Two wrongs don’t make a copyright

Let’s talk law and let’s talk donkey. Or. in the British vernacular, ass. In particular, let’s go back to Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law, who had one of his characters in Oliver Twist say of a legal assumption that “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass - a idiot.” For a prime example of the some of the …

[Winkypop]

They’re my eyes

I’ll consume stuff the way I want to.

Dear ad companies: Regardless of what you fling, I ain’t clicking or buying.

OK?

[Joe Gurman]

Re: They’re my eyes

And I insist on my right not even to view ads. Even by accident.

[Philo T Farnsworth]

Re: They’re my eyes

That's nice and, admittedly, a sentiment to which I subscribe as well.

I hate ads that dance and grab the screen and otherwise interfere with my web "experience."

However, bear in mind that it costs money to prepare and present the content you're viewing.

Taking The Register as an example, the reporters would like to get paid so that they can support themselves and their families and, well, continue to report.

Same for the editors, the IT folk keeping the site on line, and (gasp) investors who plunked their pounds and dollars down to finance the endeavor.

Back before the Internet, we had these things called newspapers and while you paid a nominal fee to pick one up at the news stand or market, the bulk of the costs in production, etc., were picked up by advertisers. There were even sections of the paper devoted entirely to small advertistments ("want ads" or "classifieds") that people would actively peruse for used cars, appliances, and jobs, among other items.

I don't recall anyone tearing out the ads or blacking them over to avoid seeing them, probably because they weren't jumping out and twitching in an attempt to grab your attention (that was the job of the copywriters and designers -- to make the ad interesting enough to get you to at least glance at it).

My point is that having ads in your newspaper were sort of the "price of admission" and nobody objected.

Back to the Internet -- somehow the notion that, purportedly according to Stewart Brand, "Information wants to be free" has become "I want my information for free."

Since we're not willing to pay for our information, entertainment, etc., through an admission fee, such as we might going to a concert, we have to pay for it somehow, and the only solution at which the market has arrived is advertising.¹

It's either that or paywalls.

Do I have an answer that both ensures that the producers of the work and the maintainers of the infrastructure necessary to deliver it get paid and still ensure an unencumbered expierence?

No. I wish I did.

Maybe someone reading this has an answer. If so, fire away, and, if not, well, it won't be the first downvote I've received.

______________

¹ Do not take this as a defense of either predatory market capitalism or of rampant saturation advertising -- I'm not a fan of either -- in fact, quite the opposite.

[trindflo]

Re: They’re my eyes

No vote either way.

The most ad money gets spent on garbage I really didn't want to see anyway. I'm not concerned at all that marketing mavens may feel a pinch in income.

What would happen if all that marketing money went out of advertising?

The things people actually want might require a subscription.

The fanatical drive to gather every scrap of information about people would lose its funding.

Pages would load faster because they didn't have to go to the ad arbitrater first.

I'm not saying you're wrong; I don't think you are necessarily. I'm proposing another model to look at this from and suggesting there may be (an admittedly painful) means to extract ourselves from this toxic culture. It would require someone to make a stand, which I doubt is likely. I like to think it is possible even if unlikely.

The closest thing we have right now is that youtube will allow you to buy a premium subscription that eliminates ads. And youtube will continue to monitor the price points to extract maximum revenue. That is not what I'm talking about. If nobody will play, nobody will pay.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: They’re my eyes

But I always thought people went onto Facebook just to look at the ads

[JulieM]

Re: They’re my eyes

Almost.

They go onto Facebook to see inflammatory advertisements next to posts by people who they would have expected to complain about them. And they mistake the apparent lack of pushback for acceptance of the abhorrent material in the adverts; because the whole thing is very carefully designed to create the illusion that every user is seeing the same advertisements. After all, everyone who sees a poster on a hoarding, in a newspaper or on TV sees the same thing.

[LybsterRoy]

Re: They’re my eyes

-- probably because they weren't jumping out and twitching in an attempt to grab your attention --

Brilliant post overall and the above sentence hits the nail on the head for me. Setting up a PC for someone I get overwhelmed by the amount of crud on the browser until I get an ad blocker functioning.

