Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/34873574
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Comments136https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/legal/mozilla-warns-germany-could-soon-declare-ad-blockers-illegal/Open linkView original on lemmy.zip
This is truly dystopian. A ruling in Springer's favor here could imply that modifying anything on a webpage, even without distribution, would constitute a copyright violation (EDIT: only for material in which the copyright holder does not grant permission for the modification; so not libre licensed projects). Screen readers for blind people could be illegal, accessibility extensions for high contrast for those visually impaired could become illegal, even just extensions that change all websites to dark mode like Dark Reader could become illegal. What constitutes modification? Would zooming in on a website become illegal? Would translating a website to a different language become illegal? Where does this end?
This needs to be shot down.
Dystopian, yes
Also Fascist
Something we never want to see in German politics in particular
I don't see a reason to have a preference for a specific geographic region to not be influenced by fascism. Fascism should not be instituted anywhere, in any scenario. Unfortunately, it's on the rise globally, and I'd personally prefer it not be present anywhere at all, not just in an area in which it has had previous influence.
It's like cancer.
It's never good. But when it's already taken hold once, you want to be extra vigilant.
Right? It's especially worth at least a second or even third glance in places that have a historical predilection to metastatic fascism.
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.
No, copyright holders have the right to provide permission for modification and distribution of their copyrighted material. That includes providing conditions for that permission, such as requiring the derivative to hold the same license (like GPL). This is a case where the copyright holder is not explicitly providing those rights, so it is a completely different scenario.
But ad blockers don't distribute derivative materials.
It's like saying you can't distribute a stencil to cover up things you don't like to see in a book.
Correct, this case (as far as I'm aware) is only about modification. I simply mentioned distribution and derivative works to talk about libre licenses like GPL being different than what the court case is about
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.
EU please stop, you were suppose to save us from American Tech abuse not join them.
It's a monkey's paw situation. Sure, the EU will protect us from American tech abuse... and implement the same policies internally.
We need an African Tech revolution. Unless their tech follows the same path, then we run to an Australian tech revolution. Asian tech is already cooked and has been for a long time.
What could be the reason this keeps happening everywhere???
It's not capitalism, it would happen under any system. It's caused by psychotic power hungry narcissists willing to do anything to stay in control...you know, the type of people willing to do anything to obtain power in the first place. It is the bane of society, only the people who are unfit to have the power are the ones who seek it.
You know, the type of people who end up with the most power under capitalism.
Not just capitalism, under any system...this is a people problem that exists within all ideologies.
The PH levels of the ocean
Africa tech is just Chinese tech so they're already cooked.
Australia basically banned encryption long ago and in doing killed off their tech industry.
We need a New Zealand tech revolution, which is where all the Australian IT firms relocated to following the encryption ban.
Encryption laws are hurting Australia's tech sector, Atlassian says | Australian security and counter-terrorism | The Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/27/encryption-laws-are-hurting-australias-tech-sector-atlassian-says
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.
And much of that driven by lobbyism by the same media empires who are trying to get rid of ad blockers.
Good thing my computer isn’t in Germany. I will stop using web browsers before I disable ad blockers.
This is complete bullshit thought up by people who have no idea how computers work. It's basically the failed youtube-dl DMCA takedown all over again. The (final?) ruling basically said that website owners cannot tell people how to read their websites.
BTW, Axel Springer products are the equivalent of FOX in America and they are often embroiled in lawsuits against them. Just saying.
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!
Agreed. By their logic, it would be illegal to write on a newspaper or cut parts out of it because that’s not how the copyright holder intended it lol
Although I 100% agree with you, the whole premise of this post is that laws can change. What's legal now is not a good basis to say "it's legal, so it can't be illegal later on".
They also own Politico and Insider/Business Insider. Feel like too few people are aware of that.
Oooh, that's why my comments get deleted on business insider when I rant about the inflationary use of "Deindustrialisierung". They can go fuck themselves.
This would make even a dark mode extension something illegal.
Screen reader? You better make sure it only works on a site that explicitly allows them, and no reorganizing these sections, or else!
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.
I speak German legalese (don't ask) so I went to the actual source and read up on the decision.
The way I read it, the higher court simply stated that the Appeals court didn't consider the impact of source code to byte code transformation in their ruling, meaning they had not provided references justifying the fact they had ignored the transformation. Their contention is that there might be protected software in the byte code, 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.
