There's plenty of content available for "free." There's also plenty of music available for free by musicians who play or donate. There's an assumption in your comment that all content requires some sort of compensation and I don't think that's true, and certainly not necessary for a strong society.

I think this may influence your other assumption that it's unethical to freely consume content. The article author uses the example of walking through a city and refusing to look at billboards, but still taking in the view of beautiful architecture. Do you abandon ethics to view architecture?

Imagine if the business models of all the businesses in those buildings depended on you looking at the ads. Would you abandon ethics to walk down the street?

I think there are some people who are ambivalent if every record label and movie studio shuts down. I don't really care as there is lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free. Ever since the start of the net, I've structured my livelihood to specifically avoid being in the business of extracting income from IP. So I think I'm pretty well hedged against people going against their behavior to pay for my IP.

I think reporters can be compensated in much better ways than ads, and I actually think that journalism will be better off if not ad supported. Part of the problem we have now is because ads and truth aren't really aligned with the same incentives so I see lots of news sites going more toward ads.

a) Plenty of free content? I assume you won't ever be watching another feature film or television show. Free concerts do exist, but they are pretty few and far between (and highly financed via ads and commercial sponsors -- the stagehands and techs don't work for free).

b) Billboard analogy is invalid because you cannot "not see" a billboard. Of course you don't have to act upon it, and can try to ignore it, but the billboard did make an impression in your brain, like it or not. With ad-blocking, it never has the opportunity to make the impression.

>> lots of art that is created by people who like giving it away for free c) doubt it, people sometimes HAVE to give their work away for free -- to get attention, publicity, an audience -- but they would almost always prefer to be paid.

I don't think that's a very fair argument. GP is paying for internet access. GP is accessing information, published on the public WWW, which is what GP paid to do. GP has the right to decide what information they want to download from the public network.

Why is GP under any ethical obligation to consume ads? Were you shaming people in the 90s who muted their TVs when commercials came on? Why is it GP's responsibility to make someone's business model work?

Why are you conflating movie piracy with ad blocking? It's completely different, from a legal and ethical standpoint. And GP didn't even mention piracy.

Yes, journalism is in trouble. Yes, it's an important industry that fills an invaluable role in society. But print media has been beholden to advertising so long, that it doesn't even know how to sell its product anymore. And that's not GP's fault.

Nobody is obligated to consume ads. I also believe it is fine to go to the bathroom during tv commercials or to turn down the radio when ads come on. Or to click the 'close' button on an online ad. And of course nobody is required to act upon the ads in any way. But in my opinion, there's a big difference between ads that you have to take some action to ignore, and applying some technology that passively, without any user action, completely eliminates all ads so there is no opportunity for them to make an impression. I see a very large distinction between the two, your line may be different.

Yes, I believe ad-blocking (assuming it works) is equivalent to piracy. In both cases, you are consuming someone's work (a song, a movie, an article) without compensating them in any way, enabled by technology, and without attempting to obtain the approval of the content provider.

Here's the bottom line: You have no obligation to view ads. You can distinguish between OK ads and not-OK ads in your head. Whatever. But if you refuse to accept a site's ad policy, here is your only ethical remedy: DON'T VISIT THE SITE. Reading the article entirely ad-free is no different than going to a restaurant and not paying the bill, or sneaking into a concert without buying a ticket, or watching a movie you downloaded for free via torrent. You are consuming someone's work, without any remuneration or compensation.

In today's reality expecting compensation through the form of ad-views while simultaneously posting said work freely is just an idiot's game. Don't post it freely on the open web, a place where it is common for browsers and users to use technology to customize the way they consume the data presented to them, if you don't want it viewed in a customized (ads removed, text only, style-modified, etc) way- whether it's for security, bandwidth saved, performance, or the ability to be able to actually read the article without being constantly annoyed and driven away from the content by things pulling my attention, or all of the above.

Attention is a valuable resource and not one I'm going to give freely to ads that try to STEAL it from me. Computer performance and bandwidth savings are also valuable to me. My ISP gives me a cap. Expecting me to download tens of MB of data for KB of content is a no-go. Blocking ads and scripts can also be extremely beneficial for those that need accessibility.

If you want compensation, require it, put up a paywall. If your site dies because that business model is not sustainable, good riddance. It's time the ad model dies and dies permanently without a tear shed for its demise.

Again, just DON'T VISIT THE SITE. It won't steal your attention, use up your data cap, or slow down your machine. Problem solved.

> Except the content, of course -- that, you expect to consume for free.

I’ll happily consume it regardless, yes. If there is a paid subscription - good. Dumb ads - good. Blocked tracking ads - good, and I’m not sorry I’m killing their business.

The key here is of course that I find the idea of showing me a shoe ad because I googled “shoes” last year a much more serious ethical offense than downloading without paying for it.

> all because you dared show me an ad

No, again, I don’t mind ads. I mind my information used as a commodity in the process.

And yes - exactly - I can consume content for free and I will, while not caring whether content creators (journalists etc) lose their jobs, because no one watches the ads. And I’m not sorry, and not finding it unethical (not even cynical).

The ads-masquerading-as-non-ads I was thinking of was native ads in news and products pushed by instagram influencers etc.

Sounds like Google sold you out -- you should probably stop using Google Search. How would a news site know what you Googled, unless Google sold or shared that information?

You Google “shoes”, You land on a shoe manufacturers site, said site has either ad’s or user tracking software from Tech Gaint A (Note: Tech Giant A isn’t Google, intact they are arch rivals). TGA sets a cookie on your browser with a UID and makes a note about you having some interest in shoes. Anyway, these are not the shoes you are looking for so you back out and search some more.

The next day you visit “All Sports News” (or something) and they serve ads from TGA. TGA’s ad see’s the UID cookie, checks your profile and shows you an ad for shoes.

So yeah you go, how a news site could serve you ads about something you searched for on Google (or any other search engine) without that search engine selling you out.

Not saying Google are “Holier than thou”, yeah they have their own ad network and will profile what you search and serve you ads based on your search unless you opt-out of everything. Just saying it’s possible that Google didn’t sell them out.

What's the difference? So a shoes site sold you out instead of Google. In both cases, it wasn't the news site who did, but that's who you're taking free content from.