'Ad Blocking is Not Piracy' Decision Overturned By Top German Court

Comments

• leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  If I understand it correctly, they’re arguing that any unauthorized “modification of the computer program” (i.e. the web page) is a copyright violation.

  This wouldn’t only affect adblockers… this would affect any browser feature, extension, or user script that modified the page in any way, shape, or form… translators, easy reading modes, CSS modifiers (e.g., dark mode for pages that don’t have it, or anything that improves readability for people with vision problems), probably screen readers…

  This would essentially turn web browsers into the HTML equivalent of PDF readers, without any of the customisability that’s been standard for decades…

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Or for that matter, is blocking malware even legal?

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• rumba@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Seriously people, we don’t need to live out Idiocracy. It was just a movie, not a prediction.

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• breakingcups@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Jeez, will it never end?

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• NarrativeBear@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  The original ad blocker! Arrr

  1000034134

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  • plz1@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Would that actually work? I think USPS gets paid to dump unaddressed mail in mailboxes.

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    • M137@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      This isn’t about the US. It’s a common thing in many parts of the world, and it does work in those countries.

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• Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Welp… Better start practicing…

  \o/ McDonald’s!

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• possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  WTF?

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• A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Of course torrentfreak would use the most outrageous & clickbaity title possible. It’s not so bad though.
  Discussed in another post:

  I speak German legalese (don’t ask) so I went to the actual source and read up on the decision.

  The way I read it, the higher court simply stated that the Appeals court didn’t consider the impact of source code to byte code transformation in their ruling, meaning they had not provided references justifying the fact they had ignored the transformation. Their contention is that there might be protected software in the byte code, and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.

  Sounds more like, “Appeals court has to do their homework” than “ad blockers illegal.”

  The ruling is a little painful to read, because as usual the courts are not particularly good at technical issues or controversies, so don’t quote me on the exact details. In particular, they use the word Vervielfältigung a lot, which means (mass) copy, which is definitely not happening here. The way it reads, Springer simply made the case that a particular section of the ruling didn’t have any reasoning or citations attached and demanded them, which I guess is fair. More billable hours for the lawyers! @

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  • grue@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No, it’s even worse than people realize.

    This isn’t just about ad-blocking; it’s about computer owners’ fundamental property rights (or lack thereof). It shouldn’t fucking matter if the ad-blocker modifies the website’s code, because both pieces of software are running on the owner’s machine and he has the right to modify his property in any way he sees fit.

    It is no different than a book owner crossing out printed text and writing in the margins: that copy of the book is his modify as he wants, and copyright doesn’t fucking enter into it as all because there’s no copying or distribution happening to begin with.

    What the German court gas done here is opened the door to copyright holders trying to colonize shit they don’t own, stealing control from the actual owners.

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    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I agree: website owners cannot tell people how to read their sites.

      But they only re-opened the case; nothing happened yet.

      And considering how the very similar youtube-dl DMCA takedown failed so utterly, I don’t think this will go anywhere either.

      But yeah, companies will try again and again.

      There’s also an important point not addressed in the above comment: Springer is specifically sueing Adblock Plus (and not the way more popular uBO) who have a commercial model where companies can pay them to let their ads through, and some other fishy practices.

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