Germany's Supreme Court Confirms That Adblocking Is Legal, In Sixth Consecutive Defeat For Publishers
from the never-gonna-give-you-up dept
Adblocking is something that many people feel strongly about, as the large number of comments on previous posts dealing with the topic indicates. Publishers, too, have strong feelings here, including the belief that they have a right to make people view the ads they carry on their sites. (Techdirt, of course, has a rather different position.) In Germany, publishers have sued the makers of AdBlock Plus no less than five times -- and lost every case. It will not surprise Techdirt readers to learn that those persistent defeats did not stop the German media publishing giant Axel Springer from trying yet again, at Germany's Supreme Court. It has just lost. As Adblock Plus explains in a justifiably triumphant blog post:
This ruling confirms -- just as the regional courts in Munich and Hamburg stated previously -- that people have the right in Germany to block ads. This case had already been tried in the Cologne Regional Court, then in the Regional Court of Appeals, also in Cologne -- with similar results. It also confirms that Adblock Plus can use a whitelist to allow certain acceptable ads through.
Reuters notes that Springer's case was just the first of five against Adblock Plus to reach the Supreme Court in Germany, although the others are presumably moot in the light of this definitive decision. However, that does not mean Springer is giving up. There remains one final option:
Springer said it would appeal to the [German] Constitutional Court on the grounds that adblockers violated press freedom by disrupting online media and their financial viability.
Yes, that's right: if you are using an adblocker, you are a bad person, who hates press freedom....
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Filed Under: adblocking, germany, legal
Companies: adblock plus, axel springer
Reader Comments
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Should it be illegal to use the index in a print magazine to skip directly to a story that you want to read? Should it be legal to have a friend pull out perfume ads? What about a caregiver? What about a paid caregiver? What if I'm not actually allergic, I just don't like perfume when I'm trying to concentrate on something else?
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'Not giving me money is violating my freedoms!'
Springer said it would appeal to the [German] Constitutional Court on the grounds that adblockers violated press freedom by disrupting online media and their financial viability.
Awesome, by that standard you could argue that not subscribing to a news service, or telling someone else not to, is a violation of their 'press freedom' because it threatens their 'financial viability'.
That they've sunk to the point of arguing the equivalent of 'felony interference with a business model' shows they are getting really desperate. If they put even a fraction of that time and money they've thrown into the six cases so far into figuring out why people are using adblockers, and maybe doing something about that, they might have a better shot.
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Re: 'Not giving me money is violating my freedoms!'
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Re: Re: 'Not giving me money is violating my freedoms!'
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Re: Re: Re: 'Not giving me money is violating my freedoms!'
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Another blast from the past...
Maybe the Ad Supported Media age is over?
Maybe they didn't get the memo?
Maybe we are sick of getting ads that come with malware?
Maybe we are sick of full page pop-ups/pop-unders/auto play (at full volume)
Maybe pissing off the consumers of the ads is a bad business model?
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Re: Another blast from the past...
I will get the message and I won't come back for at least one quarter of a galactic rotation.
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Re: Another blast from the past...
The problem for most advertisers is the deliberate click through rate is dismal. Plus, Wanamaker's dictum comes into play - "Half the money spent on advertising is wasted, but you do not which half".
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Re: Re: Another blast from the past...
Having spent a significant amount of time here at Techdirt, I have unblocked advertising on this site. There still remains some risk that some advertising provider will slip some malware into the ads displayed here, without Techdirts knowledge. That is some potentially significant risk, but I want Techdirt to get the revenue beyond my subscriptions (yes plural, there are two). That risk still worries me.
I am certain that Techdirt does what it can to prevent malware in its ads, but there may not be ability to ensure that, absolutely.
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Re: Re: Another blast from the past...
There IS a problem with ads fundamentally.
On a global scale, I would even say on a national scale, ads simply DO NOT and CAN NOT be tolerated. It is not scalable. Nor efficient. (just as the fish in efficient are not scalable)
Every advertiser wants to get their ad in front of every human's eyeballs. That is a many-to-many connection problem that simply is intolerable. It is why people object to SPAM. If it were only one or two emails per day it would be horrible. But in fact SPAM, were it not for technical measures to stop it, would make email entirely unusable.
The right model is to let me search for what I need. When I need house siding, or new windows, I will seek it out. I don't need irrelevant ads in front of my face.
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Re:
But that's probably because I have NoScript blocking their adblocker detector script.
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In reality, it's a completely useless waste of time and money. The adblock-detection scripts are themselves added to blocklists along with the ads and that's the end of that.
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Depend on donations
Put up a paywall
Run ads
At this point they have pretty much shot themselves in the ass with the ads. First the obnoxious annoying pop up/under auto play loud and intrusive BS. Then ads that contain malicious code. No one trusts them anymore to actually vet what ads run to be sure no malicious code is lurking or to be non annoying.
Paywalls? Guess it depends on the viewer. If they think it is worth paying for the content. Of course now a days no one wants to pay for anything. TV, books, software, games can all be had for free if you know where to look.
Donations...See above for paywalls.
It all comes down to if the web sites had not abused their viewers in the first place they wouldn't be in this situation now.
Hmm do you think the CATV providers are watching? Seems like they are on the same path. Abuse your customers and then cry when they won't buy your service/content
Novel idea. Actually give your customers what they want at a reasonable price so they have no motivation to change their habits. Inertia is a powerful thing.
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Who do they think owns and operates this 'puter anyways?
If they had purchased this computer for me they might have a say in what runs and how.
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one solutuon
When you think of all the special-interest laws out there, written by lobbyists and rubberstamped by legislators, it's a wonder that ad-blocking is not among them.
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Re: one solutuon
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Re: Re: one solutuon
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Re: one solutuon
Newsflash: They don't.
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Yes, that's right: I am bad and hate press freedom...
Oh wait a minute, that freedom includes forcing me to read the output???? Why, then, of course I oppose press freedom; it's right to swing its fist has extended beyond where my nose begins!
Now whatever happened to the idea that content was also advertising?
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How can anyone say that out loud with a straight face?
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"The RNC has a constitutionally-protected right to fill up peoples' voicemail inboxes with ringless campaign spam..."
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Felony Interference of a Business Model
That'd be like a company suing the manufacturer of venetian blinds because people are putting them in their windows to ignore the company's flashing billboards across the street.
That'd be like a muzak company suing the manufacturer of noise-canceling headphones because people are putting them on to ignore their radio ads when out shopping.
That'd be like a panhandler suing me because I didn't slow down to read his sign, or a street preacher suing me because I continued a conversation on my phone instead of listening to him.
The onus of the blocking is all on the end user. They can choose not to use the blocker in the first place. They can choose not to block a specific website or specific type of ad. And they can reverse their decision at any time. It is 100% the user saying "I dislike this content so much that I am going to go out of my way to avoid it." And there is nothing wrong with that.
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Next up: spammers suing people making spam filters...
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Adblock is absolutely necessary
If adverticers wouldn't misuse the ad platforms, they might get our sympathy, but the current situation is that web was completely ruined by the adverticements, and adblock is providing good service by restoring web to it's original mission of providing useful information instead of commercial programming.
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Re: Adblock is absolutely necessary
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blocking
My concern (and why I block many ads) is use of ad delivery networks to install malware.
My adblocking is as malware prevention - I am just blocking off the a likely way for me to receive malware (and plenty of big name respected brand web sites have delivered malware via dubious ads)
If ad is from same domain as site I visit and not .js driven my default settings will display it - it's the third party script stuff I am blocking, not the web site content itself.
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