The battle over the Brave web browser has begun. A group of seventeen newspaper publishers (including Dow Jones, the Washington Post, and the New York Times), have sent and co-signed a "cease and desist" letter to the company behind the Brave web browser, (headed by Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla and developer of JavaScript).
... the 17 newspaper-publishing companies that cosigned the cease and desist letter [PDF] sent to Eich on Thursday say that this business model is "blatantly illegal" because they claim Brave is profiting from the "$5 billion" a year the industry spends on funding journalism.
The publishers argue that Brave's advertising-replacement plan would constitute copyright infringement, a violation of the publishers' terms of use, unfair competition, unauthorized access to their sites, and a breach of contract.
The letter compares Brave's business model to a company simply stealing their articles and pasting them on their own websites for profit.
For those that don't recall the announcement of the Brave web browser:
Brendan Eich's new browser, Brave, announced its launch early this year. The browser — available on iOS, Android, OS X, Windows, and Linux — has ad-blocking software baked into it, which blocks all ads by default and replaces them with its own ads that it says load quicker and "protect data sovereignty [and] anonymity" of users by blocking tracking pixels and cookies.
With Brave, publishers get around 55% of revenues: 15% go to Brave, 15% go to the partner that serves the ads, and 10% to 15% goes back to the user, who can choose to make bitcoin donations to their favorite publishers in order to get an ad-free experience on their websites...
Previous Coverage: Former Mozilla CEO Launches Brave, a Privacy Oriented Browser
Related Stories
Former Mozilla CEO Launches Brave, a New Adblock Browser
Brave Software, a new startup by Brendan Eich (creator of the JavaScript programming language and former CEO of Mozilla), unveiled the new Brave browser today for Windows, Mac OS X, Android, and iOS. The Brave browser is currently in beta, based on Chromium, and aims to block most advertisements, while still potentially making money for publishers.
Brave will block all non-native ads, trackers, analytics scripts and impression-tracking pixels. However, the browser will eventually insert advertisements of its own, but which Brendan Eich claims to be unintrusive, with no persistent user id or highly re-identifiable cookie. The aim of Brave isn't to create a list of approved advertisers, or to aggressively pursue ad dollars: "We hope our users will form a valuable enough audience that our browser-side anonymous targeting will get ads from the buy side organically. We don't want to play games."
Beyond privacy protection, Eich promises Brave's browser will come with a speed boost: It loads pages two to four times faster than other smartphone browsers and 1.4 times faster than other browsers for personal computers.
[Continues...]
The Brave Browser by former Mozilla CEO and JavaScript developer Brendan Eich has begun testing opt-in ads and integrating Tor into private tabs.
From gHacks:
One of the key ideas behind Brave was to replace the current advertisement system of the Internet with a better one. Brave wanted to establish its own system that shares the advertisement revenue between publishers, users, and the company.
Brave uses its own currency and platform for that. BAT, Basic Attention Tokens, has been integrated into Brave Payments last year and some users started to use it to distribute BAT to publishers and creators anonymously. Brave funds this currently if you opt-in; this means that you do get a monthly budget of 15 BAT (about 4.41 USD) that you can distribute to websites you visit.
[...] The company announced the start of opt-in advertisement trials yesterday. Users need to leave a comment on the Brave forum and may be selected for the trial when they do.
Brave wants to do things differently in regards to advertisement and the two core difference to the existing advertising model are the following ones:
- Brave pays users about 70% of the gross advertising revenue in BAT. Users can use BAT to reward sites they visit or exchange it for other currency in the future.
- Brave's advertising model values user privacy. Instead of tracking users, it is downloading a set of ads to the user system based on region and language, and displays the most appropriate ad using local matching.
The advertisement option will be opt-in and consent-based according to Brave. Users who don't want to see advertisement don't need to change anything as ads won't be displayed to them.
From PC Gamer:
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @06:51AM
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:43AM
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:51AM
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:10AM
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @06:59AM
All these dirty, shitty schemes to try to sell crap to you. I pray for the day the "internet giants" decide there's no money in it and go away, and we return to a 1996-era internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:15AM
1996, I remember it well. President Clinton was abducted by aliens and Duke Nukem was sent to rescue him. Good thing we got him back too, because it wasn't until 1998 that Clinton signed the DMCA into law; then we finally got nice things like internet radio stations that could operate openly without being sued, and safe harbor protection finally meant forum sites wouldn't get taken down if users posted entire song lyrics or video files of pirated movies and tv shows.
