'Ad Blocking Is Not Piracy' Decision Overturned by Top German Court
torrentfreak.com123 points by gslin 2 days ago
123 points by gslin 2 days ago
This URL used to host an FBI recommendation to use ad blockers for personal security.
https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624
It's gone now. I wonder if that's a policy choice.
Edit: It just moved to https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221
The FBI recommends individuals take the following precautions...
Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.The FBI caring more about people's rights than the German justice system? That would be an interesting twist.
I think at any large org you're going to get folks whose job it is to write up good advice and they do it sincerely and the content is produced and if it says "use an ad blocker" there it is.
Meanwhile others at the same org may have different feelings based on what they're tasked to do.
It's just a human organization thing.
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I once worked at a company where HR was tasked with helping employees de-stress / relax. One group organized free lunches and even an outing or two. They were sometimes naive, but seemed like sincere and good faith efforts.
Later the company was reviewing some kind of expenditures and for whatever reason a separate group in HR became involved. They noticed that some of our 24/7 tech support staff didn't attend some of these lunches or outings. Of course they didn't all the events occurred during the work day and someone had to be on the phones and others worked weekends or nights or etc.
This other HR wanted it noted on their performance review as a negative that they didn't participate in HR de-stressing events ... pure madness (thankfully it didn't happen).
Two different groups, same org, conflicting choices.
I guess that is a bit of a misunderstanding of the separation of powers. This court is the highest civil/criminal court which only decides precisely on the text of the law. It has IMHO less interpretation freedom than Germanys supreme Court. Also as far I understand it only sends back the decision to the next lower court because it did not weight the argument that HTML might be code. Copyright on software in Germany is btw strangely different from artistic copyright in many parts. I can imagine that police or the the BSI would share the FBI's opinion. However, I doubt that even if this goes through, politicians will see a need to chance the law or make it more precise in this case. Actually much worse is Germany's hacker law, which endangers pretty much every security research. Although many people acknowledge the problem and there were ridiculous legal cases, there has been so little movement to abandon it.
https://reclaimthenet.org/germany-rejects-us-free-speech-cri...
Germany is jailing people for memes, raiding homes over jokes, and fining pensioners for calling politicians idiots. The government calls it “fighting hate.”
We've seen what happens if you have completely unlimited speech. One time last century in Germany, and one time in the USA right now.
Germany's going too far in the opposite direction now, though. I'm actually okay with the rule against insulting people as long as everyone knows that's the rule (note that you can't insult anyone, not just politicians) since it doesn't affect quality discourse yet it keeps low-quality discourse (the kind that dragged the USA into the mud) down. The way they're applying it to discussion about Israel is currently a problem. That's a separate law from the insult one. They're claiming that any criticism of Israel's actions is antisemitic hate speech, which is of course illegal.
Note that supporting the principle doesn't mean I support the implementation. If it were up to me it would be only a slap on the wrist fine except in very severe cases (like organizing a hate protest) and I don't know what level of checks and balances would be enough to ensure the classification of "hate" doesn't devolve into what it has become.
There's a big difference between creating an atmosphere of hate against vulnerable minorities, and and criticizing a minister of economics.
Criticism of the government is absolutely vital. It's the very reason why free speech is so important. And that seems to be what the article is addressing.
Using "free speech" to silence and persecute minorities, and create a hostile atmosphere for them, is the opposite of free speech, abusing the space it was granted by free speech, and inevitably leads to serious restrictions on free speech, as we're currently seeing in the US.
These two things are not the same.
>> criticizing a minister
But using memes with real Nazi for this, in Germany, is too much. And they got a fine, not a prison term. Fair enough.
Memes are not critique, they are often (as in this case) just an attack on the personal level. If they are harmless, no one would take them seriously - but calling someone a nazi is an insult in Germany, so everyone who is offended by it, can sue.
It wasn't for criticising the minister, it was for insulting him. You're allowed to say "Robert Habeck is incredibly wrong on these particular points, has been consistently wrong for his entire career, and he is poorly suited to being the minister for economics." You're not allowed to say "Robert Habeck is a moron." It's like the Hacker News comment guidelines, but for real life!
One major plot hole: Despite the law ostensibly applying equally to everyone, there is zero chance that Robert Habeck would ever get in trouble for saying "Martijn Vos is a moron." That's because he's an Important Person and you're not.
Germany *is* completely totalitarian on speech right now, but only on the issue of Israel/Palestine.
Robert Habeck would not get in trouble, because it's extremely improbable that he would ever use inappropriate language. But in general, every politician insulting any other person could face legal action. It happened before and it would happen again. But, of course, the offended person needs to take action and fill a complaint.
> Axel Springer’s argument is that when Adblock Plus blocks or manipulates its website code (‘computer program’) present in the user’s browser, that amounts to a violation of its exclusive right of modification available under § 69c (2) and its reproduction right under § 69c (1).
A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck, then the publisher's copyright has been infringed.
>A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck,
No, that type of manipulation isn't the legal argument Axel Springer is trying to use. It has nothing to do with re-using newspapers/books as birdcage liner, or fireplace kindling, etc.
Instead, Axel is focusing on the manipulation of the text/bytes itself (i.e. the HTML rewrite). A better direct analogy would be the lawsuits against devices deleting ads or muting "bad words" from tv broadcasts and movies. E.g.: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/child-safe-viewing-a
That's the legal angle they used to pressure ReplayTV to remove the automatic Commercial Skip feature from their DVR.
And yes, sometimes us nerds really want to slippery-slope those lawsuits into wild scenarios such as ... "But doesn't that also mean that when I shut my eyes at a tv commercial during a baseball game or go the bathroom during an ad it's a copyright violation?!?" .... No, the courts don't see it as the same thing.
Probably the more convincing analogy to justify ruling against Axel is the more prosaic "Reader Mode" in browsers that analyze HTML and rewrite it. Is Apple Safari Reader Mode a "copyright violation" ?!? I hope not.
