News German court rules ad-blocking A-OK

Good thing too, adblocker does a rather good job of making some sites simply better to use.

I'm completely fine with discrete advertising on the side of a page. Given that google's using all the information they've gathered about me to place suitable ads, I don't mind. Having amazon links to tools, camera lenses or computer bits is actually rather pleasant in a way.

What I absolutely hate though are those annoying, intrusive adverts that sometimes take their place. Bit a while back had one on the top banner where if you accidentally moused over it would expand and start playing sound and effects over the screen area. Nope, not supporting that. Another one are those ruddy video adverts. Imgur currently has some stupid "Fashion Theatre" behind the scenes video advert and it's infuriating. I sometimes need to open up 10-20 albums at a time (for sorting purposes, genuinely need them open all at once) and I swear that advert obliterates my laptop's performance. On my home desktop it isn't an issue thanks to adblock, but I'm not allowed to install it here at work. We have very relaxed rules about what we can and can't do, but sadly installing addons etc. is not part of that list of freedoms.

 

Good stuff,

I don't mind adds, but echoing sentiments of others I can stand adverts being forced down your throat.

 

While I'm glad that I can still do what I want with my own PC I do wonder if the people that brought this law suit really thought things through before it went to court, were they hoping to ban all adblocking software or just ban ABP charging money to be added to the whitelist.

If it's the former then how did they plan to police it? It's not like you could just make ABP illegal and it would vanish from the internet overnight, would they have also wanted to ban the many forks of ABP then move onto other add blocking software.

The latter seems to make a little more sense but then couldn't ABP just say they charge money for the vetting process? Much in the same way most online stores take a cut of the sales to cover their costs.

 

I've chosen not to use an adblocker for a long time, but lately the auto-play videoads have become so annoying that I've started to use it.

Not here though (work machine)
I mean, if I look at my screen real estate while reading Bit, almost half of the screen is ads, but it doesn't hamper my reading experience

 

I don't need to worry about blocking adds at work.
My works web proxy seems to do a good enough job of doing that itself most of the time.

 

@Gareth, That would still leave all the other add blocking software.

It seems it was more an attack on Eyeo GmbH than add blocking per se, it smells of sour grapes, that they had an axe to grind, or they just went after the biggest player.

There are far better alternatives to ABP IMHO.

 

Next lawsuit: TV channels trying to make it illegal to change channel when the adverts are on.

 

Can't see that happening but, I can see PVRs, eg Sky and YouView boxes, being programmed so that you cannot skip through adverts when watching commercial stations, live or recorded.

 

Maybe I've been living in a fantasy world.
I thought the justice system was meant for justice, to right a wrong, at least they used to be. Not meant to be used by companies to make a profit.

I like my world better, clouds are made of cotton candy, the rivers are full of lemonade and the houses are gingerbread.

 

There is a problem with tactics like that, all the brands have to blink at the same time or face a wall of 0-star reviews and returns from people calling the product faulty.

Trying to control people's leisure habits is a fool's errand, Microsoft learned that with the DRM strategy on the Xbone, whichever PVR box tries will learn it too.

 

Only recently started using adblock plus, it's awesome, I disable it for places I like & use regular like here.

 

We have that in Germany, thank you.

There's public broadcast, and there's private broadcast.

All private broadcasters are in an alliance, where, in order to receive HDTV, you need to be part of. Cable or Sattelite, doesn't matter, all private HDTV (720) are blocked unless you subscribe.

Part of the contract is that the unencrypting devices (your cable or sattelite box) do not support skipping ads, be it recorded or timeshift.

Thx very much, I'll keep watching SDTV (576), which is free and not limited in this way.

Oh, you can of course get around this, by changing the ROM's on your devices, thus voiding warranties.

 

Does anybody really use click-through ads these days, given the prevalence of fake ones/phishing etc.?

 

Im using adblock also, simply i hate adds that slow down a website to load. If I want an add, I will allow it otherwise i never allow it.

 

Corky made me fart chuckling!......."I thought the justice system was meant for justice, to right a wrong, at least they used to be. Not meant to be used by companies to make a profit.

The courts sole mission is to keep the status quo. Basically do what Dave says and keep the corporate money flowing to the right people.