1996 sucked ass. Give me the Digital Millennium internet.
(Score: 3, Touché) by julian on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:19AM
Then I have some good news for you! As wages are driven lower and lower, and fewer people have jobs at all, there won't be any point in advertising most products--no one will be able to afford them.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:21AM
If no one will be able to afford products, why then, we'll just advertise services! Advertising is a service. It's services all the way down.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:59AM
Advertising is a service
... in the agricultural sense.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 09 2016, @02:33PM
Orly? Looks more like a service in the sexual sense. Girls on call, to stroke your ego, in the hopes of influencing your spending decisions. Unlike real honest prostitutes, you never get off - these girls just work hard to keep you excited.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:30AM
Never underestimate businessmen.
Note there seems to be an income tax prep service in damn near every strip mall?
It seems around here, every time some mom&pop shop goes out of business, a payday or title loan store takes their place. Love that dancing kangaroo! While the other one has a logo that looks to me exactly like a pair of handcuffs.... [paydaymoneycenters.com].
I really hate to see all these people getting into debt... trying to keep up with the Joneses.
We just had a big sports event nearby, thousands of people showed up. I wonder how many of those people were spending good money to see a man hit a ball with a stick when they had outstanding debt... if this economy takes a tumble again, the banks no longer have any leverage to get us out of it, and those people will remember surrendering their cash to the stadium cashier while letters arrive in their mailbox about debts due and foreclosure. The only way we little people are going to put any real pressure on our Congress to cut taxes is to get the business community behind us, and the only way thats gonna happen is if we quit going to the loan people everytime a businessman hikes his price. We have to decide to forego the business offering and tell the businessman how much money we paid in tax, and there is none left for him.
Businessmen, thinking someone as little as listened to a song without payment, got Congress to act and pass the DMCA. Now, if we can get businessmen worked up over the draining of liquidity from the people who actually spend it, we might be able to get them to get Congress to think twice about taxing people having less than, say, 50K$/year to spend..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:02AM
Funny, around there when the businesses go out of business they stay out of business and leave vacant spaces. Lots of vacant spaces no one wants to fill.
People don't go to baseball games to see men hit things with sticks. People go to baseball games to be around other people who go to baseball games. It's not a sporting event so much as it's a social event for social people to be social. And when social people run out of money they go cyberbegging on social media and go fishing on dating sites for free dinners and sleep on friends couches. When antisocial people run out of money they leech off the neighbors wifi and eat food stamps and die in the gutter.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday April 09 2016, @03:40PM
Thank you for that insight on baseball games, I had never thought of it that way. That fully explains why social people like it and I don't.
There is one team sport I do like though: Battle of the Nations.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 10 2016, @03:14PM
While I think that's generally true...
I'm fairly antisocial, not interested in going out to socialize, but I *LOVE* baseball. The game itself, the game of anticipation and inches. I wish to watch it without the distraction of a crowd.
Then again, I freely admit to being a freak. :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Sunday April 10 2016, @08:59PM
I've been to a few live sporting events, and while it's something I only do a few times a year, I find it worth it. I go with a few friends and we drink some beer and have a good time.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday April 09 2016, @09:53PM
In the city that I live in there is a furniture store that goes out of business every year. After 30 years it's still there.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 10 2016, @03:18PM
I thought that's how ALL furniture stores operated... California has some law where if you declare you're going out of business, you're required to do so; you can't use it as bait and switch. This has accomplished precisely nothing; the same stores still hold their annual going-out-of-business sale (and sometimes it seems to be a year-round condition). I haven't looked into the particulars, but I presume they get around the CA law by just killing and restarting the corporation as often as necessary.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:07AM
(-1, macroeconomically illiterate crank)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:34AM
(-1, microeconomically illiterate crank)
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:44AM
Webrings, yeah!
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Saturday April 09 2016, @01:40PM
I miss those. You'd find your way to one site and then there'd be dozens of others available. Most of them were crap, but then again, most of sites now are crap and they spy on you.
It's ludicrous to me that they're arguing that stripping away ads is piracy. Removing materials being distributed by somebody else at the request of the user being piracy is a dangerous precedent to set. What's next, being forced sit there while ads play on my computer screen?