I especially dislike the ones that think they're allowed to take control of my speakers (which are generally turned off) and blast me with random noise (or music or speech)

[may_i]

A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

Either the justices at the Federal Court of Justice are all so old that they have no idea how a browser works and what latitude it has in how it renders content, or they are utterly corrupt and have taken money or the equivalent to deliver the desired decision for Springer.

Either way, this is a travesty. I can instruct my browser how I want to see a page rendered. People who are blind might use a browser which renders the text to speech so that they can use the WWW. Users with bad eyesight may instruct their browser to change backgrounds and font sizes so that they can also use the WWW. The web server which serves pages to a browser has no idea about the user's needs and this is why the browser is responsible for the final rendering of a page, not the server. Fundamentally, the design of the WWW always envisaged the user and their browser making the final decision about how a page is rendered. This is not broadcast television!

Let's hope that the lower court manages to get the point over in a way that cannot be argued with the second time around.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

In Germany the courts first look at 'big German company' vs 'some foreign entity' before they even get to anything else. They tend to assume every country is the same (and some are).

[Dan 55]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

It's Axel Springer vs Ad-block Plus (Eyeo). Both are German so this is just a straightforward case of big German company vs small German company.

[alain williams]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

That is the point: big company can afford to spend more money on a frivolous law case than a small company.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

The size of the company shouldn't come into it, though.

[Joe Gurman]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

In an ideal world. Do you live in one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

"The size of the company shouldn't come into it, though."

SHOULDN'T

But it's not the size of the company but the size of the wallet that makes the difference. It's normal practice for a wealthy company to make an absurd and indefensible copyright or trademark claim against a minnow. They know that the minnow will discover that they can't even afford to engage a lawyer so just have to back down.

Shouldn't happen but is common.

[JulieM]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

That's why we need there to be a requirement that no money changes hands until all avenues of appeal are exhausted. That prevents a deep-pocketed party who would be certain eventually to lose, from stringing out proceedings until the other party is forced to withdraw for want of funds.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

"Either the justices at the Federal Court of Justice are all so old* that they have no idea how a browser works and what latitude it has in how it renders content"

Go back and read the article again, paying attention to this:

"[The legal process's] job is to test propositions against the logic and tests embedded in the legal code, and if that produces an outcome that brays and kicks like a mule, so be it."

True the article then goes on to say "It’s up to lawmakers to fix that" but until they do it's up to everyone else to comply with the decision. That included those who write browsers; it's their problem.

* Obviously you are too old to understand how the legal process works.

[Lon24]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

IANAL or even a German lawyer. Some browsers (like IE<6) are very ignorant and cannot render some stuff or degrade it in some way. Some will have functions turned off so javascript disappears and so on. Fonts change and so can colour. Does rendering white text on white background break copyright?

An analogy, (dangerous, I know), is if I buy a book and cross out a sentence I find offensive - have I broken copyright? If I give it to my child or lend it to a friend - have I broken copyright?

Even in this country judges do tend to interpret law (that's their job as well as applying it) to evolving circumstances beyond the concept of the originators. It's up the lawmakers then to update the law if they don't like the result. In a fast moving technological world it's the only way to progress against stasis. But then stasis is what some people want. I never thought of Germany in that camp.

.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

It's up the lawmakers then to update the law ...

Indeed, as it should be.

Hopefully, without the intervention of the Mighty Brown Envelope ®.

.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

Not sure about your crossing out the sentence analogy. That would mean anyone else who gets that copy of the book has the modified version. Ad blocking is more like just chosing not to read a sentence.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: A bad decision. Stupidity or Corruption?

And "choosing" is the crucial word. AdBlockPlus doesn't actually block or change anything. It's a just a tool that has been made available. It's the individual users who choose to acquire that tool and install it. If the ads were benign, and the site publisher took a legal position of accepting responsibility that every ad they serve is benign, then maybe people would not be looking for tools to change the content of the web pages they wish to look at.

