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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: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday April 23 2015, @04:28AM
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.