thePowerOfGrayskull's Journal: Adblock and misunderstood posts...

There seems to be some confusion around my comments here. I get responses that mostly seem to say that site owners deserve what they get when they use obnoxious ads; and that posters will be damned if anyone tells THEM how to browse.

I disagree with neither of those. The point I was trying to make is that the web site owners have the /right/ to do whatever they want - including the posting of obnoxious, gouge-your-eyes-out advertisements. They even have the /right/ to try to force you to view those advertisements - this is their server, and they have control over how they want to run it.

I am not saying they will succeed in this - obviously there are many ways around any restriction in this open playground we call the Internet. But it is undeniably their /right/ - which is the only point I was making.

Conversely, you and I have the /right/ to control how we view those web pages. I use adblock, but will listen to a reasonable request to unblock ads. If a site uses evil ads (flash, java, java-script, animations) and tries to force me to view them, I tend to stop using the web site because a) it's no longer worth the aggravation of trying to circumvent - there is precious little content out there that I simply "must" have. b) if enough people do walk away, the provider has no choice but to reconsider his tactics.

But to reiterate my point - the content providers have the right to control what is on their web site. What we choose to do about it is up to us.