If I have a volunteer service where people ask me to come after the paperboy and individually redact all the ads in the newspaper with a marker, am I breaking the same law?
No
Why not? You're creating a derivative work without the permission of the copyright holder.
Because software has insane legal protections that no other medium has.
Exactly, another example is that physical mail has way more legal protections than e-mail or any online communication.
I wonder if it has different implications for different types of adblocking, then. A DNS-level block doesn't modify any copyrighted data, unless they're contending that the addresses returned by DNS servers are copyrighted. And that would seem to potentially pose major hurdles for the functionality of the internet.
I also wonder how it's made distinct from an addon that does something like block malware on a website. Surely that must be modifying copyrighted data too? Are some modifications allowed, I guess? Surely if something like an accessibility addon modifies the data, that's acceptable, right?
What if I have a friend who volunteers to take a black sharpie to my newspapers and remove all the ads and content I've told them in advance that I don't like, before I read the paper? And that friend lives in the computer?
The law in question is specifically about computer programs. It applies to neither newspapers nor friends. This whole thing is not about what ought to be right, but what the current law says.
But the decision as written (or rather, as translated; I'm not fluent in German) would seem to make modifications to web page from the browser's inspection console illegal as well.
a cosmic bit flip could manipulate bytes on a computer...
And hail can damage a car, that doesn't mean that vandalism has to become legal. Or what was your point?
my point was that i am not convinced that ad blocking is a copyright violation since it "rewrites the bytes" of a page. any number of browser extensions and user actions can do so. that's not the same thing as asking for open season on vandalizing cars.
besides, the ads are inserted from another host, so which bytes are we talking about?
Wouldn't using a microfilm reader also violate this right? I know lots of older newspapers were only available on microfilm when I was younger.
Does using microfilm reader modify a computer software to circumvent their ability to make money off of the copyrighted content?
If not, then it's fine.
I assume (tell me if I'm wrong) this only applies to published origami duck versions of newspapers, because they're still copies. Or (?) published tools with the purpose of folding a specific newspaper up into an origami duck. Or (?) for folding any newspaper. Because, I don't know why, makes no sense. But anyway it doesn't apply to things you do privately. Or does it?
Edit: a sibling comment points out that it's about editing the text, not folding the paper, but I still have the same questions: is it supposed to be a copyright violation (even if too small to sue over) if you cut and paste with a newspaper you bought, in private? And is a tool with the specific purpose to help you do this - "newspaper scissors" - also a copyright violation?
This is a true story. My mother would cut out many advertisements in the newspaper when we were young that she did not want us to see. She was the first ad-blocker and it scares me to think she would have been arrested for "piracy".
Technically, a more direct analogy would be that some newspaper print on demand service exists, and the instructions for printing are distributed to the machines that print the newspapers, but are modified during distribution before the newpaper is printed by the reciever.
As much as I'm pro ad blockers, this seems like a reasonable reading of the law. An interesting way to convince yourself of this is to find a solid line that you could draw based purely on a set of principals grounded by some legal standard about what the difference between a desktop computer program, a downloadable JavaScript program, CSS and HTML really is in terms of how they cause a computer to act on the information.
That said, I think you could fairly reasonably find that section 69e of the copyright act (english translation [1]) applies to adblock software, though I'd imagine the plaintiff would probably argue that the use of an adblock software interferes with their interests.
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Section 69e Decompilation
(1) The rightholder’s consent is not required where reproduction of the code or translation of its form within the meaning of section 69c nos. 1 and 2 is indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:
1. the acts are performed by the licensee or by another person authorised to use a copy of a program or on their behalf by a person empowered to do so;
2. the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been made readily available to the persons referred to in no. 1;
3. the acts are confined to those parts of the original program which are necessary to achieve interoperability.
(2) Information obtained through acts as referred to in subsection (1) may not be
1. used for purposes other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created program,
2. given to third parties, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created program,
3. used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program which is substantially similar in its expression or for any other acts which infringe copyright.
(3) Subsections (1) and (2) are to be interpreted such that their application neither impairs the normal exploitation of the work nor unreasonably impairs the rightholder’s legitimate interests.
---
[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur...
I think most apt analogy would be someone taking pile of free to distribute newspapers and feeding them to machine that automatically cuts out the adds and then distributes them again...
No, they distribute the machines.
No, because when you fold up a newspaper, that doesn't create a new copy.
The problem is that copyright laws, at least in most jurisdictions, have never been updated to cope with the fact that computers copy things so many times. Including to load content into memory so they can display it to you. (And on the web, they also often count downloading it to a tempfile in your cache as a separate copy!)
So while the website may grant you a license to download its content as-is for viewing, that doesn't mean they grant you a license to modify it and copy it again.
Yes, this is an utterly idiotic interpretation of copyright law, that effectively breaks the internet and much of what computers do. However, from a particular point of view, it is one that follows logically.
This was fixed in 2001.
See art 5.1 of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_and_Information_So...
... makes only one exception obligatory: transient or incidental copying as part of a network transmission or legal use ...
What’s next, a dark mode browser plugin is an illegal modification too?
Fuck off Axel Springer. Their “Bildzeitung” helped the rapid Verblödung (dumbification?) and radicalization especially against foreigners of the German population. Similar to what Fox News is doing in the US.
Folding it into a paper duck is tranformative. Where a webpage, but without the ads is not transformative.
> A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck, then the publisher's copyright has been infringed.
That only shows how idiotically abusive are protections awarded to proprietary software.
Modern websites are software. That's a fact. According to the rules, Axel Springer is right. It's just that we don't want them to be right because applying the rules here leads to bothersome outcome.
I hope Germany rules according to the letter of the law and bans browser extensions that modify web applications. Because only suffering can make law change to something more reasonable. Lenient rulings protect bad laws.
Or if you would just not look at a billboard on your ride to work and you would be fined for that. Imagine that.
Anti-circumvention laws are heinous. Governments look like absolute fools giving legal backing to this absurd premise that people have no right to modify or change the world about them. We can re-paint a car, rip a page out of a book.
