Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box. Except the honesty box isn't visible on the way in, it's located on the back of the enter sign so you only see it on the way out, and the driveway is so long that surely you've already started munching on the fruit while starting to leave. Since I'm still on a food kick the whole expectation-of-paying thing is still clouding the analogy a bit, but at least this is closer to the situation than a sit-down restaurant analogy. Oh, and of course our hypothetical farmer needs to have primarily fixed costs, little or no variable costs based on the amount of fruit taken.

It may very well be more common for such hypothetical farmers to forego having an honesty box hiding where you don't see it until you've consumed the fruit, but for those who do choose to have one, are you stealing the fruit if you don't drop in a few bucks?

More on topic: I also think courts would see quite a difference in intent between using a mainstream graphical browser with an ad blocker vs using things like a text mode interface, a screen reader, a braille display, or libcurl. The former is like driving past the honesty box while chuckling; the latter is like not even knowing it was there.

I seem to have hit the max reply depth, so sibling posts will have to do.

> disable JS and images

> They're all the same thing. I'm deciding how I want to consume content; I'm not circumventing a access control mechanism.

I guess the difference I am trying to highlight is:

* a lack of ads for hard technical and/or compatibility reasons (JS not enabled, images not enabled, graphics subsystems not existing, not having sufficient eyesight, etc.), versus

* a lack of ads because screw you.

This line in the sand may be stupid, but I'm afraid it's not "the same thing." I'm afraid this difference could be argued successfully in court, and that is my point.

Hn removes the reply for an increasing amount of time per level, I think.

But it's not "screw you" it's "I don't want to waste the bandwidth I pay for and am metered on with things I don't want to download and could potentially harm my computer". Viewing those ads costs me money as well, money which isn't going to the person serving the ads, not to mention the risk of malware.

> Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box

The issues is that there is normally a expectation of paying for things like produce. Unless there was explicitly a "Free Produce" sign, I would expect to have to pay.

There is no expectation that you need to pay for the data sent to you later; if payment is required for access, you're told so and need to provide it to continue to the resource (or otherwise provide proof that you had paid, e.g. logging in).

There hasn't historically been and can't be an expectation of payment later because that would be untrue for many, if not the vast majority, of websites. Additionally, there has never been an expectation that the client will render everything you send to them. All browsers have the option to disable JS and images, and always have.

It's these differences in expectation and culture that I believe provide the difference between your examples and the web. Violating these constraints would cause legal issues in the vast majority of systems, would mean running old software would be illegal (Chrome preloads links under certain circumstances, but doesn't render them), and would also end up forcing users to run code they didn't choose to run (there is no expectation or knowledge of what code the server will send and choosing to not run harmful code would be illegal), which would be an interesting thought experiment as a civil rights violation. It would also force me to, say, accept a EULA for Flash, even if I disagree with it because I visited a site that randomly sent me a flash payload. Or what about something without a linux runtime; I would have no ability to avoid committing a crime, because I don't have the choice to accept the rest of the content that came with the content I can't run, but am legally required to run.

Violating the very assumptions of how the web works would have terrible ramifications.

> More on topic: I also think courts would see quite a difference in intent between using a mainstream graphical browser with an ad blocker vs using things like a text mode interface, a screen reader, a braille display, or libcurl.

Why? They're all the same thing. I'm deciding how I want to consume content; I'm not circumventing a access control mechanism.

Because what a court does isn't always logical or even reasonable. Especially on IP stuff, especially on IP stuff involving software. Did you pay attention to Oracle v. Google?

So far in the Oracle v Google case it's been ruled that apis are covered under copyright, but that implementing them from scratch is covered by fair use. I mean, that's not wholly unreasonable.

Oracle has appealed, would we'll see what happens.