Re:Are Adblock companies breaking the law?
by Raed667 on Monday November 23, 2015 @04:46PM
(#10617555)
I think that the clear distinction is:
- In the first case you're gaining access to a content you don't have the right to. Thus braking the law.
- In the second case, you're merely discarding some content that doesn't interest you.
I'm afraid that the kind of argument above will lead us to a dystopia like the one pictured in Black Mirror - Fifteen Million Merits[0].
For applications and games it is illegal to circumvent DRM protections meant to prevent or eliminate unauthorised acts of reproduction, communication, public offer or distribution in the EU. In the USA it's also illegal, although jail-breaking general-purpose computing devices is legal since 2015.
In general usage of software is covered by EULA terms that are not negotiable and enforced by copyright law. If you don't like the EULA, then you can choose to not use the software in question. Of course an EULA cannot override copyright or contract law. Plus many companies claim that software licensing is not a sale, hence the first-sale doctrine does not apply. The EULA for Microsoft Windows famously says that Windows is licensed and not sold. But overall, in order to use a piece of software you have to respect both the EULA it is distributed under and copyright law. Because without that EULA there's nothing giving you the right to use said software, because the copyright law says so.
In other words, while you may be justified in saying that the user should choose what to run on his computer, modifying an app or a web interface to load just what you want and discard anything else is probably copyright infringement. And even if it's not, though I doubt it, then this can be solved with a simple piece of code that blocks browsers with ad-blockers, in which case blocking such pieces of code from running is definitely illegal.