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.