Who blocks the (ad) blockers?
The New York Times recently covered the already over-hyped dispute between Danny Carlton, an obscure Web site designer, and the makers of the popular Adblock Plus Firefox browser extension.
Adblock Plus is something akin to a TiVo for Web-browsing. Users who install the extension will find that their Web experience is radically changed--in that the vast majority of graphical Web advertisements will no longer be displayed within the Web-pages that they visit.
For those of you with short memories, it's worth noting that before TiVo was the only major game in town, there used to be another TV advertisement skipping technology. ReplayTV was vastly superior to the TiVo, in that it completely skipped commercials, instead of permitting users to fast-forward. Following a similar tactic to that was used by the major media companies (who had previously gone after Napster and the VCR), the TV networks essentially sued ReplayTV out of existence. The moral of the story: companies that have built their business models on advertising revenue do not take kindly to others who permit customers to skip those advertisements.
With that little walk down memory lane over, let us focus on the issue at hand--Web advertisement skipping technology. Essentially, it boils down to this: Web site designers depend upon advertising revenue to pay their bandwidth bills as well as to pay for the staff time that goes into making a successful site. Users do not particularly want to see advertisements, but except in a few cases where advertisements are extremely annoying, will for the most part put up with the ads in order to view the Web content that they are seeking.
There is a pretty big difference between the TV and Web site business models. A broadcast TV network, by and large, has fixed costs, no matter how many customers actually tune into the show. The same amount of electricity will flow to the TV transmitter, and the satellites above will still beam down the same number of 1s and 0s. Internet content is different, as each person's computer makes an individual connection to the remote server hosting whatever Web content the user is seeking. Each time users visit a Web site, the server consumes bandwidth to send the content of the Web page back to the user--and that bandwidth costs money.
Thus, every time someone uses advertisement-blocking software to avoid the graphical ads embedded within a Web site, they are denying the Web site operator revenue that would otherwise have gone to pay for the bandwidth that is consumed during that browsing session. While it could be said that TiVo users are freeloading from the broadcast networks, users of Web advertising skipping technology are far closer to theft than they are to freeloading. This is not a clearly defined issue, but there are a significant number of moral issues at play.
Which now brings us to the technical issues involved in this particular story...
The person running the anti-Adblock Plus campaign has been unable to remotely detect which Web surfers visiting his site have installed the extension, and so, in an effort to pressure both the developers of Adblock Plus and the Firefox browser development team, has instead called for Webmasters to completely block the Firefox browser. Call it collateral damage, if you will.
It turns out that Danny Carlton, the man behind the boycott, is using an implementation difference in the document.all() Javascript function to determine which users are visiting his site with Firefox and which are browsing with Internet Explorer. For those of you Firefox users desperate to view his Web site, a highly effective technique which will allow you to evade his simplistic browser detection technique is to lie about your browser's User Agent and turn off Javascript. While this can be done within the Firefox preferences, an even better method is to download and install the User Agent Switcher and NoScript Firefox extensions. In particular, NoScript is a must-have Firefox addition which will allow you to create a Javascript blacklist for individual Web sites.
If Danny wishes to block Firefox users who have turned Javascript off, he could use implementation differences in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Furthermore, due to a trick discovered by uber Web-application security hacker RSnake, it is possible for Web site designers to figure out exactly which Firefox extensions you are running. This was first reported to the Firefox development team in 2005, but has yet to be fixed. The developers of Adblock Plus have developed and deployed their own fix to this problem, but most other extensions are still vulnerable. If they wished to, Google could quite easily use this bug to to blacklist users of the Customize Google Firefox extension, which among other things, allows users to block Google's text advertisements.
In the end, a few things are clear: Users of advertisement-skipping technology are essentially engaged in theft of resources. Web site owners have not, yet, wrapped their Web sites in shrinkwrap contracts, and so while the ad-skipping may be immoral, it certainly isn't illegal. Web site owners are perfectly within their rights to utilize any and all browser/extension/Web behavior detection technologies in order to blacklist the ad blockers. Similarly, creative users are more than within their rights to evade whatever detection technology the Web site designers use.
The real question to be answered is: will other Web site owners wish to get themselves into an arms race that they almost certainly cannot win?