If this decision goes against AdBlockPlus, then what happens when a malign malware infection results from an ad executing on millions of users computers? It not as if it's never happened before. Admittedly, protections have moved on too, with sandboxing and other browser protections, as we all know, it's an arms race. Removing a defence is not how we win.

[b0llchit]

Modification without distribution

Changing a copyrighted work in your possession for your own purpose and not distributing the result to others but yourself, the person who possesses the work and performs the modifications, can not be considered copyright infringement.

If that case is copyright infringement, then anybody cutting a hole in a newspaper or annotating a book would be infringing copyright. It would amount to adding a no dissemination clause to copyright. If you no longer can do as you please with a work, as long as you do not distribute, then there is no possibility of evolution of works any more. No one could ever again create a new piece of work without copyright infringement on other's work because we all base our new work on existing work put together in new ways. And by analogy, if AdBlock is infringing copyright, then also pens and scissors must be banned as copyright infringement tools.

[juul]

Re: Modification without distribution

Exactly, The original title is not changed only one persons perception of the title is changed. If this guy wins, then wearing any kind of device that changes the optical perception of the title will be illegal, like wearing a pair of sunglasses to a museum.

[b0llchit]

Re: Modification without distribution

And, as browser extension examples, these would all be illegal too: NoScript, Privacy Badger, GreaseMonkey and Tampermonkey.

And while you are mentioning sunglasses, all those colour blind people, they modify the author's intended perception too. That is a big no-no and these people must be convicted of copyright infringement because they automatically modify the work before consuming it.

[may_i]

Re: Modification without distribution

Axel Springer is a company named after its founder.

This isn't about "a guy", it's about a massive German publishing company wanting to force feed people advertising. Springer are one of the largest publishing companies in Europe. They also have their hand in academic publishing - one of the biggest rackets there is.

[nijam]

Re: Modification without distribution

> They also have their hand in academic publishing - one of the biggest rackets there is.

Indeed, can you guess which large publisher led the offensive to make it a racket?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Modification without distribution

"Changing a copyrighted work in your possession for your own purpose and not distributing the result to others but yourself, the person who possesses the work and performs the modifications, can not be considered copyright infringement."

The logic in the decision is that the adblocker makes such a change and distributes the result to the user. I can see why the court came to that decision. As the article says, it's up to the lawmakers to fix that - if they choose to do so.

The simple option for the adblocker would be to not distribute any material from Axel Springer that contains ads. The nuclear option would be to not distribute any material from any site that contains ads.

I suppose what the defence now needs to do is go back to the lower court and argue that they're not distributing anything, the material is in the user's possession once it arrives in their PC and that they are simply the scissors with which the possessor chooses to cut a hole in the newspaper.

[may_i]

Re: Modification without distribution

At least I'm not old enough not to see you playing devil's advocate here.

A program running on my computer which changes how a page is rendered in my browser isn't "distributing" anything, as I'm sure you know.

The court is technically incompetent or corrupt as I suggested. Your slippery interpretation of what the word "distribute" means does not change this.

[PB90210]

Re: Modification without distribution

"A program running on my computer which changes how a page is rendered"

IEv Netscape...

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

Re: Modification without distribution

Actually, it opens up an argument for browsers with built in ad blocking. Because instead of a third party plugin interfering with the process, it becomes the browser making choices about how to render a page. Which it does all the time as part of its essential operation.

[nijam]

Re: Modification without distribution

> The simple option for the adblocker would be to not distribute any material from Axel Springer

There seem to be three surplus words at the end of your sentence. Am I correcting an error or am I breaching your copyright?

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Modification without distribution

The logic in the decision is that the adblocker makes such a change and distributes the result to the user.

By the same logic, when I open Microsoft Word and type on my keyboard so that words appear in a document, it is actually MS Word that is creating the document, and not me, and it is Microsoft who own it. I'm sure they'd love this, but nope. Reduction ad absurdum.

[Dan 55]

Re: Modification without distribution

Maybe that's true now Copilot can write stuff for you and everything is saved by default on OneDrive?

