Yes, and you get to choose between doing that and getting blocked because it’s their server. Stealing entertainment is hardly a bold stroke for freedom.

By that logic, going to the bathroom while ads are playing is “stealing”

Try writing out the argument more formally and you’ll learn why that’s not true.

Disabling ads is exactly the same as going to the bathroom during ads. In both cases, I don’t see it. In both cases, I am choosing to do something else than watch the ads. The only difference is… hmm, nothing.

Come on, you can do better than this. Nobody expects you to watch every ad, it’s a numbers game. Advertisers know that people don’t pay rapt attention to every ad but they also know that you’re going to see the at least start, hear it even if you’re looking at your dinner, and the only thing more unlikely than you going to the bathroom every 6 minutes is that you mute the audio and turn off the display each time. A lot of ads are familiar brands, so they don’t even care about watching the full length if it reinforces something positive about their company.

Businesses will pay for those percentage changes because in aggregate a lot of people will see the ads. This changes when they know the odds are zero and that’s why YouTube is doing this.

Yeah, I can do better. How about this: I live in a country where I don’t speak the native language. All the ads I see are in the native language. I am not interested in these ads. In fact, when I do see the YouTube ads on my phone, I hate these brands because that is all I see, the same damn commercials over and over again, that I can’t understand much less determine if the brand is for a car, energy, or something totally unrelated to whatever story just unfolded on my screen (probably soap, but honestly, it’s a total guess).

So, I don’t watch YouTube on my phone any more. I will do whatever it takes to never, ever get ear raped by those commercials, ever again.

And no, even if they go so far to put it in the stream itself, I will hook it up as an input to MythTV and have it remove the commercials for me, just like it does on regular tv. I’ll never see them, I don’t consent to seeing them, and if you disagree, I’ll happily buy some ad space so you can stare at my shiny ass for 30s every 6 minutes.

They can block me if they want.

I’m not stealing entertainment. They can block my browser’s request or require authentication and payment. They’re free to stop me videos upon request at any time.

My browser requests a video. They send the video and some other stuff. I chose to discard the other stuff they sent. They could just not send me the video if I haven’t paid.