(Score: 2) by BananaPhone on Tuesday April 12 2016, @03:25PM
we have that already with youtube.
In 1996 it was the DVD player.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:01PM
we return to a 1996-era internet.
You don't mean 1993? Specifically August or before?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Touché) by pgc on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:29AM
Where do they get the idea that anyone is required to load their shitty JavaScript?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:32AM
because Brendan Eich invented shit fucking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @07:58AM
There are many JavaScript developers, but only one developer of JavaScript.
THE ONE
THE ONLY
BRAVE BRENDAN EICH
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:17AM
It's not brave to leverage brand recognition by stealing the name of another language and sticking -Script on the end. It's the cowardly approach of the bottom-feeding scum-sucking asshole.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:46AM
Without JS we wouldn't have the sweetest perfection that is Node.js.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:21AM
Javascript was initially supposed to be a "glue" language to allow Java Web Applets to talk interact with the DOM / events.
That's why it's Java + script. It's a scripting language, and as such zero consideration was made for performance. It was assumed that Java would handle all the heavy lifting.
Sun dropped the ball. Instead of creating a fast stripped down embeddable VM for the web (maybe something like Lua), they dragged the entire huge Java API, all of its plumbing, the kitchen sink, bathtub and toilet -- and thus exposed to any site all the attack surface of the entire Java library.
Fast forward to today: We are standardizing on a bytecode for the web, but it's not Java. Web Assembly is a lean, mean, instruction set based on an Abstract Syntax Tree -- and it's still objectively shit. Because it gets compiled to ASM.js primitives, and while that does away with the performance killing JS prototype system (where any object can rewrite itself and the behavior of all other instances at any time), and avoids using the slow as fuck JS garbage collector, allowing the code to be somewhat turned into (inefficient) machine code: It still has stupid slow shit like, every time you access memory you also AND the address with a mask rather than simply spin off a process and give the code free reign of itself.
So, it wasn't exactly "riding on the coat tails" as it was: Here's a shitty glue language, but don't worry, we'll probably get rid of once Sun builds us an embeddable Java... Then Java became a security nightmare, and JS was the only thing there. We still use it, not because of any merit the language has, but because it's there and we need to do some client side stuff.... You know, because browsers are becoming akin to Java VMs, hence "web apps". So, might as well just drop the web, start over, use Apps for everything -- few if any sites are "webpages" anymore, all the sites are webapps today anyway. Including this one. So, might as well engineer a proper safe VM for thick client multimedia applications. That's what I said 10 years ago. Now Android and iOS exist... but they still have shitty slow browser running on an embedded computer using the slowest language besides brainfuck as a scripting language... /facepalm.
TL;DR: The name wasn't stolen, it just wasn't supposed to be used sans Java.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:13AM
Javascript was initially supposed to be a "glue" language to allow Java Web Applets to talk interact with the DOM / events.
Thank you for the clarifying post, Mr Eich. I'm sure everything you say is true and not completely fabricated crap. Truly you are the only one who knows the truth, and everyone else is ignorant of the history of LiveScript which was renamed to JavaScript as a marketing scam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:01PM
If you could go back and kill Brendan Eich as a baby, would you do it?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:03AM
Wait, doesn't copyright infringement actually require copying?
Well, the publishers can of course write whatever they want into their terms of use (well, almost; I guess if they wrote in their terms of use that by using their site you agree to kill the president, they'd be in deep trouble). Whether those rules are actually enforcible is, of course, a different question.
Competition? Last I checked, the newspapers were not in the browser business. And I doubt the makers of Brave are in the news business.
It doesn't make any accesses that the other web browsers don't do either, does it?
Breach of contract? Which contract?
That said, I cannot imagine why one would install a browser that replaces ads with its own instead of installing something that blocks ads completely.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:25AM
No, Brave is in the "ad revenue skimming" business, that's for sure.
...
I have mixed feeling about this.
On one side, I dislike obnoxious advertising... so, at the first sight, I'd say "the enemy of my enemy"...
However, I can deal with online advertising and tracking all by myself; so Brave isn't going to help me.
On the other side, until now there's no solution for paying professional journalists (the news business is still a mess), and I feel we (as a society) still need them - if Brave is skimming their income source, then it doesn't seem so friendly to my interest after all.
(but, if I choose to disable ads and what not by myself, am I any better then Brave?)