But Ad-block Plus is a local plugin for a local person, there's no distribution here.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Modification without distribution

"The logic in the decision is that the adblocker makes such a change and distributes the result to the user. I can see why the court came to that decision. As the article says, it's up to the lawmakers to fix that - if they choose to do so.""

As per my other reply, only the the user has the choice to install AdblockPlus in the first place and as per others replies, only the user gets to see the changed content. So that's two strikes against the logic. It's not being forced on a users and it's a "personal use" only, ie the modified work is not being "distributed" to others.

[skwdenyer]

Re: Modification without distribution

I don't think you understand the concept of agency. The adblocker doesn't make "such a change and distributes the result to the user." The adblocker (the software) is doing no distribution; the adblocker software's developer very definitely is not doing so.

The user install a piece of software (a browser) and another piece of software (a browser extension) to customise the browser's rendering to his/her tastes. There is no third party "distribution" of modified copyright works. All choices are made by the user; some are merely automated by the use of a helper extension. Should the user wish, he/she could instead craft a custom style sheet to exclude the vast majority of ads from a given site, for instance - automating that process doesn't change the user's agency in the matter.

I can see why the court came to that decision *IF* (as is often the case) the defendant's lawyers were insufficiently bright to explain the issues in the correct way.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Modification without distribution

"The logic in the decision is that the adblocker makes such a change and distributes the result to the user. "

Easy enough, give the user choices on how the product works so it becomes a tool. By default, everything is on and ads are deleted. This would have most people just installing it and leaving it as-is. But, they COULD untick some boxes to let a few ads in if the liked.

I'm not opposed to ads which is why I like some trade magazines and electronics/hobbyist magazines since they inform me about products and companies I might not otherwise find. Any editorials winds up being the fluff, but can be entertaining from time to time. Web ads, OTOH, are often too glaring or designed in a way to may one think they are a function of the web page to get one to click on the links. I really hate pop-ups and overlays that get displayed right in the middle of my trying to type something in a search box. US hardware stores are infamous for this. Half the time the lottery page will try to display a popup that doesn't work with Firefox so I have to use another browser until they stop using it. It just grays out the page and won't let me do anything. Blinking, scrolling and garish colors are just plain annoying to the point where I'll actively NOT consider whatever is being advertised.

[tyrfing]

Re: Modification without distribution

And yet there have been court cases about this very thing.

In downtown Toronto, there used to be a mall called the Eaton Centre. There was an art installation of Canada Geese suspended above one set of escalators.

One Christmas, the mall tied red ribbons around the necks of the geese.

The artist sued, as this altered his vision of the installation.

I don't know whether the mail had bought the piece or only rented it, or the outcome of the case. And it's true that this is public display, not a private change.

But it is relevant.

[speed]

Re: Modification without distribution

exactly. the keyword in copyright is copy

[Peter Christy]

"how about responsible, non-intrusive, non-monstrous ad tech? The sort that doesn’t utterly ruin online content, doesn’t present a security threat, and doesn’t power global surveillance capitalism?"

Spot on! Ads have completely ruined the YouTube experience, being usually irrelevant, intrusive and not even entertaining. At one time ad agencies would produce TV ads that were genuinely entertaining in order to prevent viewers leaving the room to put the kettle on. Perhaps on-line ad producers could learn from this concept.

That would however, require some creative thought - something that seems completely absent from on-line advertising.

A few years (decades?) back, architecture took a turn where designs seemed intended to shock rather than enhance our city centres. The designs were more intended to win awards from their peers rather than serve the community in which they were placed. We are still recovering from that. Advertising seems to be going through a similar phase.

Long live the revolution, I say! ;)

[Robin]

The change to abusive advertising happened back in around 2000/2001. Ads before that were static images or maybe animated gifs at a push. They sat there in the top right corner or down the left hand side, and that was it. Then came the popups. And ones that expanded to fill the screen. And popunders. That was the point at which the advertisers made their collective bed, and why today they can go and fucking lie in it.

The advertising manager in the company where I worked was quite dismissive when we warned him that ad blockers were a thing and would get more popular. 6 months later he was begging us to find ways around the blockers and so the war was on. And yes I washed my hands with wire wool and bleach every evening.

