Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal

Comments

• salacious_coaster@infosec.pub ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I guess we shut off the fucking Internet to Germany then. 🖕🏻

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• ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• Jozav@lemmy.world [bot] ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I buy a newspaper and black out all the advertisements. Now the government is banning black felt-tip pens?

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• Auth@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • deadcream@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And much of that driven by lobbyism by the same media empires who are trying to get rid of ad blockers.

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  • SomethingBurger@jlai.lu ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • Auth@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I bet Google probably lobbied to revive this somehow.

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  • CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Next step is that Google has to show them in the results and pay them on top or stop operating entirely.

      They already tried that…

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    • DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Making ad blockers illegal means they win the ad blocker war that YT has been waging for a while now.

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• Filetternavn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is truly dystopian. A ruling in Springer’s favor here could imply that modifying anything, even without distribution, would constitute a copyright violation. 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.

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  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

    In any case, it will take years to get results.

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  • General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • Delusion6903@discuss.online ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Dystopian, yes

    Also Fascist

    Something we never want to see in German politics in particular

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    • Filetternavn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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 in many locations, and I’d personally prefer it not be present anywhere at all, not just in an area in which it has had previous influence.

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  • DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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 is still freely available.

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    • Filetternavn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No, copyright holders have the right to provide permission for modification and distribution of their copyrighted material. This is a case where the copyright holder is not explicitly providing those rights, so it is a completely different scenario.

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• Guidy@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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