The Morality of Web Advertisement Blocking

An anonymous reader writes "There has been some recent coverage of the over-hyped boycott of Firefox, in response to the rising popularity of the Adblock Plus Firefox extension. A recent editorial on CNET looks into the issue, and explores the moral and legal issues involved in client-side web advertisement blocking. Whereas TiVo users freeload on the relatively fixed broadcasting costs paid by TV networks, users of web ad-blocking technology are actively denying website owners revenue that would otherwise go to pay for the bandwidth costs of serving up those web pages. If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right? "

Oh boo hoo

If things weren't so horribly intrusive and capable of tracking a user's entire internet experience, for the sole purpose of selling you stuff, people wouldn't bitch.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Agreed... web advertisers talking about morality and ethics is a joke.

When you site warns me that it's going to resize my browser, install software and watch everything I do I'll stop blocking it.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Exactly. I don't sift through every page and Adblock everything. One, it would be a waste of my time, and two, I actually do click on a few ads every once and a while. I use Adblock to get rid of "annoying" ads, like the ones screaming into my speakers that I won a free iPod Nano, or the ones who make huge flash overlays over half the page so I can't read the damn article. It's not immoral, it's pushback.

adblock subscription

I don't sift through every page and Adblock everything.

Check into AdBlock Plus subscriptions [mozilla.org]. You won't have to sift through any pages. The ads will be blocked automagically. That's what this discussion is mostly about.

Seth

Re:Oh boo hoo

Why are these people so intent on advertising to people who are clearly not interested in it. Are they of the belief that those of use who go out of the way to avoid these adverts, will somehow fall under their magic when we see their latest animations?

Re:Oh boo hoo

that still doesn't take into account the people who read sites without javascript enabled, don't have a flash plugin, or use text only browsers. it's not their moral obligation to install firefox or use IE, or install plugins to view the ads. That's ridiculous. If you want to host a site, and you dont plan on paying for the hosting without income, then find some way to generate income that actually generates income. Relying on people loading ads doesn't actually do you any good if they don't load the ads. For example, I can be an outdoor icebox salesman in Siberia, but that doesn't mean that because I'm selling it they have to buy it in order for my business to succeed, obviously I just have a bad business plan and it's my fault if my business fails. Same thing with picking the wrong revenue stream for your site. Don't use ads if you don't think they're effective, for whatever reason.

Re:Oh boo hoo

and not fulfilling your half of the bargain in letting them deliver the ads to you.

You had me up until this bit. When I go to a website, I am not engaging in any sort of bargain with the webmaster. I never negotiate what I will do or demand what I will get from them. There is no agreement that I explicitly agree to saying I will look at their ads. If there was such a EULA on a website, I would quickly opt out and not go to their site.

Some of the youngsters on /. may not remember this, but there was a time when there were no advertisements on the web. Somehow, people still found a way to afford to publish their sites. In the unlikely case that all advertisements on the web were to suddenly stop paying off, the web would still exist. The advertisers, and even the publishers of web content do not have some sort or god-given right to make a profit. And we, the web users, do not have any requirement to provide these people with profits.

As to your stealing soliloquy, come on. What has been stolen? Did I break into someone's house and remove the ad profit from them? No. There is no physical thing that they have lost. They lost a potential profit. A profit that they are not entitled to. They can not demand that that I look at an ad, or download one. If they want to force people to pay for their web page, then they need to ask them for money. The subscription model has worked for a long time.

It's like saying that you are stealing from Walmart if you walk into their store and you don't buy anything. In this scenario, they may want you to buy their crap. Their whole business model is predicated upon people buying their crap. And you are using their employees' time, taking up valuable parking real estate, and a whole host of other expenses. Their costs are the same regardless of how many people come into the store. But since you did not buy anything, you have stolen from them more egregiously than any mp3 copying, EULA violating, device unlocking pirates. Right?

Re:Oh boo hoo

By circumventing that implied intent, you are morally in the wrong.

Bullshit. I never agreed to download the ad. I never agreed to even view the ad. I have no obligation to do anything just because the webmaster placed the ad on his publically accessible webserver, wanted me to view the ad, and placed an img tag to the ad on his page. My actions are not wrong and thus are not immoral.
 
...you do not morally have the right to disregard the owners wishes and block ads...

Again, I have no responsibility to download ad files from websites I visit. I have no responsibility to view those ad files. That's my bandwidth I'm saving, which the webmaster wants to use. I have a right to control my bandwidth, thank you very much. My actions are not wrong and thus are not immoral.

YOU webmasters are attempting to create a responsibility where NONE exists. YOU webmasters offered these pages free for ANYONE to view. And now YOU webmasters are intimidating people unless they download your ads down OUR bandwidth and view your ads on OUR time. Last time I checked, that is called extortion. So sorry, if anyone is in the wrong it is YOU webmasters. That is where the immorality lies.

Re:Oh boo hoo

When you site warns me that it's going to resize my browser, install software and watch everything I do I'll stop blocking it.

Actually that is when I block the entire site, not just the advertisements.

It is when the advertisements covered up the site so you could not access the content (X-10 cams?) is when I got serious about blocking advertisements. Yahoo news was almost unreadable due to all the junk floating over the page. It was as welcome as reading a used newspaper after someone used it to mop up a spilled bottle of catchup. The flash floaties were so bad, I went to the extreme to fully remove flash from my machine so I could read the articles. Later other tools came out to deal with the problem, the best being flashblock. That gave me the best of both worlds. I could view flash content and control the ugly spills on the articles.

It was obtrusive advertising that started this mess.

Once flashblock was working it was a small step to find discussions regarding the problem and solutions. The solutions would not have had a market if there were not a serious problem to deal with. The advertising hasn't improved, except Google came along and showed the world that a page full of banner advertisements isn't required to have effective advertising. Search engines have for the most part have cleaned up their act, but most news sites haven't caught on and are playing games with flash advertising for those who haven't blocked it yet, article keyword advertisements, and the old standby banner advertisements.

A hint for advertisers is to be there in the search results. Provide lots of great sponsored content. When I need soething, I'll come looking for you. That is the best kind of consumer, ones that want your product. As an example I was looking for information on a failing lamp in my laptop. Do I replace the laptop? Can I replace the lamp? Is it expensive? Is it hard to replace?

A Google search gave me the answers and a vendor with reasonable prices. The vendor didn't need to buy a bunch of banner or flash advertisements to get my business. They just needed to provide the info I needed and a good catalog of the proper parts.