The idea that a page that's been copied over to us must sacrosanctly be viewed only as intended is absurd. Our speech rights must grant us a right to use tools to view and see things as we might dream, not merely as provided to us.
The war within the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace has really really come to a roiling boil in the past couple years, with all sorts of states trying to declare control over how their populations connect to the global information system. In 95% of cases, I think it makes the state look like an absolute fool.
And very rarely is it being done in accordance with the will of the states people, which is quite chilling!! So called democratic states, with elite capture, doing ill against the free thinking world. These are losers, professional idiots at best, an actively working against humanity for shitty shady hidden motives more likely alas. They are losers, and while this will likely only intensify & make the world tenser and worse and obstructed and jammed up, I have some faith that they will continue to lose their war, that JP Barlow's triumphalism over their shitty ways will keep proving out. These people are idiots, and powerless, and the courts trying to enforce these bad unenforceable dumb laws only illegitemizes the idea of governance. Which I believe strongly in, and want to be a force for good!! But alas, not here.
So if someone attempts to run malware when I visit their page, I am legally obliged to let them run it? Absurd and absolutely non-enforceable.
While it is completely absurd, I don't see why it would be non-enforceable. They can very well enforce it.
Here is one way to do it: they could take a page out of google's Web Environment Integrity proposal and make it illegal to serve any page within Germany unless the integrity is proven. Done. VPNs are problematic? Ban them. Seems very enforceable to me.
Why do you think it is un-enforceable?
Web Environment Integrity was so heavily criticized at the time that it made Google itself backtrack. The same Google that forged ahead with Manifest V3. There is no realistic way the German government could get websites to implement an even worse version of that.
The whole Web would simply become incompatible with Germany. So this would be trivial to bypass on a technical level, and unacceptable on a social level. Completely unenforceable indeed.
> Web Environment Integrity was so heavily criticized at the time that it made Google itself backtrack. The same Google that forged ahead with Manifest V3. There is no realistic way the German government could get websites to implement an even worse version of that.
I don't think this is a good comparison, though. Google cannot force people to use WEI -yet-. The government can.
>The whole Web would simply become incompatible with Germany.
I think the ad-supported web would just LOVE this idea and would become compatible with Germany ASAP.
> So this would be trivial to bypass on a technical level
I don't think so. Don't get me wrong, there will always be a way for the tech-savvy. But all the trivial ways can very well be blocked.
> unacceptable on a social level
In Germany, you cannot install security cameras in a building unless all the owners agree, on grounds of privacy. But the ISPs keep all of your traffic logs, law firms get these logs, and mass-send cease-and-desist letters using automated systems. This is also not particularly acceptable, but it happens everyday and looks like it is very enforceable.
Lets not be naive and think this is unenforceable on the grounds of being "socially unacceptable".
> But the ISPs keep all of your traffic logs,
only for some short time allowed by the law
> law firms get these logs,
Not it you have them for law enforcement, then it's illegal to give them to someone else.
Yes, but the same logic doesn't fly for basically any other topic, since German public is very sensitive about their privacy. We need to protect the right to privacy at all costs. Unless if its for copyright enforcement. If it is for copyright enforcement purposes, timeouts and pinky promises about not sharing my ID-associated private data with anyone other than for law enforcement purposes is all we need...
It is 100% enforceable. So get your host files ready if you live in Germany becasue all the ad blockers are about to be gone.
You can instead have your browser abort and not show the page instead of trying to modify it.
Kinda sounds like hitting the "stop" button mid-load might be a copyright violation...
If users are compelled to view ads than websites should be liable if those ads violate privacy laws or distribute malware.
My infrastructure is my infrastructure. If i choose not to pass certain data, then that is my decision. There is no way in which i can be forced to pass through certain data on it. Contracts and TOS may require access to certain data locations in order to function correctly, but this does not absolve them from enforcing it. Sorry, but my current DNS resolver does not work very well with certain data points that just want to show me ads :)
Or funnel to fraud/scammers. But ad companies and publishers should be liable for those things regardless. The choice to "scale" by not vetting any of their business partners is theirs.
If they’re using a dynamic auction mechanism then you can fairly safely assume they’re violating European privacy laws.
Seems like their argument would also apply to:
1. using antivirus software to infringe on copyright of viruses
2. using any bookmarklet
3. scratching out typos in a book you're reading
4. game mods
This is a mistake programmers often make. Our code of laws is not a proof, or a program, or a set of logical axioms. It's interpretations, often conflicting, of legislature. It also takes into account intent and subject matter and various other things.
It doesn't matter that ad block is logically equivalent to bookmarklets. If elected judges determine it's illegal, none of these "nerd" defenses will work. The only defense is to vote in legislators who will pass laws protecting it.
It's true that it's at time conflicting, it's not true that it's meant to be so.
The term of art for this is "legal certainty" and finding the inconsistencies help iron out when something is off.
So yes, it does matter how logically an ad block is equivalent to bookmarklets, because inconsistencies crack and consistency composes.
I get your point that judges can rule, but it's not the end all be all of it.
>If elected judges determine it's illegal, none of these "nerd" defenses will work.
The nerd defense of "I will use technology to avoid being caught" does work, and it's the only nerd defense worth pursuing.
> elected judges
Judges are not elected, in Germany at least. They are appointed.
Law is the recorded decisions of those with power. There are ways other than legislation to create law that we're only just beginning to explore.
I'm not thrilled at the idea of trying to explore alternate methods to enforce laws.
Can you provide more information / clarification on what those other ways are?
What? Executive orders has been around since forever, and has been one of the main sources of law until very recently (in historical terms). Unless you're alluding to something completely different.
In my youth when I was quite the "pirate", I used to tear the pages out of magazines I had purchased that had only ads on both the front and back of the page. (A kind of compression algorithm for which I got no patent, BTW.)
> computer programs are treated as literary works under the Copyright Act
So this applies to published adblockers and things, I guess. You could roll your own, just like you could tear pages out of a book you bought. You could mod a game privately.