I'm confused, man, all confused. So, I'll continue as until now and forget about Brave... a waste of time for me.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ticho on Saturday April 09 2016, @08:38AM
There is no good side here, just a crook trying to outcrook the established crooks. And we get to watch. Bring popcorn!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:15AM
Er no.
Brave is definitely the good guy here. But facile "everybody is bad" thinking like you just demonstrated will probably doom them.
Here is why you are wrong: Brave is not just about replacing ads with different ads, their primary goal is to replace the entire ad-funded publishing model with a user-funded model. They are just trying to do it in baby steps because the end goal is too hard for most regular people to wrap their heads around.
With Brave you have two choices:
The ad replacement is the stick to make the websites sign up with Brave, the revenue sharing (whether it is from ads or from subscription fees) is the carrot.
Big websites are shitting their pants because of the rapid growth in ad blocking - even MS and Apple are now including ad-blocking in their browsers. Ad-funded websites are marching like lemmings to the cliff's edge of revenue collapse. Brave offers them a win-win - they can survive the ad-blocking apocalypse and the internet gets a lot more free and private because without ads there is no call for the massive tracking and profiling databases that are doing the NSA's job for them.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Saturday April 09 2016, @01:09PM
um, so taking advantage of a fucked up system to interject yourself to skim ad revenue, OR, extort ad revenue, is a good thing ? ? ?
*especially* when adblockers, noscript, etc are pretty easy, cheap, effective tools to do it yourself ? ? ?
no, i think the other poster is right, simply new crooks looking to out-crook established crooks...
maybe we should consider mending a crooked system instead of capitulating to it...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @02:40PM
Who is this "we" you speak of?
Seriously, who do you think is going to "mend" the system?
It is stupid, bombastic people like yourself who expect perfect solutions in some utopian version of the world rather than deal with the actual circumstances on the ground who enable the current system to continue indefinitely.
Get your head out of your ass, Brave has come up with a solution and a path to get there from here. It isn't perfect, but anyone who expects perfection hasn't paid attention to the world they are actually living in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @06:54PM
Actually it is you who has a head up your butt, and I at least hope its your own!
Much of the internet is run without ads, with businesses / organizations / individuals paying for their own hosting. Many sites that people use have a subscription option. Removing the advertising model from the internet will do away with some free services, but much of the net will still exist. Worst case, this will inspire advertising networks to get their shit together. Websites will quickly learn that spamming pages full of ads is a bad user experience.
Personally I'd like to see the house of cards fall down, the stuff I care about will still be there. The ad infested shitpages I already back out of as fast as I can click/tap.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @01:46PM
I disagree. I think Brave is taking the works of others and inserting their own ads. They then say "we'll give you some of the money we earned on what we took from you and you can be happy with that." The guys who "protect" my local bar call it a charitable donation; I disagree with them as well.
I can see how copyright can be used against Brave. They are copying content from the websites and replacing the ads, which can be viewed as a derived work. I feel the same way about ISPs that replace or insert ads into pages.
I hate advertising more than the next guy. I feel that when someone wants me to buy something more than I want to own it that there is something amiss. The advertising world thrives on deniability based on weasel words and douche baggery. They all belong at the bottom of the ocean along with the politician, lawyers, used car salesmen, union officials and the guys that shake down my local bar.
Ugh. We're going to need a bigger boat.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Saturday April 09 2016, @11:31AM
" until now there's no solution for paying professional journalists"...what are these things of which you speak? Because all I have seen since Reagan deregulated media company ownership is propaganda by one of a handful of megacorps pushing their agendas. If they all die out? I don't know about anybody else but I know I won't shed a single tear, as Soviet era Pravda was more honest than the talking heads spewing corporate bullshit that we get from "Mainstream media" in the USA.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @12:59PM
Fortunately, USA doesn't extends over the whole world (even if the USA "Mainstream media" do have penetration in some other countries - nevermind, Murdoch won't live forever).
Unfortunately, the professional journos are impacted (by the Internet) no matter the country. Especially, I'd hate to see the investigative journalism disappear (we'd finish in the same shitty situation as the USA).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday April 09 2016, @03:01PM
As far as I can tell, even investigative journalism ends up pushing one group's agenda over another's.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:40PM
May be so, but that's not the point.
The point is, in their march towards the end, they uncover and publish on a reality which others want hidden.