Here is the tutorial that got me to the vendor's site;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdtutorial.html [ccfldirect.com]

Here is the table that told me what lamp I needed;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/lcdrepair.html [ccfldirect.com]

And from the table, here is the lamp I need and the price;
http://www.ccfldirect.com/2x29fuspccla.html [ccfldirect.com]

I found my bulk inkjet supplier and fuser supplier for my old laserjet the same way. I looked into how to refill cartridges, how to reset the ink level indicator, and such. The supplier with the info got my order. I found them from a Google search. I did not respond to a flash or banner advertisement. Those advertisements simply don't contain the info needed. Most click-through advertisements simply put you into a data mine site. They gather information on the hot new lead instead of providing the information you seek. Bad move. I'm not signing up to everyone's email list just to get questions answered. Visit the above example for the laptop lamps. Notice the total lack of data mining. They don't ask your age, income, e-mail, profession, etc. They simply provide an open door. From there I placed my order and supplied the information needed for the order. Notice who got the sale and who didn't.

Ad blocking isn't evil. It's just an efficient way to toss the electronic 3rd class mail in bulk that you never open or respond to anyway. The free samples of catchup not spilled on your web page is a bonus. You shouldn't let advertisers spill gooey messy stuff all over your pretty web page.

From a former ad profiteer...

I ran two websited that used contextual ads (from the likes of vibrant media and kontera) as well as banner-based stuff (google, yahoo, etc) and I can tell you that the worst person to piss off is the one that doesn't want to see the ad. They were never going to click on it anyway, so why should you care? Most of our deals were cost-per-click revenue anyway so I didn't care to serve an ad to a person who wasn't going to click it and have to deal with pissing them off. A few months before I sold both sites (and am glad to be out of that business, though I miss the revenue), I made it so that folks could disable contextual ads through a profile setting, and added the ability for them to pay a paltry sum ($10 per year) to remove all ads site-wide. Folks were thrilled to pay a cheap price, I made some good cash, and everyone was happy.

I knew of folks using ad blocking software (hell, I use adblock plus myself!) and would never have done anything to that group for the sole reason that I wasn't going to make money on them anyway and might as well make em happy instead of mad.

Oh - and I determined that most of my ad-clicks were unregistered folks who visited my site for the first time - one of those dirty little industry secrets.

Re:Oh boo hoo

OK. Then when the site warns me before it loads that it's going to resize my browser, install software and watch everything I do I'll not visit it.

Re:Oh boo hoo

It's not two wrongs... its one wrong blocking another. :)

As a site publisher I understand the angle that it "blocks advertising", but as a web surfer I definitely understand. I don't put intrusive ads on my page, but if people want to block them, I understand.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Do you even understand the point of HTML and similar markup languages? The user agent which interprets the document has the option of ignoring tags that it doesn't support or doesn't want to. That's why we have non-graphical browsers, mobile browsers, and text-to-speech browsers. Other user agents include spiders (some of which only parse the first 500 bytes of text, removing most tags), validation engines, and mashups.

The short story is, it's not theft; the user agent is just configured to ignore certain elements that match a pattern. It's the user agent doing it's job of presenting the content in an efficient manner to the user.

If you want to force people to view the content so rigidly, use a PNG or PDF.

Costs me money too

Adverts on a web page are sent to my browser as links, which my browser must in turn request from the appropriate server.

This means that each advert on a page causes my computer to actively send and then receive additional data.

This results in real additional bandwidth usage on my part.

If I am using any kind of metered access, or even if I am using unmetered access but with one of the major ISP's who arbitrarily enforce unofficial bandwith caps, then I incur a real cost for viewing that advert.

So, me configuring my computer to not waste resources in that way is no more immoral than the web site configuring their page such that viewing the advertisements makes use of my resources.

...and SAVES the site owner money, too

If the site serving the ads does not have to use the bandwidth to serve up the ads, then it costs less when an AdBlock user is viewing the content. Since Firefox/ad blocking are a minority of viewers, the number of ad-blocking users is therefore low. Hence, the majority of non-ad blocking (i.e., well, IE users), they are costing the site more money, while effectively subsidizing the ad-blockers.

Seems quite reasonable and equitable to me.

   

Re:Oh boo hoo

If you want to force people to view the content so rigidly, use a PNG or PDF.

Off the main topic, but that comment reminded me of just such a system I ended up designing for a client of a past company. Basically I used the exact same argument when he made a similar complaint, and he thought it over and asked what it would cost for a cgi package to render all pages as a single image, as an imagemap in a form. For each 'page' it keeps track of what areas look like links and all were 640x480. I explained all of the downsides right up front before I even put thought into how this could be done; bandwidth costs to him, limited image size, very slow page loads, zero handycap access in any form, no mobal browsers, dialup users would not put up with that and you chase them away before your home page finishes loading, and potentially extra fees from his web designer, and someone would have to make those image->url cordinate mappings whenever a page is to be changed, which will not be my job, and not likely to become the web designers job (but he could ask.)

He used it for a month. We noticed in the logs that the traffic actually dropped. Only a handful of IPs actually sent a request for anything but the main page, a couple of which were myself and the site owner.
An interesting detail about the version of apache we used at the time.. Sometimes, when a user hits stop in the browser and the connection is reset is a specific but common way, the entry goes to errorlog instead of accesslog.
The 'less page hits' was compared to html (not all hits like images etc) on the old site, to both access and error entrys together for the new.

Anyways, needless to say, afterward he replaced that mess with his old website, however a few more ads to makeup for lost visitors. The traffic level dropped due to using html instead of one jpg, then rose slowly, but never came close to what it was before all the changes.

Just thought i'd share that experence.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Two wrongs don't make a right.

No, but three lefts do ;-)

Re:Oh boo hoo

Repeat after me: "It is my computer. It is my browser. If the web site operator doesn't want me to view the content for free, then they should not place it on the web in a public location."

This is not like TV, where all you get is what the broadcasters send to you. You are the one who requests data from them. If all I want is the text (say, I want to read in a terminal via Lynx), then that's my prerogative and nobody else's. If I don't want Flash or JavaScript on my machine, then who is anyone else to tell me otherwise?

As the user has total control of the browsing experience, online adverts were an inherently broken revenue model from the beginning. The fact that users are just now being empowered in this respect does not change the inherent flaws of the advertisers' plan.

Well you're half right.

It's your computer and your browser and your net connection.
On the other end there's another persons server, content and bandwidth. If they don't want to serve you pages, then they don't have to.
Everybody's happy.

Re:Well you're half right.

It's your computer and your browser and your net connection.
On the other end there's another persons server, content and bandwidth. If they don't want to serve you pages, then they don't have to.
Everybody's happy.

Very true. He has every right not to serve me pages if he doesn't want to, and I won't complain if does that. What he does *not* have the right to do is to serve me pages and then bitch about how I view them.

Chris Mattern

Re:Well you're half right.