Christopher Soghoian delves into the areas of security, privacy, technology policy and cyber-law. He is a student fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society , and is a PhD candidate at Indiana University's School of Informatics. His academic work and contact information can be found by visiting www.dubfire.net/chris/. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. 
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So tell me, do you go to the bathroom during commercial breaks when you're watching television? Or get a snack? Or channel surf? Or do you do the moral thing and watch every moment of every ad?
Chris, AdBlock Plus is not like Tivo. Tivo doesn't skip commercials for you. Also, the CSS link you provided detects IE, not useful in my case since I was trying to block FF, not allow only IE. RSnake's trick also doesn't work since Ad Block Plus disables detection of chrome elements directly related to AdBlock Plus. Theft of resources is illegal, and there is more than adequate legal precedent for AdBlock Plus to be found guilty of copyright infringement. EFF may not like the concept of copyrights (few Socialists do) but their article was only opinion, not legal advice, therefore not "proof" that this is an "unwinnable" arms race. Odd that in our phone conversation you continued to use that term and I continued to explain that it isn't about any sort of "arms race" yet you still used the term. Why interview someone if you're simply going to ignore the facts any write what you want?
Finally, a new block for AdBlock Plus has been found, so I am, for the time being, not blocking Firefox. Hopefully Wladimar Palant and the ABP filter writers have realized that their own ethics are now under scrutiny for their insistence on not allowing site owners to detect and block ABP. Even when it was allowed only a handful of sites bothered to do so, so hiding AdBlock Plus is more about pettiness than protecting people from "bad ads". Let' see if they will allow the block, or continue the pettiness.
Rubbish. When I surf web sites, I'm under no obligation to allow any of that site's content onto my computer unless I want to. That includes ad content, dirty words, ActiveX controls, or anything else served to my browser which is housed on my computer. My browser, my rules. If you put content on the web that is freely available to anyone typing in your URL, then you need to accept that once the pages are served and the content is sitting in someone's browser cache, you no longer control how that content is displayed. What you call stealing I call freedom of choice. There are, of course, certain limits; it's not permissible for someone to redistribute your copyrighted work without your permission, nor would it be OK for someone to hack into content you charge a subscription for accessing. But for freely available content, nobody is obligated to help you pay for your bandwidth or costs of publishing by viewing your ads or doing anything else.
Now it is perfectly valid for you to put ads on your pages, and it is also perfectly valid for you to block certain browsers. You absolutely have the right to control access to the content. But once the content is served, once the content has reached the host machine, the choice of how that content is displayed, or whether the content is displayed in whole or in part, is not yours to make. You are defining "stealing" as "I don't make any money if the ads aren't displayed, therefore those who choose not to accept the ads are stealing from me."
There are other options for you. Many blogs solicit donations from their readers, and if the content is valuable enough to them, then they may choose to donate money. Or if you think the content is valuable enough that people should be paying to read it, then put it behind a password-protected paid subscription firewall.
Either of those options are better for you than your current tack of alienating users of a certain browser simply because a small handful of people who are also using that browser choose to control what is and is not displayed on their monitor when they browse your site.
But as long as we're talking about it, you indicate that software that strips ads from sites is unethical and people who use such software are stealing. What is your stance on settings in browsers that block popups, or do not automatically load images? These seem like they would be similar enough to such software to merit comparison. From a hardware standpoint, and shifting the model to television, would the remote control be in that same league, because it allows a person to change the channel or mute the TV, thereby "blocking" the reception of ads.
The point of my earlier post was not to insult, but to merely point out that there are plenty of methods people can choose to use to avoid what they consider annoying, and that many of those methods are universally accepted as fine (no one, I would hope, would attempt to mandate a "no bathroom breaks" law.) When people start classifying some of these techniques as immoral, I wonder out loud why other techniques are not classified as such.
Whn an ad appears on a web page, it's a passive message that you are then completely free to ignore if you so wish. It doesn't force you to waste time. The amount of bandwidth it uses to download is inconsequencial since A. most broadband accounts have unmetered bandwidth and B. you are using the publisher's bandwidth to view his or her content.
That there are some ads that present an active "presence" (pop-ups, certain flash ads, etc.) does not excuse blocking all ads. It's not difficult to block pop-ups, nor to block Flash ads. Of course a more proactive response would be to take the time to complain, or simply note the site and not return. The shotgun approach to bad-ads fails to address any problem past your own nose, and creates problems for others.
