Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model and frames website execution inside web browsers as a copyright violation.
This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.
I wouldn’t worry if that’s their argument: you can modify whatever copyright-protected work you wish as long as you don’t redistribute it, otherwise taking notes in books or using an equalizer when listening to music would be copyright violations. Surely you can do the same with the programs you run on your computer (also regarding computer programs, live patching is a thing).
That said, copyright law has been so absurdly twisted and stretched (suffice to say it was born to protect authors and it now protects megacorporations’ profits) that it’s worth to keep an eye on this.
PS: You may want to take a look at Axel Springer’s newspapers/brands
Maybe it doesn’t matter legally speaking, but as a software engineer I would object when someone says HTML/CSS is a computer program. It just is some specially formatted text that is interpreted by browsers (which are the actual programs here).
Isn’t every high level programming language just a specially formatted text, that is interpreted by the compiler? Now for C you could say it is compiled into machine code, and the machine code is then the actual program. But what about Java using the JRE or Python and other script languages? That seems kind of similar to what browsers do, from my limited software understanding.
You could make that argument for interpreted languages, I guess.
But still I would say there is a difference between those languages and HTML. HTML just describes the layout of a website and CSS describes how this layout should be presented exactly.
What I consider a programming language (and output a “computer program”) can do stuff like perform calculations, follow some control flow (e.g. conditions, loops, etc) and can handle user input/create output dynamically.
Anyway, I’m just here to argue against people making my ad blocker illegal 🥴
True, you can technically compute anything in CSS with enough hacks—but if your boss asks you to implement a sorting algorithm in CSS, it’s probably time to question their sanity. So I acknowledge the “well akchually”, but still stand by my previous point😅
Funnily there was a recent court decision ruling that a cheat module for the PSP is not a copyright violation as it is not modifying the code, just the memory of the device.
Also there is a very simply solution to this problem. They could just provide a static HTML page. But this would go without all the tracking and dynamic ads and would be privacy friendly.
At least this time they cant argue with §202a the “Hackerparagraf” because an adblocker doesn’t help you access more data. It actually helps you access less data.
I wouldn’t worry if that’s their argument: you can modify whatever copyright-protected work you wish as long as you don’t redistribute it, otherwise taking notes in books or using an equalizer when listening to music would be copyright violations. Surely you can do the same with the programs you run on your computer (also regarding computer programs, live patching is a thing).
That said, copyright law has been so absurdly twisted and stretched (suffice to say it was born to protect authors and it now protects megacorporations’ profits) that it’s worth to keep an eye on this.
PS: You may want to take a look at Axel Springer’s newspapers/brands
Maybe it doesn’t matter legally speaking, but as a software engineer I would object when someone says HTML/CSS is a computer program. It just is some specially formatted text that is interpreted by browsers (which are the actual programs here).
Isn’t every high level programming language just a specially formatted text, that is interpreted by the compiler? Now for C you could say it is compiled into machine code, and the machine code is then the actual program. But what about Java using the JRE or Python and other script languages? That seems kind of similar to what browsers do, from my limited software understanding.
You could make that argument for interpreted languages, I guess. But still I would say there is a difference between those languages and HTML. HTML just describes the layout of a website and CSS describes how this layout should be presented exactly. What I consider a programming language (and output a “computer program”) can do stuff like perform calculations, follow some control flow (e.g. conditions, loops, etc) and can handle user input/create output dynamically.
Anyway, I’m just here to argue against people making my ad blocker illegal 🥴
This is my *well akchually" moment of the day: CSS is technically turing complete and thus should be counted as a programming language
True, you can technically compute anything in CSS with enough hacks—but if your boss asks you to implement a sorting algorithm in CSS, it’s probably time to question their sanity. So I acknowledge the “well akchually”, but still stand by my previous point😅
And “taking a look” here means blocking them all so your poor adblockers don’t need to bother…
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TheBlockList/Blocklist/master/axel-springer
Funnily there was a recent court decision ruling that a cheat module for the PSP is not a copyright violation as it is not modifying the code, just the memory of the device.
German article: https://www.lto.de/recht/nachrichten/n/i-zr-157/21-bgh-zur-zulaessigkeit-von-cheat-software-sony-psp-datel
Also there is a very simply solution to this problem. They could just provide a static HTML page. But this would go without all the tracking and dynamic ads and would be privacy friendly.
At least this time they cant argue with §202a the “Hackerparagraf” because an adblocker doesn’t help you access more data. It actually helps you access less data.
No, you don’t 🤣🤣 if some company thinks they can dictate me what i see online, they can go where the pepper grows 😎