[Doctor Syntax]

"That was the point at which the advertisers made their collective bed"

More like when that shit in it.

[Doctor Syntax]

"At one time ad agencies would produce TV ads that were genuinely entertaining in order to prevent viewers leaving the room to put the kettle on."

They tried. They mostly failed.

At best, however entertaining it might have been the entertainment value fades to zero and then turns negative with repetition. The advertising industry has never cottoned on to that, largely because it's not in their interest to do so. Their function is not to sell the advertisers' products, it's to sell their own, advertisements, and it's advertisers' marketing departments to whom they sell it. The marketing departments are complicit because their jobs depend on not realising it either.

[Anonymous Coward]

"At one time ad agencies would produce TV ads that were genuinely entertaining"

Doesn't seems to have occurred to the advertising nongs that an entertaining advertisement could be part of a narrative left hanging in the Perils of Pauline tradition. I suppose if it had, the cost of retaining actual talent to produce the interlocking segmented adverts would have deterred them.

I haven't bothered much with television for years but I find that my mind just filters out the advertising to the point that I couldn't say what the ads were or what they were about. Generally just think about the content of the program so far during the interruption.

I think the German Federal Court of Justice is immured in Karlsruhe which I suspect is bit of a backwater and that a slight case of judicial cabin fever might be responsible for this peculiar decision.

After reunification perhaps the court should have been removed to Berlin where the winds of modernity might be expected blow more strongly.

[Paul Kinsler]

Re: entertaining advertisement could be part of a narrative left hanging

This is (or at least was) a thing that used to be done sometimes on linear tv - the ad for a thing would change week-to-week or whatever, advancing some small narrative, and it indeed seemed to engage some viewers. But it probably relied mostly on the inertia of those stuck - or prepared to wait - in front of the tv whilst waiting for the ad break to finish (I mean, how many cups of tea might you actually need in an hour?), and what with all the time shifting, catchup, bingeing, and skipping capabilities now I'm not sure it could manage anything like the same traction.

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

Re: entertaining advertisement could be part of a narrative left hanging

I lived close to the guy in the Nescafe adverts, he was not impressed when I told him they were like a weekly 30 second snippet of a porno intro. They were popular, but I have no idea why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsN4YwbM9kw

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: entertaining advertisement could be part of a narrative left hanging

Yeah, he was much better in Buffy.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: entertaining advertisement could be part of a narrative left hanging

And to prove a point, one of the adverts running while I type this is 1:40 long - I've been stuffed with ads 4 or 5 minutes long in the past (that stops the video getting watched).

I rather liked the Jasper Carrott skit of the obvious finale to those adverts. Finishing with the question "how was it for you ?", and getting the reply "like your coffee, instant !"

[kvantum]

Where is the liability then?

If Axel Springer claims that website is a computer program that is fully copywritable because the author intended the user to see it exactly as it was transmitted with all of the ads, does that mean that the author assumes liability if a user happened to be breached due to malvertising?

[chivo243]

Re: Where is the liability then?

Exactly! Thanks for reinforcing my thought.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/08/15/german_court_ruling_ad_blocking/#c_5126649

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

it won't go through.

Our internal German forces to prevent the evil Axel Springer to use such nonsense arguments are strong. Does not prevent them from trying, of course - why should it be different here than many other western countries in that regard. If would be like "disable volume control on TV to silence advertising", if you go a few years back.

[david 12]

Taht is a strong and cogent argument

...made by a paid writer for an adv supported platform. And if the shoe was on the other foot, the vulture would be biting it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I just broke their copyright

I viewed their website on a monitor other than the one their designers use, so by definition it is different than intended.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I think I just broke their copyright

Many years ago, I did little bit of web design, when the world was more simple. The client wanted a specific colour scheme to match their branding, business cards, letterheads etc. So I asked for the precise colours they used and matched them as closely as possible on my colour calibrated, properly warmed up CRT display. He wasn't happy.

So I painted a rainbow of shades across the page, labelled them, and asked him to pick what they thought was the correct shade of green. It wasn't even close.

