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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the take-back-the-internet dept.

During an outbreak of common sense in a Hamburg, Germany, court it was ruled that.. no, advertisers don't get their own way every time.

Zeit Online GmbH and Handelsblatt GmbH as representatives of the advertising world filed suit against Eyeo GmbH (the owners of AdBlock Plus) claiming that the latter should not be allowed to distribute software (a browser plugin that blocks ads) that disrupts their income stream.

The court did not look favourably on the advertisers' case.

From an article in The Register :

Ben Williams, a director of Eyeo, wrote in a blog: "The Hamburg court decision is an important one, because it sets a precedent that may help us avoid additional lawsuits and expenses defending what we feel is an obvious consumer right: giving people the ability to control their own screens by letting them block annoying ads and protect their privacy."

This has ramifications for another simmering case in neighboring France.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:59PM

    by Covalent (43) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @12:59PM (#173935) Journal

    Well said...but:

    We watch advertising in exchange for "free" services, like TV and Internet. Now I understand that neither of those things are "free" anymore, but that used to be the premise, anyway.

    I also have AdBlock installed, FWIW. I'm just saying the premise of advertising on "your" screen has precedent.

    --
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:19PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:19PM (#173943)

    Is it illegal to commercial skip when watching TV in Germany, at least technically illegal even if never enforced?

    In the 90s I was into american football. Its an interesting sport with all kinds of tactical / strategic / logistical issues. Although that rain puddle is pretty shallow so I got bored of it after a few years. Anyway I used to mute the TV/radio when the commercials blared, is that illegal in Germany?

    I was just recently reading about getting a blue card in .de and it sounds appealing. Every country has their weirdness, and everyone knows everything about the USA weirdnesses, so perhaps this advertising stuff is .de's secret weirdness. Or maybe they got other weirdness.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:15PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @02:15PM (#173976) Homepage Journal

      No, there's no particular advertising fetish in Germany. Which is why the court decided in favor of AdBlock.

      I can only encourage you to give Germany a try. It's a nice country and Germans are nice folk. Do make the effort to learn German, though, or you will forever remain something of an outsider. I worked there for a few years, and enjoyed it a lot.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:37PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @01:37PM (#173955)

    The key thing to remember is that if you aren't directly paying for the service, you are the product, not the customer. In the case of services where you provide all sorts of personal information, that personal information is part of the product, and again you are not the customer.

    And in the world of business, the customer is much more likely to be listened to than the product.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:00PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:00PM (#174051)

      *You are the Consumer, not the Customer

      The proper distinction has existed for ages. Can people stop using the dumb "product" quote?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:03PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:03PM (#174134)

        For instance, If I have a website, let's call it BookFace, and I let you use it for free* because I make money by selling your personal information for money than you/(your information) are/(is) the product.

        You can say they are consumers/(products), it becomes an argument of semantics and pedantics at that point because the information is conveyed. Everyone understands what the other wrote.

        • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:16PM

          by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:16PM (#174137)

          Using proper terms clarifies the relationships:
          The product is the web site (or the TV channel), and more specifically the Ad slots.
          The consumer is you and me
          The customer is the advertiser.

          The customer buys the product at the value set based on the consumer's exposure.

          Now, some consumers can also be customers, if they pay a subscription of any kind. But unless you are talking about packaging their personal info to sell it directly to the highest bidder, the user is NOT the product.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:51PM (#174148)

        I am a citizen, not a consumer.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @09:40AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @09:40AM (#174239)

          Off to the re-education camps with you, 'citizen'...
          Repeat after me: "All glory to our corporate overlords!"

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 22 2015, @03:41PM (#174016)

    We watch advertising in exchange for "free" services, like TV and Internet.

    Speak about yourself. I usually don't watch advertising on TV. When having the choice between either watching the ads or possibly missing a bit of the show if I check too late if the ads are over, I generally choose the second option. Indeed, the ad break may actually cause me to realize that the show wasn't actually worth watching to begin with, and I was just too lazy to switch off; in that sense, the advertisers do me even a favour. ;-)

    Oh, and my internet isn't free, I pay my ISP (but I suspect that you didn't mean "free internet" but "free services on the internet" anyway).