If the adblocker-or-whatever is published, it's like publishing a mod to somebody's book. Like a script you point at an ebook that changes it. Is that considered the same as publishing a copy the book with small parts changed? Why?
The article highlights the line in the German copyright act about exclusive rights to "the translation, adaptation, arrangement and other modifications of a computer program". I'm unclear on the scope here. I don't think this applies to people making edits to copyrighted programs in private.
Opening devtools and changing things on any website that is not your own.
IIRC there has been a case in Germany where it was ruled that opening devtools is hacking and therefore illegal intend. A person found a vulnerability by looking at the website source (using devtools) and informed the company. They then sued him using the "Hackerparagraph" (§ 202c StGB) for use of hacker tools.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbereiten_des_Aussp%C3%A4hen...
"(1) Any person who prepares a criminal offence [Wer eine Straftat nach] pursuant to Section 202a or Section 202b by: 1. passwords or other security codes that enable access to data (Section 202a (2)), or 2. computer programs whose purpose is to commit such an act, manufactures, procures, sells, transfers to another, distributes or otherwise makes available, shall be punished with imprisonment of up to two years or with a fine. (2) Section 149 (2) and (3) shall apply mutatis mutandis."
Not sure how this is twisted into opening devtools.
"Among other things, criminal charges were filed against the Federal Office for Information Security, as the office allegedly violated the law itself." But were dropped. Sounds like this is a vague law that can lead to a lot of harassing intimidation, followed by cases being dropped.
Substitute later parts with earlier parts they refer to and it's much clearer: "computer programs whose purpose is to" "enable access to data", when used "[to prepare] a criminal offense". I guess it depends on what the vulnerability was.
Shit... sometimes I am so happy of living in my lawless 3rd world country. Between the USA crazy Nazism and Europe crazy GDPR and Germany's stupid laws.
Apparently 1st world countries have solved all other problems and are splitting hairs looking for stupid things to legislate.
I am not sure about the legality of game mods.
Most companies tolerate them, sometimes encourage them, as long is it is not disruptive. Cracks and cheats however are definitely illegal and companies often take action against people who write or use such tools, usually account bans, but there have been some lawsuits the game company won.
Fundamentally, there is no difference between a cheating tool and a harmless mod, and many mods are baltent copyright infringement using assets without a license. But because mods are generally beneficial to the company, they have no intention to use legal means to stop them.
This varies from country to country.
In the United States, it's legal to modify your machine to interpret the programs running on it other than the way intended by the machine creator and the program author (Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc, 1992). But every nation has its own system of laws and the precedents of one aren't binding on another (and I don't, personally, know if the Galoob v. Nintendo precedent extends to modifying the data on a PC or only protects the far-more-complicated approach of intermediating between PC storage and the CPU).
To my perception, the position of mods in the gaming ecosystem is mostly, for want of a better term, a "gentleman's agreement" or "gentleman's understanding." An awful lot of game devs got started by modding other games, and they feel more than zero empathy for the folks who are basically learning to be the next generation of developers, if not future employees. It's a bit akin to Adobe's position on cracked copies of Photoshop: they reserve the right to sue so companies can't just thumb their nose at their IP rights and use their product with no remuneration, but individual non-corporate users of pirated copies are, at worst, unpaid advertising for the product and, at best, future customers. Some game dev houses are exempt from this "empathy rule;" Nintendo is famously litigious (although even then, they tend to target projects that are, whether the developer knows it or not, in direct competition with Nintendo; AM2R puttered along happily for years until Nintendo decided to release their own Metroid 2 remake).
Your comment made me imagine someone writing a virus, then suing everyone who wound up with a copy for copyright violation.
Is it absurd? Yes. On the other hand, absurdity has never slowed a lawyer...
Those are all copyright infringement in America too. The final one has already resulted in many cease and desists and lawsuits.
Really! But what's the legal argument there? Nothing is copied, it's a mod.
Copyright includes the rights for controlling the modification of the work.
Questionable. It certainly prohibits people from selling modified versions of the work, but it's doubtful whether that prohibition can extend to you choosing to modify it yourself.
In what sense, though? Publishing a modified copy, sure. But why extend that to a thing-that-modifies-a-copy-you-have?
Markers are illegal because I can use them to cross out words in books I've bought?
> For German publisher Axel Springer, ad blocking solutions are mechanisms that fundamentally undermine the company’s ability to generate revenue.
So they want to change the law so that they can impose their business model on people?
That's absurd.
Their argument is that the law, as currently written, should protect their capacity to impose their business model (in the "If you don't like it, you don't get to read our stuff" sense).
They may be right; it happens all the time that laws have unintended consequences.
If they want to be so protective of their content, they should put up a paywall.
Their purpose is to publish propaganda anyway so I don't understand why they would want to prevent anybody from reading their socially rotting filth. They want to have their nazi cake and eat it too it seems.
What does the ad-free internet look like?
People hate ads, they are annoying and provide virtually no value to the end user.
People hate subscriptions, they cost money, are annoying to track, and gravitate towards being impossible to cancel.
Donations are feel good, but no one donates. Conversion rates tend to be <5% of users.
This topic always draws tons of outrage and anger over ads, but no one ever provides a solution besides "Users are entitled to everything on the internet and don't owe anyone anything. If you put content online, you are dumb to expect compensation, but I really love your work!"
> People hate ads, they are annoying and provide virtually no value to the end user.
[Today.] In the past (1980s, maybe?) I remember getting these fat volumes consisting of only ads (they had everything, from clothing to electronics to LEGO sets) and browsing them with my siblings for hours on end, and fantasizing about getting some of these.
I believe the old style ads, where the website you visit serves locally hosted ads that are in line with the subject matter, not only are not frustrating but actually provide some value as they help you to discover more about things you are already interested in.
I fucking dream of going back to the Internet where no one is compensated for their work. I'm not compensated for mine, and I don't want to be. Read freely!