And yes, I did try to explain to him that even two identical CRT displays would probably show the page in slightly different shades for any number of reasons, including component tolerances and whether it was at normal operating temperature. I even talked a little about colour gamut and how RGB additive colour mixing on a display was tad different to the CMYK subtractive colour mixing of printing and the limited overlapping areas where matching was at least possible.

I got paid in the end, and it looked "perfect" on his screen. No one else saw it the same way :-)

[MachDiamond]

Re: I think I just broke their copyright

"I got paid in the end, and it looked "perfect" on his screen. No one else saw it the same way :-)"

My main monitor on my production machine is a calibrated Eizo. I'm confident that what I'm looking at is accurate so if a customer rings up and tells me it looks a bit blue, I know it's their monitor. My MBP is calibrated just for these sorts of issues, but it's still not as good as the monitor in the office. All I can do is make sure I'm evaluating color that's referenced to a standard. High end clients will also have calibrated monitors to look at work they receive in. They often have the tools to check prints as well to make sure any printed material is exact as well. Of course, it gets viewed by people that don't care as much under much different lighting so it all out of the window anyway.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Such as?

>> non-intrusive, non-monstrous ad tech

Any suggestions on how to do this, please? Adverts have to intrude to get attention. If they are not noticed, they will not work. Subliminal? That is banned in the UK. Product placement? Hmmm.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Such as?

"If they are not noticed, they will not work."

But what is their effect when they work. They are almost universally hated by those who have them pushed onto them. This is especially true of those who use adblockers. As a result they are more likely to build negative associations with the product.

The best an advertiser can hope for is that their ad gets blocked and thus avoids that fate. The next best is that their product is something the viewer wouldn't want.

The only advertisements which can guarantee to be useful are those which provide information the viewer is looking for when they're looking.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Such as?

There's an old quote about 'only 50% of the adverts work, but we don't know which 50%'.

Perhaps I can help here. Any advert sent to any vaguely technically competent person won't even be seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Such as?

"They are almost universally hated by those who have them pushed onto them. This is especially true of those who use adblockers. As a result they are more likely to build negative associations with the product."

Is this so? The latter bit certainly, but the margins that branded goods have over own-brands or unbranded goods says that in net terms, advertising works. I have otherwise intelligent family members who would never buy anything other than Persil laundry products and Fairy dishwashing products. They even subscribe to Which? whose tests show that there's no good reason to pay the brand premium, but nope, they still reach for the heavily advertised stuff.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Such as?

"The only advertisements which can guarantee to be useful are those which provide information the viewer is looking for when they're looking."

If I'm looking at house paint, an ad for brushes and rollers isn't as bad as an advert for a flat pack gazebo. I'm even happy to see links to tutorials on the best way to paint a house that might include gratuitous mentions of a particular brand. The ad blocker is in place so I can search through paints without being constantly interrupted with popups for useless tat.

[nijam]

Re: Such as?

> If they are not noticed, they will not work.

True. Adverts are all shit, and when I do notice them, the products advertised are also shit.

And the program they interrupt has been enshitified by the interruption.

Also, isn't that interruption breach of the program-makers copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Adverts have to intrude to get attention

I disagree - they have to be visible, but only that - they also need to avoid alienating the potential customer by being annoying.

E.g. a row of static images (with associated links) down the RHS of a Register article, perhaps images advertising computers or something vaguely relevant would be visible, might be tolerated, and may even work; but going further by making them intrusive (with animations, sound, or whatever) will likely just drive us even more towards ad blockers.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Such as?

If they are not noticed, they will not work.

Subliminal? That is banned in the UK.

"Subliminal cuts" are banned, however, the way all advertising works is on a subliminal level. They make you subconsciously aware of a product's existence. Nobody ever said, on a conscious level, "I love this advert, I'm going to go and buy the product. I especially love the way I've already seen the same advert inserted five times in this short Youtube video, three of which such insertions were in the middle of a sentence."

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Such as?

I once got "surveyed" which asked precisely how much I "loved" a particular advert.

