Thread 106343745

> A recent ruling from Germany’s Federal Supreme Court (BGH) has revived a legal battle over whether browser-based ad blockers infringe copyright, raising fears about a potential ban of the tools in the country.

> The case stems from online media company Axel Springer’s lawsuit against Eyeo - the maker of the popular Adblock Plus browser extension.

> 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.

> Previously, this claim was rejected by a lower-level court in Hamburg, but a new ruling by the BGH found the earlier dismissal flawed and overturned part of the appeal, sending the case back for examination.

> Mozilla’s Senior IP & Product Counsel, Daniel Nazer, delivered a warning last week, noting that due to the underlying technical background of the legal dispute, the ban could also impact other browser extensions and hinder users' choices.

> “There are many reasons, in addition to ad blocking, that users might want their browser or a browser extension to alter a webpage,” Nazer says, explaining that some causes could stem from the need "to improve accessibility, to evaluate accessibility, or to protect privacy."

> As per BGH’s ruling, Springer’s argument needs to be re-examined to determine if DOM, CSS, and bytecode count as a protected computer program and whether the ad blocker's modifications are lawful.

> “It cannot be excluded that the bytecode, or the code generated from it, is protected as a computer program, and that the ad blocker, ..........

more:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/legal/mozilla-warns-germany-could-soon-declare-ad-blockers-illegal/
https://archive.is/3RSZv

>>106343745 (OP)
Will there be a news in which we'll not see Germens getting cucked

I want this ruling to take effect just to make germcucks seethe.

>>106343745 (OP)
Why are Krauts so tech illiterate? This is the same people that took Americans to the moon

>>106343804
They were the good ones, now all of them like to nibble on Kikock

>>106343745 (OP)
>> Axel Springer says that ad blockers threaten its revenue generation model
Oh boo hoo.

>>106343925
>Some nice and acceptable ads you've got there, it'd be a shame if they were somehow blocked.
Adblock Plus is malware that shouldn't be used when uBlock Origin exists. I guess most of their userbase consists of tech illerates that got introduced to it decades ago (before it went to shit) by more tech savvy relatives.

>banning a browser add-on on national level
Kek. Good luck

>>106343804
you mean germans before they got colonized by americans, now you have germans after american colonization

>>106343745 (OP)
>that a website’s HTML/CSS is a protected computer program
How can something that is not written in a programming language be considered a computer program?

>>106344167
What is a programming language?

>>106343745 (OP)
>not downloading an ad = copyright infringement
absolute retardation

>>106344175
>A markup language is a text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate automated processing.

The greater question is this, is modifying copyrighted material a violation of copyright?
The answer is no. It would only be a violation if you were to then try to distribute that material, which isn't what anyone is doing.
It would be like saying running an upscaler on a video is copyright infringement because you're altering the data. That's just stupid.

>>106344187
What is a programming language?

>>106344206
>buy newspaper
>grab a scissor
>cut out all the ads
>read my paper without ads
Am I a criminal?

Also the argument would apply to a shitton of security software that will monitor, sandbox, and alter programs as they run.

>>106344249
Axel Springer Verlag and all of the so called german "right wing" jew and israel loving Luegenpresse should burn.

>>106343745 (OP)
Stop posting that bullshit. While I am on the side of Adblockers and use Firefox myself, that blog article is fucking fake news.
The court case is about Adblock Plus ONLY because it is ran by a company who earns money with altering HTML of websites. The court is to decide if that is a violation of copyright law, when HTML is considered software and a tool is altering its function for commercial reasons.
It is NOT about adblockers in general and especially tools like uBlock are not affected by this.
So no, there is nothing about "banning adblockers" (mind the plural form) going on in Germany.

I really can't imagine that a bunch of muslims are this profitable, just stop providing service to Europe.

>>106344206
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.
Does anyone else have applicable cases?

>>106343745 (OP)
that's rich coming from mozilla, overwhelmingly funded by google, who'll drop manifest v2 because their sugar daddy asks them to

>>106344280
>just stop providing service to Europe.
You realize that the court case is against one company located in Germany, yes? Idiot.

>>106343804
all the good krauts either died in ww2 or left for america

>>106344285
I guess that they also got paid by Eyeo.
Adblock Plus has more in common with Honey than with a normal adblocker.

>>106344327
I dropped ABP the moment uBO entered the scene.

>>106343804
>This is the same people
no they're not you schizophrenic fuck

>>106344302
I'm not going to read the article when I'm trying to make a joke about Europeans being muslim now, Ahmed.

>>106344302
And you think Springer and the other merchats will stop there?

>>106344361
Ok David Goldberg

>>106343745 (OP)
A machine removing ads from a physical newspaper wouldn't be illegal, so a machine removing ads from an online newspaper shouldn't be illegal either.
I mean, the alternative would be AI glasses that blot out ads before they reach your eyes.

That said, German legislation and judiciary has been a total mess concerning ANYTHING relating to the Internet, which largely explains the absolute state of this "country".

>>106344376
Yes. It's not even clear if they succeed in that case because the entire case is about "earning money altering a code of someone else".

>>106344376
Their arguments don't work against normal adblockers.
At first Adblock Plus tried to extort companies to whitelist their ads. After that failed, they started to replace blocked ads with their own ads. This ist what the lawsuit is about.
In a way, Adblock plus becoming illegal might be a good thing as it could force users to switch to a better adblocker like uBlock.

