Comment It's the nature of the business (Score 1) 1043
The heart of the problem is that a social contract is subject to change at the whim of _society_. If you build your business model, in this case advertising revenue, on the presumption that the behavoiur of society will continue unchanged, you had better be prepared to be light on your feet when and if that behaviour changes.
Whining at society that they're not honouring some unwritten rule by changing their behaviour for their own benefit just proves that you haven't really thought out the long term implications.
In this case, the long term effect is that both parties lose out if the model fails completely. If online advertising is blocked to such an extent that it is no longer feasible to run a website, a good many excellent websites could disappear.
The reality is that long before that happens new models for getting paid advertising into content will be developed and so the merry dance will continue unless we reach some sort of equilibrium state where the advertisers put out their information in a way that is acceptable to the majority of people, or it is technically unfeasable for the majority of people to do anything about it.
Whining at society that they're not honouring some unwritten rule by changing their behaviour for their own benefit just proves that you haven't really thought out the long term implications.
In this case, the long term effect is that both parties lose out if the model fails completely. If online advertising is blocked to such an extent that it is no longer feasible to run a website, a good many excellent websites could disappear.
The reality is that long before that happens new models for getting paid advertising into content will be developed and so the merry dance will continue unless we reach some sort of equilibrium state where the advertisers put out their information in a way that is acceptable to the majority of people, or it is technically unfeasable for the majority of people to do anything about it.