Very true. He has every right not to serve me pages if he doesn't want to, and I won't complain if does that. What he does *not* have the right to do is to serve me pages and then bitch about how I view them.

He's got every right to bitch about how you view his pages. He just doesn't have any right to do anything about it besides refactoring his pages so the ads are harder to block.

Re:Well you're half right.

He's got every right to bitch about how you view his pages. He just doesn't have any right to do anything about it besides refactoring his pages so the ads are harder to block.

Which is how we ended up with sophisticated ad-blocking in the first place. When it was a picture here, or a link there, nobody cared. But then the ads got more desparate and we got little shaking boxes, pop ups, great big chunks of Flash (which we pay for out of our bandwidth costs as well, incidentally). The ads become a big detraction to the website that we actually want to see. So naturally ad-blockers arise and become hugely popular. I put one in ages ago to try it out and then after a re-install, I didn't bother for a long, long time. But a couple of months ago, after visiting /. a couple of times and having some irritating Flash movie start playing and overlaying the music I was listening to with its audible sound-track, I immediately went off and got Flashblock.

If advertisers had been a little less greedy or desparate, they wouldn't be in this mess. But I have every right to not download things I don't want. And it's very, very easy to do that.

Re:Well you're half right.

It's an easy problem to solve. Have the ad-blocker "ping" every URL that is on your blocked list. This will cause the site you are on to receive credit and get paid.

Better explaination. I surf xyz.com which has links to ad4crap.com and urdata.com. If you send the correct url with the forward from (what is the name of the tag?) tag in the header, xyz.com will get credit for a referal. The ad blocker can just throw away any results from the URL.

Re:Well you're half right.

This would probably get ignored as click-fraud, and if it happened often enough might get the page banned from the advertising service altogether.

Re:Well you're half right.

It is like TV.

When they had 8 minutes of commercials per hour it was no big deal.

For one of the recent alias special episodes they had 24 minutes of commercials for 38 minutes of programming. They actually started it a minute early and ran it a minute late to do this.

And they wonder why we are blocking/zipping through commercials?

An 1" x 5" ad for 1000 words of text would not be a big deal.
Dividing the same article into 4 pages (as a recent mythbusters did), each of which had 5 to 7 ads and only about 800 words in the entire article (so 200 words per page maybe) is just asinine and begging for ad blocking.

Re:Well you're half right.

Indeed, you are 100% correct.

You see, my problem isn't with a site trying to make a profit, but rather with advertising. If CmdrTaco wants to hold a bake sale in the Slashdot corporate office, fine. If /. sells t-shirts or offers paid premium accounts, that's cool. But I object to adverts on principle, as I imagine many here do. I know what I want to buy, so there's no need to convince me that Shiny New Widget is what I need today. I come for the tech news (consolidated from other sources) and the chatter amongst other users, not for ads.

I don't pay for a /. sub, and I unabashedly filter ads while here (and everywhere else). If /. folds, well, them's the breaks I guess. I'll go back to USENET or some other site for my daily dose of tech ramblings and gossip. Seemed to work well back in the BBS days when most sites were free and most operators were glad to spend money on their labor of love. Sure, the dial-up BBS couldn't have hundreds of thousands us users online at any given time, so it was a different beast. But really, it wasn't that much different.

This site is cool, no doubt. It's a shame that there's no real valid business model for it to keep it from running in the red. It's one thing for sites with real original content to sell subscriptions (research publications, newletters, newspapers, etc.), but trying to charge for a site where the content itself is provided by all of us? When you think about it, it's one of those cases where "Step #2: ?????" doesn't really exist.

Re:Well you're half right.

If advertisements frustrate you so much that you've sworn you will never click one in your life, a site with ads loses nothing when you block those ads. Nobody pays per view anymore. And as far as I know, there's not even an implied agreement that you'll click on ads when you're visiting a page.

Re:Well you're half right.

Suppose someone puts up a booth on the street with Ice Cream, and little drop box with a sign that says "Please pay .25 for each ice cream bar you take". You're saying it's perfectly MORAL for you to come along and take all the ice cream (or as much as you want) and not pay him a dime because he didn't provide a means to enforce the sale?

You're an idiot. You either can't construct a valid metaphor, or think we're too stupid to see through your intentionally invalid one.

It's not your web server.

It may be your computer, but guess whose web server it is?
With that in mind, the web page is on a private server which is open to the public. However, the owner of the machine has every right to block users who do not allow for advertisements.

See, with big sites such as CNN, I feel that their service is an auxiliary mode of delivering information in addition to their other services. However, with smaller sites such as communities, etc., I allow their advertising to pass through because I realize that for most of them, the advertising is the only thing keeping their servers up.

That's my logic. Feel free to disagree, but I feel it's probably more accurate than the parent post.

Re:It's not your web server.

I have no problem with web server blocking views. What I have a problem with is the *whining*. Block if you're going to block, don't block if you're not going to block, but for God's sake quit whining about how people view the pages you do serve up.

Chris Mattern

Re:It's not your web server.

I have adblock as well. My policy with using it is this: If the ad is annoying (lots of movement, flashing, etc) I will block it. If I see several of these kinds of ads coming from the same ad servers/domain (doubleclick.net for example) , I block all ads from those servers/company/domain. You want me to see your ads? Don't make them annoying, and don't purchase advertising from a company that displays annoying ads. Ypu want me to see ads on your site? Don't get advertising from companies that display annoying ads. I don't have Google adwords blocked. Feel free to show ads from them.

Re:It's not your web server.

I don't understand why advertisers have this idea that forcing people to watch their ads will do some kind of good. If I don't want to see your ads I'm definitely not going to buy something in them if I'm forced to view them!

There are a couple of sites I go to that are sponsored. That is, specific, RELEVANT companies support the site. The site displays the advertiser's logo and provides a link to their store. Guess what? I BUY stuff from that sponsor occasionally! I've never, ever bought something from one of these random, always changing ads. Not that I see them much anymore....

a better mantra

"Your business model is not my problem".

Re:a better mantra

Somebody should make a t-shirt with that. I like it. We can advertise it with web advertisements!

Re:a better mantra

"Your business model is not my problem".

Forget the t-shirts, it should be stamped on every MBA diploma and integrated into every word processor. Finally Clippy has found his purpose!

"It looks you are making a business plan. You do realize no one is obligated to behave in the manner required to make your business profitable, right?"

Re:a better mantra

Somebody should make a t-shirt with that.

Disregarding your sarcasm...
http://www.paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php/archives/2005/04/11/your-wish-is-my-command/ [paulbeard.org]

Well no.