Sounds more like, "Appeals court has to do their homework" than "ad blockers illegal."
The ruling is a little painful to read, because as usual the courts are not particularly good at technical issues or controversies, so don't quote me on the exact details. In particular, they use the word Vervielfältigung a lot, which means (mass) copy, which is definitely not happening here. The way it reads, Springer simply made the case that a particular section of the ruling didn't have any reasoning or citations attached and demanded them, which I guess is fair. More billable hours for the lawyers!
[Edit: added "The way I read it, coz I am not 100% sure, as explained later.]
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
Honestly, a lot of modern copyright law is very shady. You can get in major trouble for ripping a CD or DVD? That sounds insane. And what about not being allowed to repair your own tractor? Do you remember the baby dancing to some music, that was then DMCA-ed away?
My favorite is still the absolutely bonkers almost 100 years on copyrights. That has absolutely nothing to do with "the Progress of Science and useful Arts," everything with lining the pockets of copyright holders.
Back in the 90s when the current iteration of copyright laws were being passed, many lawyers disdainfully referred to the act as the 'Mickey Mouse Copyright Act' In no small part because Disney was such a huge driver behind it. They did everything, and I mean EVERYTHING possible to delay the release of their IPs to public domain. There is a reason why the earliest iterations of Mickey Mouse coming out were such a big deal. Did you know that if they didn't act like assholes back in the day, and pre-70s copyright were still in effect, Mickey and Minnie Mouse would be fully public domain as early as 1984?
German copyright laws?
I know nothing of copyright laws in Germany.
That's why I'm rooting for LLMs to destroy copyright completely. Haters gonna hate but copyright is so broken the best path forward is to completely destroy it and start over.
Honestly every law usable to keep a business working that would fail otherwise is shady. Other than preventing (literal physical) theft, robberies and murders.
Especially if it limits your freedom to do whatever you want that doesn't involve stealing, robbing, killing, raping, putting stuff on fire ...
If what manxu said is true it might be both courts agree its clear cut. It sounds more like a pull request getting rejected because of quality issues. "Fix it and resubmit. We don't want this happening again"
I've learned courts have a lot of jargon and procedures that don't make sense on the surface. some things that sound bad actually are for your benefit and it's best to get a lawyer to translate.
Insanity - modifying code that runs on your machine in no way is even remotely related to copyright.
Cracking code/verification systems on your computer is also code running on your system, there are literally people in prison for running the code that cracks a program, BECAUSE of copyright laws.
So I'm not sure your setting how bad it already is for users.
(What should be, is not what we are talking about, for the record)
Thanks, that's a super helpful explanation :)
So much for Europe being more progressive. They’re shilling for corporate on par with the states.
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.
Looked it up so no one else had to!
So the acronym is now AMAMA!
I guess the new acronym should be MAAAM
US used to call it FAANG (but then there's been a bunch of renames)
I prefer AMAMA.
The good old French acronym XD
Germany, progressive? Have you ever lived there? I'm amazed they even use web browsers enough to notice now, compared to their fax machines.
Health care here still uses fax machines.
Dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of.
Will they make Reader Mode in browsers illegal, too?
What about "dark mode" or "resize font" when the website doesn't offer those accessibility features?
Will they make the "mute" function on browser tabs illegal, since it modifies the website author's intention to play audio upon page load?
I will continue to block ads, spyware, trackers, unwanted elements, popups, and social media links, "illegal" or not.
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.
I buy a newspaper and black out all the advertisements. Now the government is banning black felt-tip pens?
The copy of the web browser is mine, the data I've downloaded is mine, I can do what I want with it.
Next they'll say that avoiding ads by abandoning the internet on the whole is illegal and that you are legally required to watch ads x times, or for y minutes, per day.
Drink verification can.
I'm sure you know but for any onlookers:
This is not a meme, this was in a patent by Sony.
US8246454B2
Bah, it's only a mandatory 1439 minutes a day
What a shit website and article. At least post the one from Mozilla themselves.
The case is not just blocking adblockers: the issue is that Adblock Plus specifically charges companies to let their ads go through. That is one of the main concerns.
