Dystopian, yes

Also Fascist

Something we never want to see in German politics in particular

New ubo feature: if page does not grant permission to block ads then entire page is blocked.

When I come across a paywall that is not circumvented by simple script blocking I don't even bother to try anymore and I remove these suggestions from my feed.

Also, wouldn't this ban also potentially kill or at the very least cripple FOSS too? And what about browser forks like LibreWolf or Icecat?

Because I could see this law overriding rights that basically all FOSS licenses grant to modify something as long as that modification, and the source code in general, is still freely available.

Wouldn't it make browsers illegal? They're modifying the html code in order to present a webpage that is useful to the end user.

So far they have just re-opened the case for re-examination, on Springer's behest. Yes, German corpos can sue as well.

Considering RIAA's takedown of youtube-dl failed so miserably - argued in much the same way as this one - I think this case has little chance of even partial success. (edit: slight correction)

In any case, it will take years to get results. Until then, nothing changed.

AFAIK, this is unlikely to lead to a ban on ad blockers. Worst case is probably that the judgment will imply some way to deliver ads that is illegal to block.

In any case, there are exemptions for certain assistive technologies. Those might not be much affected.

It's a monkey's paw situation. Sure, the EU will protect us from American tech abuse... and implement the same policies internally.

It was never about freedom, but about restoring control of European governments over their citizens' online presence and their data, so that everything they do on the internet is subject to European laws and regulations, not American ones.

Ad blockers do literally the reverse, they don't inject anything, they sit on the outside and prevent unwanted resources from loading.

Also it's fully legal for the end user to modify stuff on their own end. And the information in the filter about the website structure is functional, not expressive - no copyright protection of function.

To claim copyright infringement for not rendering a website as intended due to filters also means it would be infringement to not render the website correctly for any other reason - such as opening the website with an unsupported browser, or on hardware with limited support, or with a browser with limited capabilities - or why not because you're using accessibility software!

They also own Politico and Insider/Business Insider. Feel like too few people are aware of that.

This would make even a dark mode extension something illegal.

I think they do understand what they are doing. Just like with modifying a "protected" program locally, a native one. They are making laws about what you can and can't do, and outlawing tools allowing you to do that.

Honestly until it's possible to make laws forbidding you to do something that doesn't violate anyone, such will be made. If you can spend N money if forcing something through markets, and a bit less than N if lobbying for a law, then you'll do the latter.

Anyway. The problem is in the Internet and the Web as things which encourage this behavior.

and if the ad blocker modified the byte code (either directly or by modifying the source), then that would constitute a modification of code and hence run afoul of copyright protections as derivative work.

Insanity - modifying code that runs on your machine in no way is even remotely related to copyright.

I wouldn't call it fair, this is a clear cut case of copyright law abuse and they shouldn't be able to make dumb stuff up and waste everyones time. This shouldn't even be a case.

The company is also shady: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE

Thanks, that's a super helpful explanation :)

Honestly countries also fight corporations for power. GAFAM have been to threat to the powers in place and it's essentially a survival match. Countries do spy on their own citizens that's not news. Internet is a great tool for that.

What we are seeing is probably european countries trying to get rid of GAFAM and puting their own measures in place instead to fill the void, the void being the services, the information, the data the GAFAM were providing to said countries.

Germany, progressive? Have you ever lived there? I'm amazed they even use web browsers enough to notice now, compared to their fax machines.

This is exactly it. It has always been up to the browser to decide how to render a website. There have always been differences. The idea that a browser can honour or ignore parts of the content has always been part of it.

If anything should be illegal, it should be websites 's constant attempts to bypass user preferences. Some of that shit is plain malware.

Drink verification can.

Bah, it's only a mandatory 1439 minutes a day

Even that shouldn't be illegal. It's shitty, but it's still too far

I thought there was a reason why they sued Adblock Plus and not the vastly more popular uBO. I thought it's just because they are a company (possibly German). But this makes much more sense.

This article is FUD and I suspect Mozilla's is at least significantly less so.

It doesn't matter what Adblock plus is doing, it is perfectly legal, there is no case here. If a verdict affects adblock plus it will affect all browsers. No matter what they claim editing html files on the client side is not a copyright violation.

How? Simple. A parliament of sort writes the law, it gets accepted. Then, the thing, whatever it is, is illegal.

It have no bearing on your ability to use the thing, of course. However, people providing the thing, people that are found out of using the thing, and people that facilitate using the thing are now easier to arrest.

I know I'm gonna get a lot of hate for this because everyone here despises ads, but I can see an argument for it. I don't know if it is legaly sound, but morally, it boils down to the fact that you are literally using a service without paying for it. The website is offering you a product and the payment is ads. If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it, otherwise you really are just stealing it (even if that "stealing" costs very little to the site). I personally use an adblocker and agree that ads on most sites are obnoxious, but I also feel like people make adblockers out to be completely black and white, which they are not.

Working on it

Had that

Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and if this somehow passes it could spill over to the EU commission in no time. The Brussels effect could then take care of the rest. Laughing off fascist laws because they do not affect you right now is exactly the reaction fascists like them want you to have so they can corner you.

Assuming it doesn't come over to wherever you live too.

OpenSuSE is German, I'm having to wonder if I need to prepare switching distros in case they have to remove Firefox from their repos. I'll need to research the flatpak to see if it works with webcams for video conferencing.

I actually doubt Google wants shitty newspapers that are stuck in the last century to dictate how the internet works. Next step is that Google has to show them in the results and pay them on top or stop operating entirely. They won‘t stop until they‘re either bankrupt or the internet is toast.

I just went through the comments ... people are losing their shit. And as always whenever Germany is mentioned, Godwin's Law is in full effect.
Apparently nobody remembers the very American and very similar youtube-dl takedown which ended in youtube-dl's favor. tl;dr: website owners cannot tell people how to read their websites.

DON'T PANIC nothing has happened, and it won't for years.

(edit: slight correction)

Yeah this is never going to happen. Calm down people!

DNS is a listing of address resolution. Ignoring/Dropping records is not modifying existing entries/mappings. That's a different thing in my eyes.

If the ruling were to declare published content must not be modified, I think there's multiple levels to it too, and it may dictate to any degree between them.

1. Interpretative tools (like a screen reader would be, or forced high contrast mode), which may be classified accessibility too
2. CSS hacks that change display style but not what is shown (for example forcing a dark mode, reduced spacing, or bigger font sizes)
3. CSS hacks or ad blockers that modify or hide content (block ads that would otherwise be rendered)

The biggest danger for a "copyright violation" would be the last point. Given that styling is part of the website though, "injection with intent to modify" may very well be part of it too, though.

It certainly would go directly against the open web with all of its advantages.

/edit: Comment by manxu, who read the ruling, is a lot less alarming.

The wealthy people will just pay to have the ads removed.

As always, this law doesn't exist to benefit workers like you and me. It exists to benefit our rulers and should be another example of how government representatives do not represent their populace.

As long as they can reduce the adblock usage, it is a win for them. 100% success is not the goal. Right now there is nothing stopping everyone from using some sort of adblocker (0% revenue is possible actually), which must be scary.

I'm already getting into self-hosting.

It's surprisingly easy, and can be done with a VPN that has port forwarding.

Wouldn't be surprised with how shittifed the web is becoming that we end up with alternatives to DNS since it requires forwarding on port 80.

Another way to subsidize a very small handful of extremely large businesses that are already richer than some countries, and outright kill small actors? Sign me up.

Bribing Merz*