> but I really love your work
This is your point of confusion. The people you're talking to are indifferent to your work. If it's there and someone links it to them, they might read it, but if it's not, that's fine too. They're sure as hell not going to run malware for the privilege though.
It's been a running joke for decades in discussion forums that people don't read the articles. They don't pay for it because it's actually not worth anything to them.
I don't know, apparently the internet can't work, too bad. Let's cancel it for now and come back to this whole "internet" project when we figure it out. In the meantime there's ham radio, doesn't seem to suffer from the same "who will pay for my content" hoo-ha.
So you expect compensation for your comment? If not, then here's your answer.. I want to read what others _wanted_ to write, not what they wrote for money.
You made me check damninteresting.com, and I'm delighted to see that it's back again, with a contributed post about adenoids and a Bellows post about word games, and (groan) one of those "free daily word games" that many sites have now, presumably in an attempt to get people to donate regularly.
I know Alan Bellows wants to write, but the thing is, he wants to write for money, so that he can write and live. I want to read it, but the other thing is, I don't want to give him any money. I suppose I might do if I had like ten times as much of the stuff, but I don't. The whole situation is enigmatic.
We need to differentiate between "he wants to write instead of working as X" and "he wants to write and he is willing to do that in his spare time".
I know that this isn't that simple.. someone who's not employed or has a job where they can mostly do nothing might just "want" to write and be able to, while others might _really really_ want to write but they can't afford it.
Still, as long as there exists someone who wants - and is able to - give me good content with no strings attached, I'd rather consume that than content written for money.
I remember a time when the internet was ran by techies and hobbyists for zero money, zero expectation etc. Sure, there were some banner ads on some websites but very few mega-corps wanting their pound of flesh like today.
A hobbyist-run internet can still be done today too... no need for mega-corporations to run every website when it costs a few ££ per month to run a web server that could easily handle millions of monthly connections.
Also, it's not my job to validate a scummy business model like advertising: if they (the corporations with ads) want to use them as their primary revenue source that's on them, not me!
More Wikipedias, personnal blogs and passion projects, less Facebooks, Twitters and Googles? Where do I sign?
I've always said the issue with the internet is that dreadful attention extractivism logic that led us into those anti-human patterns. Get rid of advertising and you get rid of all of its symptoms altogether.
Wait, that means that whenever I'm looking at a billboard, somebody is getting money from me.
Sounds like stealing by just obstructing my view.
How do I get these filthy hands out of my pocket?
You joke, but that is a real thing where I live. There are preserved view corridors guaranteed by law. But even if you don't have a view under one of those, you can sue if someone obscures your view of some select buildings. Those plaintiffs wins those cases, every time.
Oh god, I felt a ray of hope for a moment. Which place is it and what's the name of the regulation?
Hungary also has this. We call it "panorama rights" somewhat confusingly, as in English, panorama rights refer to something else.
In Hungary this right refers to homeowners. It says that it's illegal to obstruct someone's view in specific ways, for example, to build something that puts an overly large shade in an otherwise previously sunny yard. The newer building becomes legally questionable (even valid building permits), if it causes "unnecessary disturbance" to a homeowner's view.
For something more hopeful regarding ads, please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa . I wish this on every place I go.
Many adblockers work by blocking dns resolution, which does not alter code. It's like putting on glasses which block out certain words of a book you're reading. No alteration of the source material or host.
I suppose if this comes to pass such glasses would be illegal. As they go against moral rights of the author.
And then color accessibility settings such as filters would be illegal when reading any colored material since they would corrupt the author's intent.
Does it apply to organic, individual differences in perception?
Maybe when we all get a neural interface we can be calibrated as per some industry standard profile.
So the law which they're using here says that only the copyright owner is allowed to modify or rearrange (whatever that means) a program. Couldn't you argue that an adblocker doesn't do that? I run the "program" of the web site host, which produces a DOM tree in the browser. Then I run a second program, the adblocker, which removes certain elements from the DOM tree before rendering. At no point am I modifying their code. At most, I'm modifying the browser's program, but since the browser has an interface to facilitate precisely that in the form of addons, we can safely assume that the manufacturer of the browser is fine with that.
Edit: nevermind, I read the whole thing. The lower court argued as I did, but in revision they apparently found that the DOM tree is code generated by code and thus an expression of the program.
> but in revision they apparently found that the DOM tree is code generated by code and thus an expression of the program.
It would seem to me because user browsers are user-modifiable open source, there really shouldn't be any deep expectation by any web content producer that the generated code into DOM will be displayed in any user consistent manner. But I suppose if that was accepted rational, that means ad blockers should sit deeper in the browser (or at the network level) to avoid problems with countries that view personal modification as digital copyright infringement if the license doesn't allow it. That should secure ad blocking — until legislation specifically bans ad blockers as a function completely...
It feels like it would be a big step to move from gatekeeping personal modification, to compelling code generation by the user from the framework of copyright.
> Axel Springer’s argument is that when Adblock Plus blocks or manipulates its website code (‘computer program’) present in the user’s browser, that amounts to a violation of its exclusive right of modification available under § 69c (2) and its reproduction right under § 69c (1).
It's really interesting, because the addition of Ads is not wanted nor in any way beneficial to the consumer in this transaction, it just happens to be part of the business model of the seller that he now seeks to protect.
Would the same apply if I buy a printer and modify it to use 3rd party cartridges?
How about a company that could remove the addictive elements of cigarettes?
If you want me to provide additional revenue on top of the transaction, then enter a contract with me. Just because you made it "free" doesn't mean you must be legally allowed to force me into some other consumption...
The addition of a payment is not wanted nor in any way beneficial to the consumer when they sign up for any subscription. Guess what, that’s how the content is paid for. You think they should just make stuff for free? The deal is you get the content in exchange for loading the ads.
That's not what I'm pondering.
On payment there is a clear transaction and a contract is made. Both parties agree on their duties for this exchange.
In this case there is no contract, instead the selling party doesn't want a contract (paywall) to reduce friction, but is packaging the product with something the user is supposed to consume, and is now seeking to secure this ROI somehow.