I replied that I didn't think they understood the word "love". Yes, it was an "in person" survey. :-)

[trindflo]

Re: Such as?

You seem to be assuming universal acceptance and support of adverts. If adverts don't work, maybe they will go away!

For litter to be litter, it must be publicly displayed. That isn't a good reason for it to exist in the first place.

[GeekyOldFart]

Ridiculous.

I buy a newspaper, but I tear out the classifieds and shred them unread. - Have I infringed copyright? Of course not.

To counter the argument "but you've already paid for it there, the website is free and the ads pay for it!" let's do the same with a free community paper I take home from the stack in the coffee shop. There, like the website, they make their only income from the ads. Just as before I detach the ad section and shred it unread. Still not copyright infringement.

The advertisers pay for the websites to serve their content. There is no requirement on me to render it unless I choose to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ridiculous.

"A free community paper I take home from the stack in the coffee shop."

Looks like I might be in for 20 years to life. ;)

I used to take home the free glossy tabloid sized advertorial magazines handed out a the entrances to the Sydney City railway stations, where I extracted the staples from the spine and used the opened out sheets on the kitchen surfaces as a poor man's Benchkote^®.

Hell! I definitely wouldn't want to actually read the barely disguised marketing drivel or some pointless recollection from some semi-literate B rate parochial "celebrity."

As it is I could expect a midnight visit from the Kopyreich Gestapo because my DNS forwarder is configured like pihole to ditch advertising sites.

I can imagine the German tourist Fawlty Towers episode with "don't mention intellectual property." (Basil) "I mentioned Pihole but I think I got away with it." I suppose Germany has its Torquays but the UK didn't put its High or Supreme Court in the Torquay suburbs.

[Long John Silver]

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Axel Springer's behaviour is bizarre: a titan of the rentier economy, fiddling around enriching a gaggle of lawyers in pursuit of a ruling which, if won, will have no tangible effect upon anybody's conduct, ⁣even in Germany.

Axel Springer, in company with the rest of the publishing behemoths greedily sucking from the teat of culture, is facing the collapse of hitherto certainties spun from the spurious concept of 'intellectual property' (IP). The onset of widespread use of digital media, plus the Internet, tolled the death knell for copyright; that for patents soon when 3D printing technologies (solid and liquid) take hold in cottage industries throughout BRICS. Ironically, major players dependent upon copyright (e.g. Microsoft) willingly play ducks and drakes with extant law when 'training' their 'AIs'; they can afford to exploit fuzzy areas with awareness that regardless of eventual court rulings and legislative clarification the deed will have been done. In essence, digits cannot be corralled, regardless of who claims ownership. An alternative business model, that of long ago, awaits in the wings.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

Drawings in patent filings are rarely reproducible in any form. They are sketchy outline drawings at best. 3D printing is already incredibly advanced in many countries east and west.

[abend0c4]

Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law

Dickens was a particular critic of the contemporary lack of copyright in the US. His own works were widely pirated and despite a fulsome welcome on his first visit to the US, he left under something of a cloud after his attacks on the exploitation of his work.

At the time, the value of the American publishing industry was seen as the mechanics - the paper, the type, the ink, the presses, the binding - and not in the words on the page. The newspapers, which made free use of British copy, were quick to jump on Dickens' demands for remuneration and he was accused of being a "hired agent" of the British state seeking to undermine American publishing.

He returned to the USA having derived a strategy that might give him a financial return - a necessity owing to his many dependents - a tour in which he gave public performances of readings from his various novels. It was a great success - and perhaps mirrors the situation of many musicians today who find they depend on live performances for income as their recordings offer no meaningful return.

The US did, ultimately, recognise international copyrights, but by that time Dickens was dead. The real lesson is, though, that copyright rarely serves the interests of original creators because they're dependent on more powerful financial interests to distribute their works - either with their permission or without. Is there any reference in this current case to an impoverished author, deprived of income by a missing advertisement, or is it all about the interests of the publishing conglomerate?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law

"is it all about the interests of the publishing conglomerate?"