As long as there are two or more competing agendas, we'll get to know chunks of reality and have chances to decide a bit better where our interest stay.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 10 2016, @05:03AM
Exactly, all we see any more is "investigation" that start from a "my group is good, the other side is evil" assumption that is soooo filled with spin it might as well have been paid for by a political party. Can you even remember the last time you read a news story that wasn't obviously slanted to one side or the other? Because I can't. All I see is basically opinion pieces wrapped up in whatever "facts" they can find to back up their already made up minds.
To me that isn't news, that is propaganda, and I have ZERO desire to pay for propaganda no matter which side it is for or against.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 09 2016, @03:17PM
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. Not more, not less.
Well, there is: Subscribe the newspaper.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:02PM
I have very seriously considered this. While I abhor advertising in all of its forms, I recognize the value of true independent investigative journalism. I want to encourage that... but where?
Perhaps what we really need is to create a massive crowd funded investigative journalism feed. Not a site, but a feed, where anyone else can attach to it. Google can regurgitate it for all I care, bloggers can link to it. It just investigates and reports the news, providing the information for free to anyone that can communicate with the servers.
What's the best newspaper that you know of that can be subscribed to digitally? Heck, if they were really good I'd consider them shipping me dead trees.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 10 2016, @03:25PM
Never forget that newspapers are supported primarily by advertising, not by subscriptions.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:53PM
How many subscriptions any S/N netizen would have to pay to still make S/N discussions possible? (many of us actually RTFA).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:21PM
Don't have mixed feelings. This is very much a debate about whether the means to an end are justified. Advertising isn't justified, nor do we need concerns ourselves about their survival. Advertisers can go to hell as their entire lives are predicated on the morally unjustified, unsolicited, and unwelcome monetization of my captured attention. They're parasites that evolved a sense of entitlement about their existence, not realizing its genesis occurred due to our lack of choice and freedom.
Brave is proposing, at least at first, to keep the advertisers alive by providing a channel for it. Additionally, and quite flagrantly, they're outright stealing a market away with an impressive transfer of wealth. Specifically, from the advertisers to Eich's wallet. That's perfectly fine, as that's Capitalism. However, Eich doesn't get to pretend that he is not an advertiser. The blow is supposed to be softened because he won't track us, invade our privacy, and would better vet the javascript code he would be running on his browser, in our systems? Maybe he can pull it off, maybe not, but Eich is still an advertiser.
I have no interests in perpetuating the advertising industry.
Supporting content creators and journalists can be accomplished without the need of an advertising distribution network. Brave could just charge credit cards $9.99 a month to use their browser, and I would voluntarily reveal to them I visit Soylent News. As I'm paying them to pay Soylent News for me, I'm not concerned about the privacy. Brave should literally be a cyberspace CPA, and nothing more, if it wanted to help out publishers and small website operators. If done right, Soylent News would not be able to correlate an aggregate payment with an IP address. You would need to trust Brave with their security however.
We have two feelings about this. They're not mixed :)
1) Fuck advertising
2) I want to help journalism be better
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 09 2016, @10:49PM
As you already noticed [soylentnews.org], there's hardly a way to do it.
Suppose one would pay subscription to make this happen... well, the present state of facts reveals that one likely needs tens of subscriptions (read: information sources) to stay informed - the very usefulness of S/N is based on this.
It's beyond my financial power to support tens of subscriptions.
Likely, a "micropay per article" would better serve the purpose than ads.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 10 2016, @05:32AM
The publishers argue that Brave's advertising-replacement plan would constitute copyright infringement,
Wait, doesn't copyright infringement actually require copying?
Back when it was ISPs trying to inject their own ads, everyone on Slashdot was crying copyright infringement as the ISP was changing the design of their site. This browser is doing the exact same thing. If the web developer spent some type trying to get a good layout compared to just reusing a common template, then the site is automatically copyrighted. If it was wrong for an ISP to do it, its wrong for the browser to do it. If it's ok for a browser to do it, it'll be ok for the ISPs to do it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday April 10 2016, @07:10AM
Even if that should have been true (I doubt it; not that I doubt you could dig out some posts to that effect, but I doubt that there was any sort of consensus on that specific point), I didn't, and therefore it's not a valid counter argument.
"People on Slashdot once claimed the opposite, therefore you are wrong" simply doesn't fly.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday April 11 2016, @05:03PM
The difference between those changes being done by the ISP or by the end user is HUGE.
