Re:Thank you for ad blocking
by ikeboy on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:14PM
(#11329105)
>the transfer was done legally in good faith
This is precisely the point that I'm disputing, not the notion of property rights.
You still haven't given any definition of the terms you're trying to use to justify a distinction between the two. You claimed that any time someone requests something over http and the server sends data back, the person cannot have been doing anything illegal. You have not given any principled difference between that and the cases where courts found differently.
I've linked to lawyers making the same argument as me; I don't believe you've found any lawyers who agree with your claims here.
Re contracts: as I've said, that applies to scenarios when you've agreed to TOS. If you know a website has certain terms, then accessing it is agreeing to them. So your point is only valid if you can credibly claim that you didn't know the website doesn't allow ad blocking. If you think you can convince a judge that you had no idea some websites don't allow ad blocking, and that you therefore had no intention of breaking any agreements by browsing the web with your ad blocker installed, do whatever you want. But the very fact that we're having this conversation and you aren't telling me "no website would ever outlaw ad blockers in their terms" means that you recognize it as a possibility. It would be an interesting legal question as to whether mere probable knowledge (i.e. negligence) can suffice to be liable, or one would need to demonstrate actual knowledge: if the latter is found to be the legal interpretation, then I suspect ad blockers could be required to recognize when a site refuses to be viewed with an ad blockers, and not show the site at all then. Installing an ad blocker that doesn't do this would then be malicious.
This is admittedly speculation, although it gets closer as to what the actual legal question would be here. If you can cite precedent that bears on this directly, that would be better.
This is precisely the point that I'm disputing, not the notion of property rights.
You still haven't given any definition of the terms you're trying to use to justify a distinction between the two. You claimed that any time someone requests something over http and the server sends data back, the person cannot have been doing anything illegal. You have not given any principled difference between that and the cases where courts found differently.
I've linked to lawyers making the same argument as me; I don't believe you've found any lawyers who agree with your claims here.
Re contracts: as I've said, that applies to scenarios when you've agreed to TOS. If you know a website has certain terms, then accessing it is agreeing to them. So your point is only valid if you can credibly claim that you didn't know the website doesn't allow ad blocking. If you think you can convince a judge that you had no idea some websites don't allow ad blocking, and that you therefore had no intention of breaking any agreements by browsing the web with your ad blocker installed, do whatever you want. But the very fact that we're having this conversation and you aren't telling me "no website would ever outlaw ad blockers in their terms" means that you recognize it as a possibility. It would be an interesting legal question as to whether mere probable knowledge (i.e. negligence) can suffice to be liable, or one would need to demonstrate actual knowledge: if the latter is found to be the legal interpretation, then I suspect ad blockers could be required to recognize when a site refuses to be viewed with an ad blockers, and not show the site at all then. Installing an ad blocker that doesn't do this would then be malicious.
This is admittedly speculation, although it gets closer as to what the actual legal question would be here. If you can cite precedent that bears on this directly, that would be better.