Even that shouldn't be illegal. It's shitty, but it's still too far
What should be illegal here is the kind of misinformation, if you permit some ads and allow others, you're an advertising agency and should be upfront about it. If your whole business model is "I hide ads" but you only hide those ads that didn't pay you, that's false advertisement.
Sure, but that gives end users standing to sue, not these guys
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 can it be illegal? Makes no sense whatsoever.
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.
The server is sending me data and I’m choosing what program I’m using to interpret that data. That shouldn’t be illegal, regardless of the purposes of the data.
Ads that hide the content, ads that hijack your navigation, unwanted ads that consume your bandwidth which may or may not be on a paid plan, ads that will slow down your device, increase battery usage, or plain crash the site you're trying to see, all of these are just malware. There's no excuse for malware.
For a time, adblockers had a provision to allow non intrusive ads. The mere idea is so dead that the option doesn't even make sense anymore.
It's ilegal to photograph people in Germany but it will be fully legal to gather everything about their psyche to serve them ads
'using a service without paying for it' alright. do you want us to sign contractual agreements before visiting websites? Most companies want people to use mobile apps these days because of the legal implications of editing those apps. The ads are baked in.
it comes down to the philosophy of internet systems you ascribe to.
I'd like to see your reaction to that television patent that forces people to stand up and clap after the advertisement.
I'd like to see your reaction to me placing sticky notes on my physical screen over the advertisement's location such that I never perceive the content.
I'd like to see you kneel, subordinate human worker. Do my bidding. Watch my ads. It's the moral thing to do.
I'm not advocating for you being forced physically to watch ads, I'm saying that as it stands, ads are the payment method and you actively blocking them means you're not paying for what you're using. I'm not criticising people for that, I'm simply stating a fact. If everyone on the internet was to use adblockers, most of the web would die out, and first to die would be actually useful sites that provide helpful information that they invested time and money into making, such as news, review sites, etc. Perhaps the threat of adblockers itself is benefitial for the internet as it might force websites to find alternate, better payment methods, but I don't see what you could replace ads with since people won't be willing to pay a monthly subscription for every site they visit, and most people won't pay for donations if you try a donations based model.
Websites existed before internet ads came about, and while it may be true that most would die without ads I'd be happy to see them go because the vast majority of websites have no value and only exist to try and make a few bucks off ads.
Hosting for most websites these days is virtually free. For about 80% of mine I only have to pay for the domain names, and I have no desire to serve ads to my visitors under the guise of covering costs.
The alternatives are directly charging for access to a service, or providing it for free and relying on donations or payment just for extra/bonus features/content. These methods are very successful when something is actually worth paying for.
Hosting costs heavily depend on the type of service, YouTube's costs are very much not negligible, but it is true that for most sites it is very cheap. But hosting costs aren't the only cost, many sites provide useful reviews, news, or testing that costs them money to produce, which they pay for with ads. Yes, some sites survive using alternative payment methods, but I'm skeptical that this can scale to the rest of the internet. My fear is that we'll end up in a situation where 90% of the internet is just YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and other giants and people get all of their news, reviews and other information from those sites, which I think is worse than having ads.
This is pretty much already the case though. And they all have plenty of ads despite being incredibly profitable through their paid offerings.
the types of ads that are being blocked are effectively a type of malware
The "owners" of our world want us to be passengers, not drivers. They own the carusel, and we rent our rides.
They say we have no skin in the game. Truth is, SKIN is ALL we have in this game. We must have assets in the game as a birthright to make it worth playing in good faith. If most are landless and assetless, sorry, the game sucks. That means untill we get the rules that protect all of our interests, as opposed to protecting massive wealth accumulations at everyone's expense, we will ignore the rules, the norms, decorum, civility, etc.
If the hoarders break the social contract repeatedly, like they have since 2008, it takes people some time to internalize and digest the fact of what it means for none of us to be bound by a social contract. Once people catch on, there will be hell to pay.
You can make ad blockers illegal, but you can't actually enforce it unless you have a dystopian totalitarian government with a secret police to track down anyone using one. Does Germany have that?
Working on it
Had that
longer in the eastern part
So basically its "we get to decide how data is processed on your hardware when we send it down the pipe". Somebody should explain server/client roles to these clowns.