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday April 22 2015, @09:41PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @09:41PM (#174124) Journal

    We watch advertising in exchange for "free" services, like TV and Internet.

    Well, that's the theory.
    But I don't remember agreeing to that, or even being asked to do so. I was not a party to that decision.

    If websites want to embed ads into their own html, served from their own servers, that might be different. Ad blockers would then have to physically change their html to block these.

    But the way it is done these days is to simply instruct MY browser to go fetch an ad from somewhere.
    We are perfectly withing our rights to refuse to do that. We are perfectly within our rights to ask for compensation if we choose to do so.

    If ABP were a honorable company, there wouldn't be such a huge exemption list, or you could sign up to allow their exemptions in exchange for part of the proceeds. (The largest part I might add, since users pay the bandwidth, electrical, and inconvenience costs of ads, while ABP pockets their "protection money". Till this is an option I don't allow their exemption list.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:39PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:39PM (#174144)

      If ABP were a honorable company, there wouldn't be such a huge exemption list, or you could sign up to allow their exemptions in exchange for part of the proceeds. (The largest part I might add, since users pay the bandwidth, electrical, and inconvenience costs of ads, while ABP pockets their "protection money". Till this is an option I don't allow their exemption list.

      Not that I'm defending them per se, but if they didn't have a whitelist I would imagine there would be a lot more people (companies) angry at them. And you know the saying, Don't get angry, get even^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsue somebody.

      Also can't you opt out of it with just a couple clicks? It's like a checkbox in the menu you get when you click the icon. It's practically impossible to make it any easier to opt out.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday April 23 2015, @04:28AM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday April 23 2015, @04:28AM (#174197)

    I'm just saying the premise of advertising on "your" screen has precedent.

    Not exactly. During the evolution of the marketer subcreature, the term captive audience was coined. All advertisers did is recognize a captive audience in a brand new format. It literally took decades for technology to catch up, and remove the captivity part. I have to disagree that the "premise" here is correct, which is really the social contract between the content providers and content consumers. It's anything but certain that we all made an agreement to put up with their bullshit in exchange for anything.

    In essence, that is what all of the arguments of the marketers are. A weak, futile, and entitlement laden plea that time reverse itself and we unlearn all of the technology that freed us from captivity. So the precedent is most certainly not our acceptance of this social contract, of which it never was, but the recognition by all sides there was simply the lack of choice. At no time was the agreement that advertising space was opening up in our private areas, only that you could piss us off with the interruptions to an extent. Of which, you may notice has grown substantially in the last few decades. I think we are down to well less than 20 minutes of actual content per 30 minute window. That's ridiculous.

    I always have to disagree with that. While this did happen before I was born, I disagree that I inherited such an interpretation, which in my mind is just a rephrasing or restatement of our apathy and laziness as a much more nefarious agreement. This alleged agreement is now being conflated with rights of possession by the advertisers. It's evolved from a semi-polite and goofy intermission, to a truly damaging sense of entitlement about what they can do in our private spaces. In between was the move towards an acceptance that it's simply the way the whole thing is funded, and thats-just-the-way-it-is attitude.

    That defeatist attitude is fine and all, but not the acceptance of this beach head into our lives. I recognize no such precedent, or it's implications. At least not in mine, and I will never let their delusions over old advertising models influence my rights of possession and peaceful enjoyment WRT my systems and networks.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @09:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @09:38AM (#174238)

    Now I understand that neither of those things are "free" anymore, but that used to be the premise, anyway.

    So what you're saying is the world has changed and we no longer get things for free... I think it is fair that we are paid to look at advertisements.

    Me, do my own DNS poisoning. If I hear of a domain that is used to serve ads or track me, it gets added to my list of places that tells my machines to look for it at 0.0.0.0!
    The problem with adBlock is that it only works in the browser (and in all fairness, I don't know whether it just *prevents* ads to be shown or whether it prevents the request to be made at all). I don't even want these bastards to see a request from me.