See, if the ads were hosted on the page you were viewing, then you'd have a point...But they're not. AdBlock and similar wouldn't work if it wasn't that the advertisers served their own ads for the most part, making them super easy to block. I mean, if I was browsing with Lynx which doesn't even offer images, or hell, browsing with wget or something, would it still be the same?

HTML isn't like television. Television is 25 still images a second; there is nothing to filter out except the entire stream. HTML is discrete chunks, and I can very easily tell my browser that I only want to view certain chunks...It's part of the design. I can change the fonts on the pages, I can reset the background color. I can turn off flash or javascript. Don't tell me I HAVE to view it like they "intented"...Hell, using Firefox it's often enough that you can't do that anyway because of some IE only horseshit.

Re:Well no.

Wow. First, let's clear the air. Morality has absolutely *nothing* to do with this. NOTHING. Please get that correct first. Business models are designed to make money by offering something that someone wants. It is that simple. Going by your post, it would be immoral to leave the room when the adverts arrive for television programs; or even scan the radio channels during commercial breaks.

We filter *everything*. If the business model doesn't work, it doesn't work. Whining that it is "immoral" to not view adverts because a freely offered web page has the ads clipped from it is plainly stupid. Take the corners of Las Vegas in the evening as an example. People stand there and offer various cards for "evening companionship" to all passersby. Would they whine if someone took a card (freely offered by any of these vendors), and clipped the ads from them to only keep the picture?

Even viewed from other angles, the argument is fallacious. If that form of advertising is not working for you, choose another. If your sole goal is to present free information to all passersby, then do so. If your goal is to make money, and the offering of free web pages have their ads blocked... move on. Examples of this on the web are rampant. You log in to purchase items from many web vendors. If you do not read their adverts, so what? They don't care. Newegg never complains to me that while purchasing my new hard drive that I blocked the other adverts along with my purchase. If they did, I just wouldn't buy anything there and move on to a vendor who was not confused about their ultimate goal.

So tell me again why a browser that blocks images is a "gray area"? Since no morality is involved (see above paragraph) it just means that the user wishes to use a perfectly valid browser to enjoy what internet content interests them. Ad content does not interest me, and I block almost all of it. I watch television (what little I do watch) via Tivo. The adverts are annoying (usually oppressively loud after a quiet portion of a program), and I am uninterested in their content. I pay a cable provider, who in turn pays the originator of the program.

The same applies to the internet. I pay a provider to get information I wish. If I need to support sites that I enjoy special content from, I do so. If their only manner of gaining revenue is from the adverts, *and* they are giving the pages away in hopes of you paying attention; tough. Poor business decisions are not my problem. It is the responsibility of a good business to decide their ultimate goal, and format their decisions to accomplish that. A local store gives free samples on the weekends to anyone who visits. They don't complain when you don't buy the product, nor when you do not even inquire as to the company that provides the sample.

Why should the internet be different?

Re:Oh boo hoo

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

And blocking ads from your computer is not wrong. Your comment is null and void.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Two wrongs don't make a right.

-1 * -1 = 1, so two negatives do make for a positive. If you want two wrongs to make a right, just use the proper math.

Re:Oh boo hoo

That was stupid.

If you shine a light in my window, annoying me,
I cant draw the blinds? Because your commercial
interests are affected?

Bugger off, make some ads that are not offensive.

Re:Oh boo hoo

It's not just about "offensive" ads...It's ads that slow down your goddamn page loads, because the page waits for the massively overloaded ad server to finish loading its ad before the rest of the content pops up. Screw that.

I block ads from most big banner providers because I hate them. For sites that depend on that revenue I tend to buy their stuff, or subscribe, or donate, or whatever.

For small providers or people who host their own ads? I don't block 'em. They're usually not as annoying to me as the interminable "Punch the Monkey to Win an XBox/iPod/Whore" ads and I don't mind giving them my business. Hell, to use an over-wrought example, look at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]...They put thought into the ads they choose to host, and the ads are relevant and informative to the people who frequent their site.

Re:Oh boo hoo

Considering that Yahoo served up a few million Trojans in poorly vetted ads, it is a damn sight more than an inconvenience! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/11/yahoo_serves_12million_malware_ads/ [theregister.co.uk]

Re:Oh boo hoo

I would, however, have to agree that if I put up a website and I depended on advertising revenue, I'd be a bit pissed off if all of my visitors started using adblock, especially if I chose non-intrusive adverts like google ads.

Well, that's the real rub. I have adblock, but I've got a bunch of sites actually whitelisted because I don't mind their ads and I don't want to have a bunch of empty space all over the place (which, without the whitelist, I'm never sure would be ads or something else I'm missing). And I wouldn't even have adblock at all if it weren't for a few really bad apples that forced me into it.

Adblock is not something that everybody just has, and that's as simple to use as flicking a switch. Remember that most people - and I don't mean most people here, I mean most people in the world - have no clue what a "Firefox Extension" even is or how to install one. You need to make an actual effort to find out about this, to download it, to install it, to configure it so that it blocks what you want it to block. Even people who have the technical ability to figure this out are not going to do it unless pushed. It's not like everybody who hits the web for the first time immediately says "ok! I'm ready to start surfing! But first, how do I block the ads?"

Look at Google's model (at least to this point). They're making plenty of money on ads, and so are all the sites that rely on them. And I guarantee you they're not having any problem with adblock. Their revenue numbers certainly don't seem to show any. Why? Because their ads are not intrusive, in fact they occasionally even border on useful. I have clicked Google ads a few times myself.

It's both funny and strange to me that people still think the way you make money on ads is to be as annoying as possible, when the biggest company on the net became as successful as they are by doing exactly the opposite. Don't people ever learn anything?

If you ask me, any site whose model is to present you with the most annoying ads possible deserves to have a user set that relies on adblock. If you've got a problem with adblock, it's because you as a webmaster brought it on yourself.

Re:Oh boo hoo

I wouldn't be blocking ads if:

1. The ad servers didn't overload all the time and slow the page load to a crawl. I can't count the number of times I've had to block an ad server just to get a page to LOAD.

2. The ads weren't so obnoxious. Sound is an absolute no-no. Animation is almost as bad, but at least doesn't startle you half to death at 3am when you aren't expecting it. It does however tend to slow the page down, especially if there are multiple animated ads all dancing around and asking you to punch the monkey.

If they toned down the ads a couple of notches, and made sure their infrastructure could handle the number of ads they are serving I think a lot of people would be more than happy to put up with the ads in exchange for the free content. But it seems like no matter how much you say this the advertisers don't want to listen. They're stuck in the old TV mentality where they try to push as much dazzling crap at you as they can. The problem is Internet users aren't TV viewers; we don't want things shoved in our faces constantly. If we did, we'd watch TV. Instead of getting "mind share" they're just pissing everyone off.

