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Germany 1 : AdBlock Plus 1 : Advertisers 0

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

juggs writes:

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: 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.