>Guess what, that’s how the content is paid for.
No. Just because you say that this is how it works does not make it so. That's total rubbish. Yes, advertising works. But it works on hope, that's all. If your hope costs you money, well that's on you.
§69 is specifically about computer programs, so it doesn't apply to printer cartridges or cigarettes.
A little bit tangential but: I hated while living in Germany that some movies were legally available ONLY with german dubs. While making the only alternative, piracy... risky.
Are subs or dubs best for anime? In Germany this endless debate has been finally settled by the state. Next week they will rule on vim or emacs, then they promise to end the question of tabs vs spaces.
I remember childhood in the 90s with german tv channels.
It was a bit confusing when Roseanne and Kim Basinger had the exact same voice.
Germany still hasn’t banned VPNs yet, so there are still non-risky options here for torrenting.
I know that technically you can configure your torrent client to disconnect if by some reason the vpn connection dropped, but I was so paranoid about f*ing it up that I just accepted defeat. I think living there for 4 and a half years really changed me (still waiting on red lights while on foot even if the street is dead at 3 AM, for example).
The proper way to do this is to use a seedbox (basically a VPS w/ lots of storage, in a pirate-friendly jurisdiction, that comes preinstalled with all the tools you'd need). It's weird that top AI labs have been caught torrenting stuff, when the solution is obvious, and doesn't leave traces (i.e. no meta IP ranges would have been leaked)...
Familiar with Seedboxes but do you really get off worry free just because the hardware exists in a different country (probably on leaseweb)? Wouldn’t it matter where the company was based itself or is the biggest hope that you’ve become too much of a pain in the ass to deal with?
You have to think from the perspective of "who has enough data to correlate this with you". Obviously, three letter agencies will know. But that's not the point.
What happens usually is that a) copyright investigators (on behalf of copyright holder associations) or b) ISPs do basic analysis and "flag" IP addresses.
The copyright investigators usually look at torrenting pools, log all the IPs, and do some sort of query on those IPs (whois, reverse dns, etc). Then they pursue the biggest targets. "Hey, look, this IP that belongs to Meta has torrented 4234234TBs worth of our clients' data. Bad Meta". And the headlines pour.
Your local ISPs do basic inspection, and can see you're torrentig, but usually (unless they take extra steps) won't know what you're torrenting. But they can send a letter saying "hey, knock it off!".
If you're using a "proxy", either via VPN or VPS (seedbox) then your primary IP address never gets caught in these logs. So they won't be able to know who it was. Sure, they can go the legal route and subpoena the VPS providers, but that's where the "friendly jurisdiction" comes into play. Unless they get raided by said 3 letter agencies, they won't care much about an angry letter from a lawyer.
Still, I’d imagine the company would still have to comply to the laws where they’re based not where the location of the hardware is.
You're talking about companies (seedboxes, not Leaseweb) whose entire business model is enabling piracy. If they got their customers in legal trouble for piracy, they'd quickly go out of business.
btw a representative of Leaseweb told me they don't do individual accounts any more - they're focusing on the European sovereign cloud transition.
If you want a certain advanced networking program to only use a VPN, see if it has an option to force it to use a particular network adapter. A VPN shows up as a fake network adapter.
Get a cheap travel router from gl.inet and set it up as a VPN client with its own wifi ssid. Turn on its leak protection (drop connection when VPN is inactive). Connect your devices to that, and delete your main wifi credentials from them so they don’t accidentally hop back on.
Torrent to your heart’s content.
I actually browse full time like this; all traffic leaving my house via my ISP is VPN (or some limited exclusions that all use TLS).
This is going to be easily overturned. The ad blockers use the dns service and that is not part of what copyright protects. Modifying the results of dns requests is not protected by the copyright law itself. The argument could be made that giving "false" or "changed results" could be modifying the websites programming but you can't have it both ways, saying that your use of a free and public service is part of your copyright rights is surely drawing a long bow. It could be managed by implementing dns on the website (encrypted) to prevent normal dns from being used and hence blocked
> The decision notes that this is not just about “changing variable data in the memory of a computer, but rather changing code created by the bytecode of the website ‘computer program’ as a form of expression of the website programming itself.”
Everyone who actually writes software, meanwhile, and understands that code IS data, is collectively facepalming right now. I felt the tremors. Nevermind that almost since its inception, JavaScript has always been an optional component of the web, and my browser very well lets me turn that off. The ability to do so is critical to my security posture. That it also happens to remove distracting visual noise is a nice side bonus.
Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the same package.
Next there will be AI overseers to monitor whether you flip past the ads too quickly while reading a magazine.
We have technology to apply almost unlimited controls on people. The only thing protecting humanity (very feebly right now) is legislation that works at the service of human dignity. But we stand on a precipice, and we are slipping.
> Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the same package.
The legal view here seems to be that a third party removed content B while delivering content A, and therefore violated the copyright of the provided work.
It's not even framed as redistribution of copyrighted works, it's violating the "exclusive right of modification available under § 69c"
I'm curious how this will play out.
The only content you're interested in is content A, and the supplier chose a business model which requires you to consume content B against your will. Now they sued a third party which is stripping content B as a service to you.
I believe a case needs to be made that content B is not part of the original work provided.
Not easy though...
It may be substantially simpler to acknowledge that there is no binding contract involved between me and the supplier of content B. Were this some sort of purchase or legal arrangement that I had consented to in some way, then the content provider would have a much stronger case.
In practice, I arrive at any given site with nothing more than a crude hyperlink and almost no description of the contents. (Maybe I have a search page summary, often I don't. If I do it's usually rather out of date and incomplete.) I cannot trivially know whether content B is present, or what sort of agreement I may or may not be entering into, until data is actually transferred to my device. By that point, I typically already have content B, before I could possibly make an informed choice about whether I wanted to spend my bandwidth downloading it, what cost it may represent, etc.
