Ever walked through a tourist district and seen someone handing out freebies of some sort - palm readings, or flowers, or what have you?

Once in a while an inadequately wary tourist accepts the freebie, and then they’re accosted angrily for payment/gratuity.

I understand it’s not a perfect analogy, but the bottom line is largely the same: if you give your content away for free, you want payment, you aren’t owed payment. Giving stuff away for free and then crying about the payment you’re owed is a bait and switch.

That's similar to an outdoor concert venue trying to charge nearby residents for each show.

If websites don't like that users have the ability to block ads, then a new ad delivery mechanism is needed, or possibly a different revenue model. For example many youtubers now have sponsored sections directly in their video. The only way to avoid it is to fast forward through it.

People have every right to control their computer, their network, and what happens to data once it has arrived. Depending on something as squishy as ethics for your revenue is pretty risky.

But I'm not forcing them to share it with me.. They can request me to pay for it, I just won't unless it's something I really need.

1) I pay for free sites/services I routinely use (wikipedia, FSF)

2) They put content up for free on their sites. I put a regulator on the instructions my CPU runs. They're free to detect the ad blocker and block access.

3) copyright is BS.

And if you use your awesome painting skills to paint your house with some nice murals, will you charge me 5$ every time I pass by because I looked at something that was generated by you?

If you want people to pay for something, ask them upfront to pay or don't expose it to the public.

If you get a book, you aren't required to read it in any certain way.

When you openly put something on the world wide web, it no longer belongs just to you, it belongs to the world.

The owner posted that content in a publicly accessible location. If the content is so valuable that nobody should be able to access it without paying for it, we have ways of achieving that. Publish it as a book, put it behind a paywall, etc.