Comment Re:Fuck you. (Score 1) 618
>You know what ACTUAL theft is? Consuming someone's product (ie. visiting an ad-supported web site) and then refusing to pay (ie. allow the ads to be shown). If you want a moral and ethical ad-blocker, implement a plug-in that refuses to let you visit any site whose ads you don't want displayed, or which allows you to pay micro-payments per visit.
This may have been true once when most ads were shown on a pay-per-view basis, but nobody does that anymore because it's to easy to cheat and it costs too much. These days ads are shown on a pay-per-click basis - which is a lot more realistic in terms of value gained by the advertiser, it also means that adblockers in fact represent ZERO lost revenue or theft since those who enable them has an almost 100% overlap with "people who wouldn't have clicked on the ad anyway". If you put "people with adblockers" and "people who don't click on ads" as a red and blue circle on a VENN diagram what you get is a giant purple blob with maybe a tiny red and blue line on either side.
It's very much the same as the reason the do-not-call list hasn't significantly impact the profitability of telemarketing, if anything it made it slightly more profitable as they can avoid wasting time and money phoning people who would never buy something from a telemarketer anyway.
The illusion that you would make more money if people didn't have adblockers is based on a completely false assumption about human behavior. Ads can be very effective at creating want - but not when their mere existence has already created dislike. Those who hate ads, are the ones least likely to buy anything based on that type of advertising - simply because the negative emotions associated with seeing the add overwhelms whatever emotional effect the ad was intended to produce.