Technological solutions already exist here. A provider can choose to lock content behind a paywall, communicating an actual cost, and require that I pay it. Providers can also usually quite trivially detect ad blocking technology, and require that I disable it before delivering the content. (At that point, I am making an informed choice!) A provider doing neither of these things has a very weak case imho. I suppose we'll see if the courts agree.
Agree, but the publisher of content A is also the supplier of content B. They are sourced differently on delivery but they are legally delivered as a single piece of "original work" (as this is a law for PC-software, all included libraries in some app are also part of the "original work")
Maybe a case can be made that the work is not shipped in entirety but needs to be assembled at the consumer...?
>I believe a case needs to be made that content B is not part of the original work provided.
>Not easy though...
IANAL, and definitely not eine Rechtsanwalt.
That said, assuming that digital ads work the same way in Germany as they do elsewhere, such ads are tacked on to the site after an auction that takes place moments before that ad is displayed.
Given that the "copyright holder" of the site doesn't even know what ad will be displayed and, in point of fact, will likely never know which ads will be displayed to which individuals viewing their website, how is their "expression" being thwarted?
Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here."
If that's actually the case, just having a box where the ad would be that says "this is a space for advertisements" should be enough to satisfy "violations" of the copyright owner's "expression."
> Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here."
Or he steers away from that and states "my program places an Ad here, removing this operation modifies my work", making not the Ad itself part of the work but the process (and outcome?) of an Ad being placed there...
I do hope there's a better legal conclusion the court can take here. If I am legally required to execute arbitrary code on my machine as part of some openly accessible content, I expect a clear contract to be agreed upon...
Interestingly, if I use a 'browser' like wget I've basically transformed that computer program into what amounts to a non-program. Wget doesn't even have the facilities to run that Javascript. So it is possible that using wget in Germany is illegal?
I guess legally at some point you have to either execute or "decompile" that non-program, and the same violation would apply if you remove the ads ("violation of its exclusive right of modification").
The complex part here is that they don't sue you as the consumer, or consider the execution/decompilation illegal, but AdBlock as the tool which removes the unwanted content from it.
In that interpretation the only legal way to consume the content is completely unmodified, and the seller built a business-model based on adding something that only he benefits from. Weird scenario...
Given that someone was sued for opening the developer tools on a website, using wget would presumably constitute a death sentence.
Quarrels about copyrights is one of the most favorite entertainment of Germans. Don't make mistake of engaging into this hopeless endeavour, and of course don't let them influence your local regulations.
I thought their favorite entertainment was discussing the different types of asparagus. I'm told this is a popular topic of conversation in Germany.
This is satire at its finest. Axel Springer's taboid "Bild" already blocks adblockers. Springer has a cooperation with copyright infringer OpenAI. Altman gets the Axel Springer Award:
https://www.axelspringer.com/de/ax-press-release/sam-altman-...
Large scale copyright theft is fine, individual consumers have to watch ads.
When considering law, it's always worth noting that the specific particulars are arbitrary and path-dependent. I think it'll be hard to draw any kinds of conclusions on this ruling (which doesn't find against ABP, merely kicks the issue down to the lower court for reconsideration, not unlike Oracle v. Google with regards to API copyrightability) without reading the whole thing.
(One piece in particular I'm personally naive on is what German legal precedent says about consumer's right to modify consumed material. In the US, an author's copyright doesn't stop me, the reader of a copy I bought, from highlighting the book up, or crossing out passages I don't like, or tearing pages out, or turning the thing into a delightful booksafe. Naively, I'd believe ABP should be considered in that category of thing: an accessibility tool people use to modify the material they consume to better fit their needs. It doesn't modify the author's original work and it doesn't grant the reader the right to transmit the modified work to someone else, so I'm unclear on how copyright protection should be thought to enter in here, and I bet the text of the ruling clarifies).
Yes, the particularly odd thing to my eye is the lack of redistribution. My locally modified page infringes even though I am the only one who has seen it. Odd too that many kinds of blockers don't actually rewrite the markup at all, they just don't fetch assets from blocked endpoints, which doesn't seem like 'modifying the code' somehow.
this is my confusion also - it sounds like they are conflating "modify and sell" with "modify and consume"
Previously:
Germany at it again: now trying to reopen the "adblockers are illegal" debate
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44934571
Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?
Are ads "blocked" if, instead of being presented to a human, they're redirected and read by an AI?
Ad Reading As a Service.
What bothers me the most is that these websites do not even know what advertisements they are publishing. It is not like a newspaper where they would have some editorial control.
Maybe I would not have a problem with this law if the websites were held responsible for the ads that contain malware.
Would an ad-blocker that put a black square over the screen where ads were placed, instead of rewriting the HTML, then bypass these laws?
Wouldn't their complaint be solved if ad blockers actually loaded the image (thus generating an 'impression') but didn't actually display it? Or displayed it with 0 opacity, or what-have-you?
Then everyone wins except the advertiser / ad network.
Right, so can it be a violation of my site's content if a german politician accesses it without a crotchcrusher 5000 plugged in and functional?
Ok so what if I run the website in a VM allowing full execution of ad/tracking code, and then stream the video to a "browser" that blocks out the adverts?
I cannot even believe that is a question at all.
Europe is absolutely cooked with it comes to Tech. No wonder they fall further and further behind on the world stage.
Fortunately Europe is a lot bigger than Germany which, granted, does seem to be hell bent on becoming a rather large footnote in in history. Also German copyright law is seemingly modelled after one of the circles of Dante's Inferno so no surprise there.
> This affects all cloud-based applications such as computer games, standard software, SAP, etc.
Court overreach
They decided the brits can’t have top spot for most shit internet legal framework
Large scale theft and/or brokering of personal information, let's call that piracy too.
If they ban ads then they must force companies to provide ad free options with realistic pricing. Ads are a hard line that I will not cross. Forced propaganda consumption is immoral.
Who's forcing you to consume what ads?
It's force, even if we are technically able to not consume ads by for example not using the internet.
Just like what... you're forced to pay for the gas, electricity, or food you buy from someone else?