(and speaking of TV will someone please bitchslap the people who compress the audio of TV commercials to make it sound obnoxiously loud?)

I think this is quite true

Especially when you combine it with the 3rd big problem of irrelevance. Web ads are very, very often for things you just don't give a shit about. TV ads are actually quite targeted, they get demographic information on shows and pick what ads to run based off of who is likely to be watching. However many web advertisers simply smear their banners over and and every site. Not to mention that many are borderline fraudulent.

I've found that when you have ads that don't have this problem, not only do I not mind, I can even be happy with them. Google ads are an example. They hold the record as the only online ads I've ever bought something from. More, I've done it several times. I don't mind them at all. The servers seem to be fully capable of handling the load, so they aren't slow, the ads are very unobtrusive and on Google itself blend right in, and they are very relevant to what I'm doing.

For example I'll search for something I'm interested in purchasing and rather than looking at the normal search results, I look at the ads. Here is a list of people willing to sell me what I want. The ad usually takes me right to the relevant page. Now that's useful.

However that's not how most advertisers want to do it. For some reason everything they know about advertising seems to fall out of their brain when it comes ot the web, and they believe that the answer is invariably make it more obtrusive and it'll work.

Not Insightful. (not even a little)

If things weren't so horribly intrusive and capable of tracking a user's entire internet experience, for the sole purpose of selling you stuff, people wouldn't bitch.

I'm sure there's some fancy latin term for this fallacy, but I'll just call it the War Games defense. (The only winning move is not to play.)

The parent poster is saying if an ad is static text or image--no flash--and doesn't track you past the single page displaying the ad, then it is immoral to block the ad. Interesting.

I say, my stand on blocking ads has nothing to do with the ads. My argument doesn't depend on ads being obtrusive or anything else. I simply say, I control what I download. I choose not to download from certain sources.

You see, I don't get into a debate on types of ads. I don't even really address the issue of ads at all. I just say, I download what I want to download. If I think I'll never have any reason to request data from a domain, I might use a HOSTS file to direct requests for that domain to 0.0.0.0 just to protect myself from any inadvertent requests I may make.

Someone who wants to take the position that there is something wrong with not viewing ads on a web page has to play on my field and explain why the ISP connection and the computer I pay for are obligated to accept someone else's data without my request.

Oh my.

I'd like to live in a fantasy world where I'm simply entitled by default to ad revenue, and I only have to deal with insidious "users of web ad-blocking technology" who are "actively denying" me my solid gold razor scooter. Fortunately for users, in the real world, a webmaster has to earn ad revenue by finding content that users want and ads they are willing to accept -- not by taking it for granted that they will just gaze longingly into the CRT clicking on everything that swirls.

For a long time, advertisers were able to support a huge number of frivolous web sites, partly because they could bombard the user with page after page of obnoxious flashing garbage for which no technical countermeasures existed. The collapse of the dot-com bubble eliminated the most unviable popup-pushers, and the rest are beginning to get the message. Popup blockers are normal mainstream software, and Google has had significant success selling all-text advertisements.

The website owners seem to think that we've pushed back hard enough, and should just deal with the sea of repellant Flash banners they want to drown us in. I guess those website owners are wrong, because clearly there are plenty of people who are not willing to tolerate the barrage of useless ads. We'll find a balance eventually, somewhere in between no ads at all and the websites whose masters believe they are entitled to a tithe every time their server sends a 200 status.

Re:Oh my.

"Fortunately for users, in the real world, a webmaster has to earn ad revenue by finding content that users want and ads they are willing to accept -- not by taking it for granted that they will just gaze longingly into the CRT clicking on everything that swirls."

How exactly will a webmaster find ads that users are willing to accept if the ads are blocked and nobody ever sees them? I agree with TFA that ad-blocking software poses an issue for web sites and for the users of the web in general. In the Webs current state the ads are what is supporting the production of most of the content you see. What happens when that support gets pulled out from under the web site owners? (Webmasters could get around the issue by inserting the ads directly in to the content instead of having them served by a third party.)

On the other hand, I wouldn't equate ad-blocking with theft. Websites are posting content in a public infrastructure where the viewing public has a great deal of control over how they see that content. If they don't like it then they can just charge for access, or engage in an ever escalating (and losing) technology war against the user.

next step?

What's next step? Forcing people to actually look at the adds? Or press at it? Or are you a thief if you don't buy a product of an advertiser of a web page you visit?

What about my bandwidth?

What about my bandwidth? They're trying to say I'm OBLIGATED to take everything on their page, not just the parts I'm requesting. I can assure you that I'm requesting their content, not the ads. They're forcing unnecessary bandwidth requirements (and slow load times) upon me by their advertising.

With a pipe, there ARE two ends to it you know.

Re:What about my bandwidth?

Good point. I remember the bad old days, on dialup, waiting for pages of text to load because it was stuck waiting on advertising images. When I added the early versions of ad-blocking (including bogus host entries), it worked wonders.

So here's the thing; you want to, for example, read an article on CNN. The article will be several thousand characters of data. The images for advertising are typically several times that or more. So when we watch TV, we get like 11 minutes of actual content for 4 minutes of ads. Even that's intrusive, if you ask me, but let's say we accept that. Your bandwidth basically gives you about 3 parts content to 1 part advertising.

On a website, your bandwidth often gives you 1 part content to 5 or 6 parts adverstising.

Too bad. The thing is, people used to accept TV ads for the content they got, then Reagan (rightfully, IMO, even though it ended up ruining things) deregulated TV. So now we have MythTV boxes and Tivos and avoid the ads altogether. The day they start sending signals to make it so I can't bypass the commercials is the day I cancel my Tivo subscription. If Myth somehow couldn't do it, I'd be better off not watching anything anyway.

So if websites keep getting more and more intrusive, and if they somehow manage to force these horrible, overbearing ads on me, I'd be better off not surfing at all. As far as I'm concerned, they have every right... but will be surprised to learn the only thing it earns them is disdain. The things that are REALLY important; the intranet at work, banking and investing, shopping... these are the only things I really want anyway, everything else (like slashdot) is just time wasting fluff.

Re:next step?

Really. If they need my click so bad, why don't they just click the ad for me? If they don't think my personal preferences regarding the viewing of their ads are particularly germane, why is my personal inclination to click or not click on an ad any more sacred? Just click it for me already and cut me, the gratuitous middle man, out of the equation all together.

Like a lot of others here, I didn't bother with adblock until the ads started actively interfering with my browsing.

That said, I think this whole issue is just a troll for the purpose of, naturally, driving more traffic to another fluffy ad-laden website.

Look at it this way:

Let ad content consist of a bytes. Let useful content consist of c bytes.

