Technology

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.

EU please stop, you were suppose to save us from American Tech abuse not join them.

Good thing my computer isn’t in Germany. I will stop using web browsers before I disable ad blockers.

Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model and frames website execution inside web browsers as a copyright violation.

This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.

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.

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.]

So much for Europe being more progressive. They’re shilling for corporate on par with the states.

This is grounded in the assertion that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program that an ad blocker intervenes in the in-memory execution structures (DOM, CSSOM, rendering tree), this constituting unlawful reproduction and modification.

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.

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.

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.

How can it be illegal? Makes no sense whatsoever.

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?

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 😂

I bet Google probably lobbied to revive this somehow.

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.

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?

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.

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.