Like plastering the roads with billboards. We don't want that in the online space. Or, not in the meatspace either, if you ask me.
I think your analogy is entirely wrong. Plastering roads with billboards isn't paying for the roads.
Plastering websites that contain content you want to consume is paying for the website.
force companies to provide ad free options with realistic pricing
It's one way, but not necessarily the only way. There should be an option available for the people who do not want to be distracted by advertising.
I'm sorry but I just don't buy that (and I pay/have paid for many subscriptions for product that have ads-based versions).
A business choosing to be ad-based is the business's problem. A person choosing to not experience ads is that person's problem. They just don't want to do business with each other and either party should have the freedom to make that decision.
I do think a lot should change around advertising, tracking, etc. For example: I think you should be able to set an option on your browser that says "no ads" that sites legally have to respect (even if the result is the site replies: "no content without ads"). At the same time, I think people should have to "declare" their ad blocker use.
>Plastering websites that contain content you want to consume is paying for the website.
The problem with that interpretation is that such content that's being "plastered" (that is, unvetted third-party software which wants to execute on my property -- in fact, such ads are generally served from sites other than the one that I visited) over the website aren't actually part of the website.
They are third-party programs unrelated (except via a business relationship between the website proprietor and the ad network -- one that I have no part of, nor have I been consulted WRT said contract) to the website itself.
By your logic, I should be forced to run arbitrary code on my private property. Is that correct?
I refuse to do so. As it is, after all, my property.
If the proprietor of a website doesn't like it, they can block access to the site for those (like myself) who use ad blockers (which some websites already do).
Whether I choose to block ads just because I don't like ads or because I'm trying to protect myself from malicious software distributed through those ad networks -- or both -- is irrelevant. My property is my property and I get to decide what code runs on it. Full stop.
Ads are part of "the website". They don't just magically show up (unrelated malware aside). They're there because the people running the site want ads there. They're content the website wants you to see. They're just not the part of the content you want.
> By your logic, I should be forced to run arbitrary code on my private property. Is that correct?
I was going to say "no, obviously not", but actually, if you want to consume the content you're trying to get? Yes. That is the implicit contract for consuming web content (regardless of how aware the website is about the quality of the ads its users end up getting).
Your choice should be "I don't want these ads/this code, no thanks for the content."
And you're right: websites that don't want users with ad blockers can themselves deny access, and if ad blockers explicitly announce themselves so that the website can make that decision, great. That'd be the fair thing, right?
My actual take on this has more nuance than I'd care to fit into a HN comment (of course).
I'm not dogmatically "pro ads". I've worked at ad-supported places and I plan / hope I never do again. I think the current web browsing experience is a nightmare (ads, clickbait, content specifically made longer to fit more ads and/or increase presence). It all sucks. I'm also not absolving all the people publishing sites who would disown third-party ads like "oh well WE don't pick what's displayed" from their responsibilities.
Ultimately, though, ads is how (nearly all) websites get paid, and just as I want to get paid for my work, I think I should pay others for theirs (or at least not benefit from their work if I don't want to pay). I don't try to get around paywalls, I don't try to get around sites that think my browser isn't giving them enough latitude. I just walk away. No one's forcing me to load their ads against my will.
>Ads are part of "the website". They don't just magically show up (unrelated malware aside). They're there because the people running the site want ads there. They're content the website wants you to see. They're just not the part of the content you want.
Actually, they're not. Especially in the context of the German court's ruling. As I pointed out here[0]:
That said, assuming that digital ads work the same way in Germany as they do
elsewhere, such ads are tacked on to the site after an auction that takes
place moments before that ad is displayed.
Given that the "copyright holder" of the site doesn't even know what ad will
be displayed and, in point of fact, will likely never know which ads will be
displayed to which individuals viewing their website, how is their
"expression" being thwarted?
Given that simple truth, the only "expressive" claim that the copyright
holder could make would be that "there should be an ad of some sort here."
I don't disagree that folks should be paid for their work. That said, let's address not just ads, but a significant portion of the 'net that displays ads. That being sites that scrape stack overflow/exchange sites and publish the work of others along with their ads. Those folks should be especially rewarded, yes?
>> By your logic, I should be forced to run arbitrary code on my private property. Is that correct?
>I was going to say "no, obviously not", but actually, if you want to consume the content you're trying to get? Yes. That is the implicit contract for consuming web content (regardless of how aware the website is about the quality of the ads its users end up getting).
What implicit contract? Take the link (https://torrentfreak.com/ad-blocking-is-not-piracy-decision-... ) associated with the discussion we're both commenting upon.
Let's say (as is true with most links I'm presented with) I'm unaware of the business model, quality and safety of that particular link. Should I, sight unseen, prance over to the site without protecting myself from potential malware? Should I assume that said site is a "good" site that won't hijack my private property and/or attempt to steal my PII and/or my money?
That's a big part of the problem. In most cases, I have absolutely no idea as to what I might find when clicking on a link. Do you believe that I should, in advance of doing so, metaphorically drop my pants, bend over and spread wide? Because that's essentially what browsing the web without an ad blocker is.
As such, I take a defensive posture and protect myself. If the owner of the website doesn't want me to do that, they are welcome to tell me so. At which point I can make up my mind whether or not I believe the content is worth my time, attention and/or money.
Requiring me to give up that time, attention and/or money without any idea as to the quality or safety of the data presented is like walking into a store (of a type and with an inventory that's completely unknown), handing the clerk a credit card and walking out with a sealed bag of who knows what.
Given your attitude, may I assume that you do that sort of thing all the time?
But requiring me in BOHICA[1] fashion to allow random strangers, sight unseen, to run arbitrary code on my private property to enrich themselves -- likely at my expense -- without even a by-your-leave seems more like a scam than a business model.
I expect you'll disagree and that's fine. You do you and visit every site without any script or ad blocking and with the naive hope that every site you visit is run by honest, decent human beings. Good luck with that. You're gonna need it.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44955239
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_slang_terms#B...