My argument all along has been that all ad blocking software should be able to be recognized so those publishers which wish to restrict access to those visitors that are viewing ads, may do so.
Snarler, in context...
"In the end, a few things are clear: Users of advertisement-skipping technology are essentially engaged in theft of resources. Web site owners have not, yet, wrapped their Web sites in shrinkwrap contracts, and so while the ad-skipping may be immoral, it certainly isn't illegal."
The context denotes technology which skips advertising, not an individual chopice to skip and individual ad.
I find pop-ups annoying and note sites which use them, and avoid them. I still hesitate to go to any page at about.com because they were one of the worst pop-up abusers at one time. I intentionally do not click on pop-ups regardless of how intersting they may seem, becuase I don't want to reward unethical makreting tactics. An active approach to marketing produces results. A passive approach, such as ad blocking, is ineffective, becuase you build o negative image and therefore they turn to other methods, perhaps even more unethical. You don't solve bad behavior with bad behavior. If bad ads are unethcal, blocking good ads is not a valid solution.
Trting to equate the individual choice to not watch an individal ad with ad blocking is comparing apples to bricks. It's nowhere near a fair comparison.
Someone got greedy for our attention. Getting greedy tends to work out badly, in the end.
I do not watch TV channels that increase the decibel level of their commercial to a noticeably louder level. I do not visit websites more than once that push ads needlessly "in my face".
I have the right to find a way to stop unwanted media from entering my life? An advertiser wanting me to see an ad does not have the right to force me to view it. A website that makes it's money from ads will no doubt find a way to continue the push. As a consumer who is tired of the barrage of ads comming from everywhere I will use every means available to block "ALL ADS".
Morality? Where is the morality of the advertiser?
Those poor bastards who wrote that virus or spyware need to eat too?
To the writer: You are an unbelievable ignoramus.
- You (or your ad company) are not having to pay for the bandwidth to deliver them.
- I'm not wasting my time or paying for the bandwitdth to receive them.
If someone is paying you per impression, work with someone else. They know their ads are crappy already.
Personally, I use AdBlock Plus, but I don't subscribe to any lists of domains to block.
As soon as I am irritated by ad an (content covering, pop ups, have sound, do anything on cursor-over, blink rapidly or shake), I block the entire domain from which it originated, on the basis that any company willing to send crappy ads like that doesn't deserve my business.
Let's have a look at the advert hosted on Danny's page, for SpywareBot. This is a typical internet forum question regarding the product:
'I accidentally downloaded SpywareBOT thinking I was getting Spybot Search&Destroy. When they wanted money to remove the results of their scan, I realized my mistake and declined. However, their software is still on my computer. It pops up at startup and preforms scans on its own at inappropriate times. Does anyone know how to get rid of it?'
This product employs two 'unethical marketing tactics': the name of the product plays on the name of an established and well-respected product, and the program pops up warnings of spyware infestation and demands money. (The more disreputable of anti-spyware aps will do this even on a clean system; others grossly exaggerate any infection. While it's true that some legitimate products like Spyware Doctor and Spy Sweeper will detect but not remove malware in a trial version, running unrequested scans and popping up warnings is simply a scare tactic: I am also extremely doubtful that a program recently listed as a rogue product at Spyware Warrior is going to have effective spyware detection or removal capabilities.)
Danny Carlton is not being honest: he not only rewards unethical marketing tactics, he attempts to profit from them by hosting such an unethical ad on his page. Anyone naive enough to purchase the product he advertises will most likely come to feel they have been robbed, and a part of the profit from that robbery is ending up in Danny's pocket.
- by harrytheboy September 25, 2008 1:50 PM PDT
- help i am 80yrs old and just started on this computer lark and need help to stop the following from popping
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(21 Comments)and forcing me to read it, and telling me what it will cost if i carrying on installing it, when i did not want it in the first place. WINDOWS WARNING MESSAGER
WIN/32ADWARE VIRTUMODE DANGER
WIN/PRIVACY REMOVER M64 DANGER
THERE IS NO PLACE TO CLICK OFF, AND WHERE THEY DO TELL YOU TO CLICK OFF YOU CANT.
my Bullgard protection is working OK, so why cant i get rid of it, can any one contact me at.
irihar77@ntlworld.com and tell a old wrinkley how to do it harrytheboy