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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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday April 22 2015, @04:40PM
As I've pointed out before, ads aren't really the problem. Tracking is the problem. Running FireFox in "stealth mode" with AdBlock, NoScript, Ghostery, and other extensions is a way to stop third parties from tracking you. That's the real issue here.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acharax on Wednesday April 22 2015, @05:00PM
Tracking isn't the only real issue with ads, ad firms are prime vectors for driveby malware installs and have been so for a very, very long time because they don't care what gets distributed through their networks (and refusing to be held responsible for any resulting damages) as long as they get paid enough, which is a much bigger threat at the end of the day as far as I see it.
I don't believe for a second most of these firms have any real review process, and if they do, allot more than one or two interns to the task of briefly skimming over 1000 or so submissions. Hell, it'd be very easy to curtail most of this by returning to simple unobtrusive text and banner ads, but serving active content is much, much more lucrative because those ads are harder for the average Joe to ignore.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday April 23 2015, @06:40AM
Isn't it a crime to distribute malware?
So you could have ClamAV look over all your ads, then if it finds some malware it files an automated report with CERT.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @09:51AM
Running FireFox in "stealth mode" with AdBlock, NoScript, Ghostery, and other extensions is a way to stop third parties from tracking you. That's the real issue here.
That's a nice illusion you've got there... be a shame if something happened to it.
While what you suggest goes a long way, sadly it doesn't go *all* the way. They still fingerprint your browser using a variety of means (canvas, installed plug-ins & fonts, screen dimensions & color depth, etc...) and then they also use your IP/mac to match you... See, these fuckers won't stop, ever. You may need to extend your set of tools with an anonymizing proxy as well.
I agree that the tracking is the real issue because the reason they track is to manipulate you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @03:16PM
There are also extensions to disrupt the fingerprinting nonsense, which I use.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @03:42PM
Please elaborate because I would like to add them to my list of extensions to run (not trolling, genuinely asking)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 23 2015, @08:25PM
Well, I'm using RequestPolicy; that way my browser doesn't even contact their servers. So how would they track me?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.