> If someone got a magazine, and before reading it they cut out all the ads are they committing theft?

While cutting the ads you'll get such a good look at them, ads companies will be thrilled and beg you to do it :-)

> If I mute my radio while ads play, am I a thief?

The behavior of people watching TV or listening to radio is well studied. Here's some facts:

1. even if you change the station, you'll still see or hear some ads, especially if you want to get back to what you were watching, as people keep changing back and forth — and those ads are for brands mostly, therefore it's enough for you to see Coke's logo for you to pick it in a store as the "safe" choice

2. many TV and radio stations synchronize their ads breaks

So are you committing theft when skipping commercials? If you use automation for it, the jury is actually still out and there have been several lawsuits already.

Also skipping ads might be legal still, but there are always legal loopholes. For example circumventing DRM is not legal and it's only a matter of time before media networks wise up.

And note there have been other doomsday scenarios in the past. For example the rise of VHS was a similar event, allowing people to record shows and skip ads. But even so, ads kept being efficient and publishers and media networks survived. However this time the automation has reached a level unprecedented in history.

What do you think will happen if companies start going out of business due to ad blockers? They'll start lobbying of course and lobbying works.

For magazines you could have a friend or a robot cut out the ads, for radio you could switch to a CD while the ads run. Basically, I'm trying to get at the more fundamental question: do users have an obligation to consume the ads that are served to them, in the manner that the content provider dictates? And if so, how should this be enforced?

>Do users have an obligation to consume the ads that are served to them

Yes, if it's part of the content and they want more of that content. But they have no obligation to want that content.

> in the manner that the content provider dictates

They don’t dictate how you consume ads, they try to predict it and adjust for it, but they don't dictate your actions

>And if so, how should this be enforced?

Legally it shouldn’t be. The advertiser can do whatever they want to their content to get you to consume ads, but they shouldn’t be able to do anything past the boundary of their content.

There's a very simple way to enforce payment for content. It's called a paywall. If it turns out readers are not willing to work over actual money, then maybe the content is not as valuable as the publishers thought.

DVR allows automatic ad skipping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_skipping

I wonder if fast-forwarding through the ad break is also theft?