More or less. It's about the interests of the advertising industry of which the publishing conglomerate is a part. Their interest is in selling advertising to advertisers. It does not extend to selling the advertisers' products. It most certainly does not extend to avoiding pissing off the ads' viewers and thus harming advertisers' interests.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law

It's about the interests of the advertising industry ...

Exactly.

Advertising companies (ie: their clients) pay publishing companies for ads served, a metric that does not necessarily translate into revenue for said clients.

.

[Valeyard]

Re: Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law

paying for ads served? in my experience working at an advertising tech company years back it was conversions, they don't even look at how many got served (especially with how easy that is to spoof) even with clicks that don't convert they're interested only informationally but very rarely pay on that metric, again because a curl call would abuse that

[Korev]

Re: Charles Dickens, a pungent critic of the law

A very interesting post, abend0c4. I've leant something.

There's an interesting parallel between the above and today's LLM model building.

[Mage]

Ad Blocking?

Some sites block all content if they think you are doing it.

I have a right to protect my computer systems and data. So I block 3rd party scripts by default as these DO deliver drive-by malware (you may not need to click, or you can click by accident thinking it's real conent).

Springer and the sites that block if you block are absolutely in the wrong. Greed.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Ad Blocking?

In such circumstances I exercise my right not to visit the site.

PS. I see from other threads that my universal downvoter is back. I was beginning to worry that something had happened to you. Maybe you've been on holiday for the last few days.

[Elongated Muskrat]

Re: Ad Blocking?

I wonder how far one can go with the argument that, under the Computer Misuse Act, a website publisher's attempts to run code in your browser without your permission (under the pretence that they need to do so in order to deliver the content) constitutes unauthorised access to a computer system. I'd certainly like to see things like tracking cookies (or other tokens) that serve only to profile the user without their explicit permission, to be considered to be such.

We are quickly moving from the point where some advertising may contain malware to one where all advertising that is anything other than a static image served without "targeting" could be considered malware.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

If this goes through

Next will be print. At the end of each there will be a mandatory questionnaire about the ads in the newspaper. You need at least 80% to pass, or you'll go to jail since you dared to skip the ads.

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: If this goes through

Any ad that starts “this incredible new <thing> is taking the world by storm and was developed by scientists….” gets an immediate <skip ad> from me.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Browser choice?

I mean, all that AdBlock does is modify the way its host browser renders what comes down the pipe. If I browse springer.com with lynx, do I similarly fall foul of the German ruling?

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Browser choice?

Did you try with lynx (or links (browser), a more capable variant last time I tried)? I don't dare to poison my line with springer.com (is that the right website anyway? not springer.de ?), but it might not even load with lynx, at least not so far that you could read an article.

[JulieM]

Re: Browser choice?

The Guardian and other UK newspaper sites that are operating the illegal "pay or be tracked" protection racket still work in console-mode browsers -- and even if the file where they would usually store their cookies is zero bytes long and has no write permission.

[Evil Scot]

Re: Browser choice?

That is what has me "pure ragin".

I don't want to be tracked. I don't want to see adverts for something I have purchased.

I don't want to subscribe.

I don't mind seeing adverts relevant to the content I am reading.

Harry's razors get an honourable mention for placement in a beard care (oils etc) article.

[richdin]

Reader Mode

If you accept that logic, the next step is to ban "reader mode" (reader view in FF) because it changes the way the page is fed to the viewer... in the end they will zip tie our arms to the chair and tape our eyes open...

[martinusher]

But Websites Don't Host Adverts

My understanding of the ad ecosystem is that the typical website merely lays claim to the user's screen real estate (and ears, unfortunately) and rents that space to an ad broker. They, auction this space to ad content providers and the winning bid serves the advertisement. So, strictly speaking, advertisements aren't part of the website. I'm not exactly sure what they are (apart from "damn nuisance", "bandwidth hogs" and so on) but trying to argue that a third part's advertisement is part of a site's content when the site owner has absolutely no idea what that content actually is seems nonsense to me. In the print concept its a bit like an advertising insert or bounce back card, the sort of thing that heads to the recycling bin sight unseen.