Dumbest argument I have ever heard, this is the equivalent of someone gifting me a book and I am not allowed to annotate, redact, highlight, or rip pages of it because of copyright. That makes zero sense, how did it even go to court?
Time to switch back to text-only browsers.
I don't live in Germany though, so I don't have to worry about this legislation or do anything about it 😂
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.
Plus what if this hits the US and everywhere else too? I mean, as it stands, Free Speech/Expression and Free Press are basically dead in the 'States, what's one more right to kill?
I agree, you're right. I'm kind of sick of this firehose of bullshit raining down from on high. Freedom is dying in so many different contexts all at the same time.
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.
It should.
I know that my preferred browser (librewolf) does not and doesn't have a native build for OpenSuSE and often has problems with video conferencing in the flatpak. Its the only reason I've kept vanilla firefox installed.
Interesting. I have flatpack Chrome and camera works (hence my it should). OTOH I have dnf Firefox and camera doesn't work because 'You did not allow the browser to use the web camera. Reload the page and try again.' I guess (your) Firefox issue might not be related to flatpak. (Fedora 42/KDE)
Yeah, I think it's more related to the inherent security settings in librewolf and the sandboxing flatpak does not meshing well, which is fine as that's a great upside for it. It's not a big deal to have a dedicated browser, but I'd rather be able to block most if not all the crap when I do need to use the webcam which is why I avoid Chromium browsers when possible.
Assuming it doesn't come over to wherever you live too.
I bet Google probably lobbied to revive this somehow.
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.
They already tried that...
They‘ll try again if they succeed in this.
Making ad blockers illegal means they win the ad blocker war that YT has been waging for a while now, once and for all. Basically, ad blockers being banned by law would be YT's Hiroshima bomb on ad blockers and maybe even alt front-ends.
Did you read the second part of my comment and thought about the implications?
I guess we shut off the fucking Internet to Germany then. 🖕🏻
I don't know why but I feel relaxed about it. It's hardly enforceable and I don't even think Springer will win this. It's just a feeling from experience with those things in Germany.
They're also referring to browser based ad blocking which leaves blockers like pi hole or ad guard to be legal options.
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!
So what happens if the ad blocker is built into the browser?
And what happens if a user modifies the Dom by hand using dev tools?
What about DNS blocks?
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.
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.
I have this pre-existing accessibility condition where I can't read sites with ads on them. I've been blocking ads my whole life and have a visceral reaction to other people's browsers if they don't have an ad blocker.
I don't see how they could possibly ban ad blockers but not screen readers or ther "focused" modes. If they do, I guess I'll just pretend I'm blind
In that case, make sure the judge gets to watch 4x 10 minute ads for every 30 minutes of watching anything in 720p after having paid in full for the highest tier 4K subscription plan.
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.
We are all criminals on this blessed day.
It should/would then also be illegal to block virus/spyware delivery, or everyone's favorite, 50 porn window pop ups. The latter was "fixed" by browsers maybe 10 years ago.
That would be totally unenforceable, imo.
I'm gonna modify Springer's websites so hard, they're gonna resemble a Picasso's painting
Great, but how could they possibly enforce it? It's infeasible.
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.
Eh, next try (Nr. 7? 8?) of Axel Springer, a tabloid that wanted to declare their site as a protected piece of art you aren't allowed to modify (block stuff).
Will they sue Dillo next, because it looks like this there? 👉👈🥹
Btw, they lost in this already what, 7 times?
maybe in the future a service offers a flat monthly fee to not have any ads and distributes the money to all of the content platforms that would otherwise show ads. basically it's like a little government taxing users and giving the money to the capital owning class all over again
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.
yea
At what point do we just redo the web? I'm thinking Gemini but with more geo cities
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.
I wonder how much money Google bribing Germany to make it happened ?
Bribing Merz*
With the recent insults to privacy (including E2E encryption) and the pro-corporate legislation, has Germany lost its way? Seems like newer generations are forgetting the lived experience of the Stasi. Also, I feel that pro-tenant legislation is at risk.
Update: the top comment is the best; don’t read my bullshit.
Just take your internet connected devices into your back yard and burn them all. Might as well take preemptive action before the internet is killed off.
Funny how this thread isn't over-run with copyright shills standing up for the poor journalists. Maybe once the law needs to be changed?