When I transfer a + c bytes, that's OK. When I transfer only c bytes, I'm stealing. So in this case, it's stealing when I take less than normal?

Is it theft?

If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft?

No more theft than it would be if you were viewing web content with a browser that couldn't physically render the content. What if everyone used Lynx, [browser.org] for example?

Exactly.

From TFA:

In the end, a few things are clear: Users of advertisement skipping technology are essentially engaged in theft of resources.

No. If you do not get the reaction you expected from me, then you have simply lost that portion of your investment. I have not stolen anything from you.

Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?

Re:Exactly.

Next up on Slashdot, if she won't blow you after you buy her a drink, is she guilty of "theft of resources"?

No, that is "denial of service".

And if it happens with every woman in the bar, it's "distributed denial of service".

Re:Is it theft?

Does it really matter that much? If free entertainment content disappeared from the internet, would it really be that bad? To me, the internet is both a tool and an entertainment device. The part that's really useful is the tool part, and much of the information I need is either pay-to-play or funded directly by the site creator (product data and such - call it self advertisement). I hate to bring it up, but the internet wasn't meant for the entertainment business or advertisers, and I don't see a whole lot of the "value" they're providing.

Would I miss a free /.? Maybe. Or maybe I'd just get more work done.

Re:Is it theft?

Times like these I wish I had mod points :-| well said!

Although

"Would I miss a free /.? Maybe. Or maybe I'd just get more work done."

Maybe you'd just go somewhere else? I was more than happy with the interweb before the last dotbomb, I don't understand why people seem to think it should become another content media platform, if I wanted to watch shite I'd turn the TV on.

Actually I do... but I wont go into the American rhetoric of make a fast buck out of everything you can get your hands on and then some.

differences in not dl ad vs. not seeing it?

But is there a moral difference between not downloading the ad vs. not seeing the ad? For example, I use my userContent.css file to not display advertisements in older versions of Mozilla (I like the full suite of apps darn it!). *My* bandwidth is still used to get the file, *their* webserver still logs a request for /advert.php?foo.... but I never see the ad. As long as the request for the advert is made and it is sent, does it matter if someone sees it? Of course, if they don't see it they can't click it, but still...

Shift the example

Those poor innocent spammers need to pay (somewhere, at some level, be it money for bandwidth or time to write the virus..) to send you those viagra ads .. if we block those messages, and never see them, is it theft of some kind from the spammers or the viagra company?

A non-issue ...

I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein.

Re:A non-issue ...

I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein.

You didn't even read the slashdot summary, much less the article obviously. The newspaper gets paid for including the ad, not for you viewing it. Websites often get paid by impressions, so if the ads aren't received by the customers then the revenue isn't received by the site. Totally different from the newspaper, who gets an "impression" with every paper sold guaranteed.

Still not necessarily wrong given how parasitic a lot of ads are now, hogging resources and making annoying sounds. But lets focus on the actual argument raised in TFA.

Re:A non-issue ...

I fail to see how using Firefox to ignore the ad banners and such is morally any different than throwing out the advertising supplements to the newspaper without glancing at the ads therein.

You didn't even read the slashdot summary, much less the article obviously. The newspaper gets paid for including the ad, not for you viewing it. Websites often get paid by impressions, so if the ads aren't received by the customers then the revenue isn't received by the site. Totally different from the newspaper, who gets an "impression" with every paper sold guaranteed.

Still not necessarily wrong given how parasitic a lot of ads are now, hogging resources and making annoying sounds. But lets focus on the actual argument raised in TFA.

In other words it would be like acquiring newspaper gnomes that take the ads out of your paper before you get it, and the newspaper being paid less by advertisers for every newspaper gnome known to be on the loose.

I hope that clears things up.

Depends on what kind of ads they are

If the website owner feels it is necessary to use ads to support the cost of being on the internet, then the least they can do is avoid the flash "Bonk the _____ and get a ______" ads. If they aren't willing to do that then whether they like it or not I'm blocking their ads.

I go to websites primarily for content, and if thats disrupted by advertisement then I'm not getting what I went there for.

Re:Depends on what kind of ads they are

Yeah, but when we use AdBlock we block ALL ads, whether they're obnoxious or not.

What this might cause, eventually, is for ads to be served through the same server and directories as content (to avoid URL pattern matching), for content to be served through the ads (like a flash file that provides both the ad and text content) or that ads sneak inside content (which they already do, in the form of sponsored articles, sponsored tv shows, on-screen banners during shows, etc.)

It'd probably be in the best interest of consumers to find a good middle ground.

And

Going to the bathroom during TV commercials is theft!

No

No, it is not theft. I ask a server for a page and it gives it to me. I control which parts of the page will load and which parts won't. If websites don't like it, then they need to find a better business model.

Re:No

And as the server, I can control who I talk to. I don't see all the bitching, this is a two way street. If the server doesn't like a clients behavior, server can stop talking to client. Same thing in real life, if I no longer wish to have a conversation with someone, I walk away thereby ending the conversation. If these sites are sick of the "freeloading" Adblock users, don't "talk" to them anymore. Issue a 403 Forbidden, say your server will not talk to Adblock users and call it a day.

Ads?

What ads?

We're using their bits? They're using my CPU.

I'm using their bits, eh? Well, they're using my CPU with all their annoying flash ads.

As soon as people learn that annoying (and often intrusive) Flash ads aren't appreciated, then there won't be a major reason for adblock.

Sounds like the MAFIAA

"Our revenue model is broken, and exploiting said brokenness should be illegal."

Pay-per-view is dead, isn't it?

As far as I understand it, the pay-per-view advertising model has gone the way of the dodo, and they're all pay-per-click now. Telling me I have to let the ads through on a site, when I have zero intention of ever clicking on them, is pointless. In fact, since I'm never going to click on them, by not displaying them, I'm saving the advertiser bandwidth.

The Economics of Blocking Ads

The parent post ties in rather nicely with a short piece I wrote about two years ago (but never published) in defense of my work on Filterset.G. It may be a bit outdated, but I think it's finally appropriate.

The Economics of Blocking Ads

Preface:
I have nothing against advertisers or advertising. I have no interest in eliminating advertisements from the internet as a whole. Filterset.G is a tool, and is not tied to an ideology; there is no ulterior motive. Many people believe that Adblock, Filterset.G, and similar projects will be "the death of the free internet", and attack people developing tools to block ads (including myself). I have no desire to "destroy" the internet or advertising.

