughts:
a) As the supreme court mentioned, Springer might only own (exclusive) copyright to some parts of the computer program. It seems that they embed a lot of other JS code, e.g., Google stuff. This might mean that Springer needs to show that ABP actually modifies Springer's code. If ABP modifies e.g. AdSense code or the code of an open source library that Springer's websites use, Springer's copyright might not be infringed at all.
b) In German copyright law, only works are protected that are created by a human author. (Obviously, the author can also use software to create a protected work.) Given that a lot of JS/CSS code is written by automated rules (or LLMs), rights holders might need to prove that an actual human wrote the code.
c) As posted elsewhere in the thread: the German copyright law explicitly allows people with limited vision or with limited reading ability (not defined precisely in the law) to use assistive technology in order to transfer a work into a more accessible version⁴.
So, ad-blocker companies might argue that they are just providing assistive technology to people with diagnosed ADHD. Copyright holders would then need to go after the users of such software.
(A mentioned above: I am not a lawyer. Copyright law is complicated and interpretations are evolving)
32 comments
[ 7.0 ms ] story [ 64.7 ms ] threadThe problem is that the fundamental concept of IP is nonsensical and insane. When applied rationally, it will of course result in wacky results like this.
Given the other restrictions on internet use in China, it should have come as no surprise, but I had no idea this was the law of the land there.
I don't know how much this part affects the legal issues here, but for me that is quite a different situation than a pure ad blocker. There is a coercive element here, if your ad blocker is used widely enough and you take money for preferential treatment.
What if it does it while showing me an ad for something at the same time?
How does running a bit of software on my computer concern anyone other than me?
I am not a lawyer and I haven't read the court's rulings but this seems assinine!
I’m being completely serious here and so is he. I can barely use the web without ad blockers. They make it possible for me to participate in online life. Remove them and you largely remove me. An attack on ad blockers is a direct attack on even the slightly neurodivergent, and should be treated as such.
We've had to adhere to the rulings at work; but when I ask the lawyers; "how do you enforce this?" they say as long as you make a best effort you are fine.
Wasted effort.
Less views means fewer network effects - for a small example, fewer people posting and discussing on sites like HN or reddit. And therefore less pull in of those unfortunate people who don't block ads, and less views overall.
I don't know if it actually works out that way, but I do think forcing people to accept the full bore of your annoying site or not use it at all is a double edged sword.
Full disclosure: I am German.
It is scary to watch, because with Germany's slow bureaucracy, they probably only need to get such a thing through once, and then it would take years of effort of fighting against billions Euros lobbies by the people, because our politicians are so corrupt and bought by them. People would probably have to get to the streets in millions, which is unlikely to happen with "advanced" digital rights topics like ad blocking.
Germany is very much in danger of becoming even worse of a democracy than it is already. I am not quite sure where I read it, but somewhere I recently read that Germany has moved down in democracy ranking to a tainted democracy. Which it is. If politics don't change soon, AfD will get even more votes next time around, and then Europe will have an enemy of Europe in its heart, which as well is the most populous country. Not sure I want to go further into the future of this imagination.
Many countries in the EU or elsewhere, which are still democratic for the most part face similar challenges. I just wish people would finally punish these opportunists and criminals we have in our governments and political parties, by voting for something else. But I guess the average German person is too disconnected and too uninformed and eats it all up every 4 years, instead of voting for progressive parties, to bring some fresh air.
Well, one possible answer is that the content provider only actually provides that content under the condition that I look at the ads. After all, a lot of content providers are businesses and they don't like to give out content for free.
My stance has always been that for 99% of the stuff I consume on the internet, my condition is that I can access it the way I, as the end user / customer, prefer. And if you as the provider insist otherwise, my reaction will almost always be that I won't look at to your garbage ads but instead I'll just go somewhere else for content.
Or just read a book, ad-free [0].
[0] https://archive.is/KHPwt
The supreme court actually has rejected most of Axel Springer's² arguments and limited the revision to a single question (AFAICT, IANAL): Are the news websites in question some kind of computer program (protected under Section 8 of the UrhG³). The supreme court argues that the lower court did not sufficiently discuss this question in their ruling.
The supreme court explicitly notes that the lower court should also consider whether Springer actually has the sole rights to the 'computer program'.
Some thoughts:
a) As the supreme court mentioned, Springer might only own (exclusive) copyright to some parts of the computer program. It seems that they embed a lot of other JS code, e.g., Google stuff. This might mean that Springer needs to show that ABP actually modifies Springer's code. If ABP modifies e.g. AdSense code or the code of an open source library that Springer's websites use, Springer's copyright might not be infringed at all.
b) In German copyright law, only works are protected that are created by a human author. (Obviously, the author can also use software to create a protected work.) Given that a lot of JS/CSS code is written by automated rules (or LLMs), rights holders might need to prove that an actual human wrote the code.
c) As posted elsewhere in the thread: the German copyright law explicitly allows people with limited vision or with limited reading ability (not defined precisely in the law) to use assistive technology in order to transfer a work into a more accessible version⁴. So, ad-blocker companies might argue that they are just providing assistive technology to people with diagnosed ADHD. Copyright holders would then need to go after the users of such software.
(A mentioned above: I am not a lawyer. Copyright law is complicated and interpretations are evolving)
¹)https://juris.bundesgerichtshof.de/cgi-bin/rechtsprechung/do...
²) big German media conglomerate, not to be confused with SpringerNature
³) https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/BJNR012730965.html#B...
⁴) https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__45b.html