If the newsstand agrees to sell Time magazine, then pastes their own ads all over Time's in every issue they sell, that's a problem. If I buy a copy of Time magazine for myself and cut or change all the ads in my personal copy, that's not. The difference is that Brave isn't really providing a service, they're just providing a tool. The ISP can't change ads, because you're paying for that service and therefore they're changing *and redistributing* copyrighted material. But once it's on my computer, if I'm not distributing it further, I can do whatever I want to it. Your copyright does not override my property rights. You can stop me from distributing copies, but you can't legally prevent me from altering what you have already given to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @01:40PM
Sure. And your solution is?
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday April 09 2016, @01:48PM
"How dare anyone profit off of journalism." -Publishers?
Isnt this better than full adblock or paywalls that cause a website to become irrelevant?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 09 2016, @02:17PM
I have a choice between using a different browser and blocking all ads or using Brave, getting ads and enabling Brave to skim off the top? I'm choosing to block all ads but thanks for asking.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Sunday April 10 2016, @01:04AM
Oh yeah, I'm going to continue blocking all ads all the time as well.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Sunday April 10 2016, @02:04AM
I am totally blind & use a Screen Reader Environment (SRE) to browse the web. Since I can't see the "pretty pictures" in the first place, I use the Accessibility options of my browser to never load them in the first place. Which means the picture ads never get seen by me in either the literal or metaphorical sense.
Next I value my privacy & have configured my browser to prompt me for first party cookies, but to auto reject all third party cookies. This means all the WebBug tracking cookies, single pixel beacons, et al never get to my system. No cookie means you don't get to know where I've been because that's none of your damn business.
I also value my security, so I've configured my machine to use the HOSTS file... With Extreme Prejudice. If an ad server is known to me, then it's listed in the HOSTS file, & I'll never interact with it again. I've configured my browser not to load scripts of any kind, so the ActiveX, JavaScripting, or attempts to use PowerShell, VB, or anything else will fall flat on it's face. Why? Because Advertisers have used such avenues to infect & trash my computer in the past, & I'll not allow it to happen again. I have ALSO configured my browser not to load material not hosted on the site, so all the cross site exploits fail, as does your ability to serve me ads not hosted on YOUR server. If you can't, won't, or refuse to vet the advertisement you're sending me, then I won't let it get on to my computer.
I have made sure my browser & SRE function to allow me to visit & use the sites I normally visit, such as my bank, Soylent, & others. I can listen to Youtube streaming videos just fine. I can do my online shopping at various retailers' sites, & Get Shit Done. However I do *NOT* get to see advertisements, both because I can't *see* them in the first place, & also because I refuse to load them. Why? Because your auto playing, OBSCENELY LOUD, audio/video, pop up/under, whole page "canvas", in your face, security raping, complete waste of bandwith Crapvertisements waste my time, make me PAY to download them over my limited bandwidth connection (hello data cap, I'm looking at you), and tend to make my SRE shit itself. I can't mute that ad without also muting my SRE. I can't skip the ad because I can't SEE to use a mouse to aim the pointer at some miniscule bit of pixel X in one corner. I can't keep updating my system every ten seconds just in case your ad server is ALSO serving up the latest zero day exploit, so I maintain my security by blocking all your ads.
It sucks, I'd like to support you, but until YOU try being SMARTER, I won't play any NICER. You have repeatedly, constantly, willfully, created a situation where I have to compromise my privacy & security in order to have your idiotic ads shoved down my throat. Well no longer. I'm not your partner, I refuse to swallow, & I'll tear it off if you try sticking it in my face. As it is you can go FUCK YOURSELF with it, because it's not going to be allowed access THERE either.
This is your bed you've made, now you get to lay in it. Don't complain about the shitty smell, you did it to yourself when I refused to let you crawl into mine.
*Rude gesture involving both hands, my Navigation Cane, my SRE, & the horse you rode in on*
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 10 2016, @03:33PM
I used to support several users with very limited vision, and some elderly users, and they have pretty much the same problems for the same reasons -- even tho not using an SRE. I would add to your list the undernourished menus that not only require javascript, but also perfect dexterity with the mouse (and I've seen some that not only assumed an insane screen size and resolution, but also apparently assumed the mouse had particular settings for DPI and response time).
I've about concluded all developers need to experience their work on a 386 with a 2400 baud modem before they release it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.