Reducing Costs to Suppliers and Consumers
Advertisements are unwanted distractions to many people (i.e. those who don't buy from ads), and ad-blockers provide an easy way to remove them. Transferring advertisements to people who ignore or don't buy from them is costly to both advertiser and advertisee. Bandwidth isn't free, and the bits often travel thousands of miles through dozens of machines to reach consumers. For those who have no intention of buying advertised products in response to ads, it is a waste, and can become very expensive. The host of the ad pays to transfer it, and many ISPs charge users by the amount of data transferred, so they pay to see it. Advertisers rarely pay sites for ads based on impressions (views, not clicks/sales) anymore, due to the difficulty in gauging its success, so passive ad-viewers (who look, but don't click), needn't be considered.

Increasing Profit Margins
People who don't buy from ads are negative in the expense/profit ratio for advertisers. Eliminating the cost of advertising to non-purchasers increases profits given a constant userbase. The risk, of course, is that people who buy occasionally might also block ads and thereby decrease profits. For this reason, I strongly urge people not to install ad-blocking software on other people's computers unless they express a desire for it. The greatest threat from ad-blocking is from people pushing it on those who do buy from ads.

Demand Keeps Suppliers in Business
Let's hypothetically say that all internet advertising was eliminated overnight (which is not going to happen). That would cut a major source of funding for web sites, which would force many to close, decreasing supply. Demand, however, would still exist. As supply decreases, demand would bring capital to the "best" remaining suppliers. Subscriptions, donations, grants, and sales keep many ad-free sites alive today, and can easily continue to do so in the future. Hosting a small web site is fairly cheap, and the increasing userbase that drives up costs also increases the number of potential donors, subscribers, and purchasers. A worst-case scenario would be a drastic reduction of economically unsustainable sites, which definitionally provide too little benefit to users to warrant their covering the costs of operating it. Many people would call this a "best-case" scenario, separating the wheat from the chaff, though I take no stance.

Making Ads Less Obtrusive
If public perception of ads becomes increasingly negative, they will become decreasingly effective. Advertising strategies will necessarily shift to less offensive and distracting forms. Many users vocally support the replacement of banners and other obtrusive advertising methods by text ads in areas distinct from page content. Unobtrusive, low-bandwidth ads may not be as eye-catching, but they are well tolerated by all but the most aggressive anti-ad folks.

Forcing Ads
Many advertisers and site owners are researching methods of bypassing ad-blocking software. If ad-blocking is only done by those who do not buy from ads, the outcome will become increasingly negative as their efforts increase. Many people are becoming more and more fed-up with in-your-face ads, and are starting to boycott co

No.

If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft?

In order for me to view their banner ads, my browser must actively request the data for that banner in a separate transaction from the one used to get the rest of the contents of the page. I see no reason for me, as the computer's owner and operator, not to forbid the browser from doing so.

As a good citizen of the internet, I think it a good thing that I don't clog the tubes with advertising bandwidth which I do not care to see.

Re:There will come a breaking point....

Companies have been buying good reviews since before there was an Internet. Not blocking Internet ads won't stop them from doing so. YOU can't have it both ways, you can't have neither. But the advertisers can and do have it both ways, both ads on the side and embedded ones.

then Quit screaming at me.

If you want me to view your advertisement it better not.

1. Have sound. If it does your so forever block from my browser and wallet its not even funny

2. Overlay what I am reading. Having to click your ad away from the article text means I know exactly who I am never buying from.

3. Pop a window, over or under, its the same, your gone.

4. Any ad which causes my HD to spin up to load the damn support required for it, aka Flash and JAVA. If it pauses my experience it ends your chances.

5. Heaven forbid you dare ask me to download something.

You want might business. Then target those pages with simple and to the point banners and block ads. Do not animate my webpage. Put in bold letters why I should even pay attention to you. If you animate, make noise, or otherwise disturb my surfing you are intruding into my life and don't have that right

Theft?

Bah, that's as bad as calling copyright infringement theft.

Are we going to start getting take down notices from ad agencies now too due to this twisted logic?

No guaranteed business model

There is no such thing as a guaranteed business model. Just because it would be convenient for the world to work a certain way, or because it has worked that way in the past, does not mean that it will continue to work that way.

These businesses (and many others) have been built on the assumption that in return for content, consumers are willing to be exposed to advertising. If that assumption proves to be false, then they are going to either have to find a new business model, or else convince the consumers that they should watch the adds. If the business is build on people looking at advertisements, and the consumers are refusing to look at advertisements, there is a basic disconnect there that does not bode well.

The other side is that if consumers as a whole refuse to support add supported business, we are going to have to pay in some other way. Figuring out the balance of this struggle isn't just important for websites. It is the same disconnect that we are seeing right now in television.

Yes, it's exactly right

Yes, it's exactly right to block ads if you like.
No one has to read someone else's ads.

It's obvious that some television ads are being made much more interesting and clever to combat the tivos. They have to MAKE you WANT TO WATCH THE ADS.
They have been succesfull. I watch more ads now than I did 2 years ago.
Largely gone are the brief playlets and illustrated lectures on the purchase of consumer goods.

If web ads were more interesting and less obnoxious perhaps they would be more successful.

The worst:
Intellitext popup ads.
Catch the monkey animated ads
Those ridiculous floating ads that sit in front of the site and scroll with you.
I put those in adblock right away!

Freeloading TiVo users?

You know, before TiVo people used to skip ads by (1) going to the bathroom, (2) getting a snack, (3) changing the channel, or (4) talking. Does that make OTA tv-watchers freeloaders too?

This attitude is irritating. Over the air content is provided for free. There is nothing that says "to watch this TV show you must watch the commercials." Same with radio. Radio content is provided for free. There is no implied contract that I must listen to advertisements to enjoy the content.

It is my choice whether to watch/listen to the ads or not. This isn't a question of morality at all. It's also my choice whether I buy a product or not. Does not buying mean I'm being immoral?

If a car dealer says "If you don't buy this car, I'll starve and you'll kill my family," would you still buy the car?

Many analogies

A casino has a cheap buffet because they *hope* you are going to gamble before/after you eat. You, being a clever person, attend the buffet and leave without spending a dime on the slot machines.

Arby's has a "five for five" deal where you buy five items for five bucks because they *hope* you will spend five dollars instead of, say, two dollars. You, being a clever person, realize you only want two of the five items, so you spend $2.50 on two items and leave.

Circuit City sells printers for only $30 because they *hope* you are going to pay $20 for a high-margin Monster Cable. You, being a clever person, buy the cheap printer and purchase a generic cable for $2 from Fry's.

CNN.com offers their content for free because they *hope* you will click on their ads (or at least glance at them) while you visit. You, being a clever person, ignore the ads or disable them outright.

The point is, any free or below-cost business model is a risk that the provider has accepted, and they are inherently providing these extra "benefits" at *no obligation* to the consumer. If the provider isn't willing to run the risk of people not following their suggestions, then it is time to turn that suggestion into an obligation (pay websites, or otherwise restricted-access websites). This is not a morality issue for the consumer, it is a business issue for the provider.

Who will be the first...

Who will be the first to write a Firefox extension to block the Firefox blocking? Gentlemen, start your coding!

As a publisher and an advertiser: so what?

As a publisher of a variety of blogs and a hoster of dozens of forums, javascript-based advertising accounts for nearly 30% of our income. Another 30% is based on direct advertising or link-sales along with paid-for-articles (which we fully disclose), and the rest is made up by subscriptions.

We openly advertise that our ads are blockable, and that users who are not interested in ads SHOULD block them. For us, users who are not interested in the advertisers products should block the ads so that our click-through rate is actually higher. When one of our users blocks ads they won't click, our CTR goes up. When our CTR goes up, our direct customers pay MORE for the outreach than if we forced ads on everyone, even those who don't want ads.

We've been slowly updating our sites to actively disable ads for anyone who logs in and sets their ads to "none" (even if they aren't subscribers). Again, this is no concern to us.

The clicks we do provide to our advertisers are generally good clicks, with users interested in the site or product. This makes our site even more valuable, as we have had more than a few dozen advertisers submit bids for our sites specifically, rather than just random appearances because of the site being "on topic" for the ads. Directly bid ads get us a LOT more CPC or CPM (sometimes in the $1-$2+ range), so again it is good that non-interested readers would disable ads, making our click-through even higher for those direct ads.

Considering that we're making a decent 5 figures annually, more than 1/2 of that from direct advertisers rather than random AdSense ads, I think it's a win-win situation. Users who like what we write will either pay, or accept ads. Users who don't want ads don't display them, but they still give us a profit by being responsive to things written via e-mail or combox responses. I'd rather get 5 minutes of a person's time to respond than $0.15 for some random ad click.

When you run an ad-sponsored site, you have two choices: get a lot of crappy traffic and get low CPM (barely covering your hosting cost), or get GOOD limited traffic and get a high CPM from those accepting ads (or getting a profit through a subscription or an intellectual profit from a reply or an e-mail).

How about radio and TV advertizements?

For the last 100 years it never occurred to advertisers on radio stations that users who turn down the sound during commercials were "stealing" from them. They knew better. They were given a license to use a portion of the PUBLIC'S electromagnetic spectrum as long as they operated in the public good. The public still has the opportunity to visit radio stations and read their license stipulations and leave comments about the radio station's performance.

Then, corporate greed took over when TV stations (licensed to use other portions of the PUBLIC's electromagnetic spectrum) started claiming it was THEIR medium and that if you didn't watch the commercials but only the content they were broadcasting YOU were a THIEF. Absurd. They can transmit content and commercials but no one, absolutely NO ONE, has to watch every photon they transmit during any particular time period. That's the risk they take, especially if their ad content is so trivial or dishonest or begins consuming too large a segment of the time period.

There was a time when commercials took only about 6 to 10 minutes of every hour. Now they take 20 minutes or more, and in the case of Infomercials the full 60 minutes. It's NOT uncommon now for 6 or more commercials to run during every commercial break, with some breaks exceeding 10 minutes in length with only 2 or 3 minutes of show in between.

Infomercials should be outlawed. The cable companies are double dipping. They charge the advertiser for channel, and they bill the cable customer for "offering" the infomercial channel as part of the cable lineup. Are we stealing if we don't watch the Infomercial?

To make matters worse, the TV shows deliberately focus cameras on brand name advertisements and include product hype within the script of the show itself. And they not stealing time from us?

definitions

If the website designer has to pay for bits each time you view their website without viewing their banner ads, are you engaged in theft? Is this right?

No, it is wrong.

Merriam-Webster:

theft:
1 a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

Which means in order for it to be theft, it would have to meet the following requirements:
* It must be illegal
* It must be taking and removing of personal property
* It must be intended to deprive the rightful owner of said property

Blocking ads satisfies none of these requirements even remotely. So whatever you so, however much you dislike it, it is not theft.

And no, this is not nit-picking. Calling things by their proper terms is a requirement of a proper evaluation process.

Counterpoint

I can't help but contrast that bullshit with this:

Advertisement is Theft.

You see, it's
* my bandwidth
* my computer
* my screen
* my eyeballs
* my time and attention

Ads take a part of each of those away from me for a short time.

Morality? OK, let's talk morality...

Drive-by malware installations. Floating ads that block the content until you click on them (with no indication what clicking on them will actually do). Ads that auto-play loud sounds that're highly inappropriate in an office environment. Advertising networks that try to do highly invasive user tracking above and beyond merely displaying an ad. Those are why I block ads, and why I'll continue to block ads. Those ads represent anything from merely a disruption to an outright threat to my system. I can't evaluate them after they've loaded, by then they've already done their thing. The only safe thing I can do is block them from ever loading in the first place. And no, a web site's right to put up ads doesn't trump my right and responsibility to protect my system.

Yes, I'm grouchy. BT,DT,GTTS. The whole line of t-shirts, in fact, in every color variation. Not interested in collecting any more.

Denying them money?

Most advertisers use a pay per click model to pay the sites they advertise on. So, if I'm blocking the popups, doesn't that indicate that I am not interested in them and would not have clicked on them anyway?

In a word: "Baloney".

Anybody remember the movie (followed by the television series) Max Headroom [imdb.com]? They lived in a future where it was illegal to have an "off" button on your television receiver; you were expected to have it on 24 hours a day. I'm not implying that this is the direction things are going in the real world, but it's about as rediculous as the idea that blocking ads is "stealing content". Would anyone consider it reasonable or even rational if, say, the ability to mute the sound on a television set or turn the volume down to zero, was made illegal? Or to take it to an extreme, make it illegal to turn your head or leave the room when commercials were running? Aside from such things being as unenforceable as anti-pickpocketing laws in a major metropolis, I can't see where anybody except money-grubbing businesspeople (who, subsequently, would find ways to exempt themselves) would find such things reasonable.

As someone else here has already stated: It's my computer, it's my paid-for connection to the internet, it's my right to see or not see whatever I do or do not want, unless I choose to surrender my ability to choose (e.g., the way Netzero used to be). Personally, I'll rip the damned cable out of the wall myself the day that happens and go back to writing code for entertainment (and yes, I'm aware my rant is starting to reach "Stay off my lawn you damned kids" proportions; I'm taking a step back from the edge now).

If they're grousing about Adblock Plus, I'm sure next they'll be whining about the Flashblock plugin. Not like the over-use of Flash animations on websites has become SPAM 2.0 or anything like that. :p