>>106344384
>judiciary
*jewdiciary

>>106344384
What about "here's my machine. I replaces ads, so you can bring your newspaper to me and I will make sure that the ads of my customers that I put in are less annoying and invasive".

>>106343745 (OP)
why would govt actively push on this? ad blockers should have no direct connection to them? what do they get from pushing this that nobody asked?

>>106344268
Source on this?
I'd be glad if they took Adblock Plus away to be honest. Too many normalfags installing that shit without knowing.

How about the Acceptable Ads Commitee which is just Eyeo, the owners of Ablock Plus?
https://acceptableads.com/imprint/

>>106344555
The source is in the original blog post if you read it correctly. They write correctly that it is about one company their specific business plan. You also find about the company on their Wikipedia page.
But the headline is fakenews clickbait, as it and their wording in the article is suggesting that it is about all adblockers in general, because they explicitly use the plural form respectively general wording, resulting in other idiots copying the narrative.
The case is not about whether adblocking generally should be considered a copyright violation and would be banned.

>>106344661
They tried to coerce ad providers into their plan and business model.
I pay a company that will intercept the mail delivery to their users and replace the spam that's send to them with my content. For that I pay them money and have to sign a contract that my spam has to follow certain guidelines to be delivered.
Sounds like a pretty idiot business model.
The other side, Axel Springer publishing is trying to go against adblockers for a while now. They tried it with scripts blocking adblocker and nagging users but didn't succeed. They also have no legal means to go against free adblockers. So they now go after that one company trying to find cause in their business model to ban them.

>>106344696
I'm wondering how strongly Springer is even affected by adblockers. Readers of Bild don't even have a PC anymore and Google is doing their best to prevent Chrome users from using adblockers.
There's also Welt, etc, but I'd assume most of their ad revenue is coming from Bild traffic.
Adblockers were a problem for Springer 15-20 years ago, but at this time this lawsuit might be costing them more than the lost ad revenue.

>>106344175
a computer program (compiler) that produces a binary from the source code

>>106344768
Yeah Bild readers probably use their app anyhow. But the case is going for a while now already.

>>106344786
So that's a compiler. What is a programming language?

If germany was blocked from the rest of the global web, china style, what would we really lose?

>>106344175
Needs to be Turing Complete

>>106344249
Technically the argument applies to the web browser in general.
Germans won't even be allowed to use one LOL, they're going to have to read html and css text files directly.

I think it's a great thing if ad blockers are made to be illegal

Without adds we wouldn't have amazing free services like facebook and google and amazon and microsoft, people would be forced to do things like self host and use linux or buying things in real life

>>106343745 (OP)
Blocking ads? We don't do that in GERMANY.

>>106344893
Massive cultural loss
https://youtu.be/Ppm5_AGtbTo

>>106345263
Says who

Funny, the federal office for information security recommends you use an adblocker.

>Ad blockers are an important way of safeguarding users online, since they effectively protect against malware attacks carried out by externally embedded advertising.
https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbraucher/Informationen-und-Empfehlungen/Cyber-Sicherheitsempfehlungen/Updates-Browser-Open-Source-Software/Der-Browser/Adblocker-Tracking/adblocker_tracking.html

>>106345292
>t. Google jeet

>>106345372
That's because the article in OP is bullshit.

Reverse engineering for modification and 3rd party compatibility was always legal. There are no copyrights for algorithms.

>>106345384
You can do it for yourself but you can not make money from it.

>>106343745 (OP)
i don't agree. code is delivered to the browser and the browser executes, so you can choose what to execute. deciding not to read the Sports section of the newspaper is not a copyright breach of the newspaper by the reader.
if the webpage is delivered WHOLE to the browser then chopping it up is a different issue. but i don't accept that a webpage is a "computer program"

When was the last time krauts actually implemented a good law or ruling.

>>106345486
Somewhere around 1941.

>>106343745 (OP)
Tranny company that promotes global censorship is warning about something? I dont trust them

>>106343745 (OP)
good
we need an alliance of ad free enthusiast internet sites that provide content for free/donations
these corpo shit pseudojournalism sites distract and deteriorate creative minds into caring about mundane bullshit

>>106343768

If using an ad blocker is copyright infringement perpetrated by the user, then putting up ads that lead to malware is a cyber attack perpetrated by the company that owns the webpage.

In that case, I'll see at of those motherfuckers in court.

>>106344893
CC from Hololive EN is one of the few likable hoes they still have in EN and by some miracle she's German.

>>106343745 (OP)
>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.
Right click > inspect element > edit as html...

>>106345404
Maybe it's different in Germany. There were some rulings in the US regarding emulators that make me think it's definitely legal there.

>>106343804
Same reason as the UK, all the good ones exported themselves a long time ago.

>>106344262
rightwing jew
Is an oxymoron they will never be rightwing, a kike that left a skeleton of “rightwing”

OK, let's use AdNauseam instead.

>>106343745 (OP)
>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.
What the fuck
I hope someone can explain to these fucking germs what a user agent is

>>106343745 (OP)
I think they have solid argument. If you download a software and modify it without permission, you violate their copyright. Same thing goes for software.

>you
>will
>not
>own
>your
>own
>RAM

>>106347146
I assume you mean same thing goes for websites.
The difference is that you don't modify the website's "software". The website provides some documents to you which are explicitly intended for interpretation by the browser. The browser acts as a "user agent" which acts according to the user's preferences in displaying the content provided by the website. Things like adblocking, or in the exact same vein custom styles, are just changing the behaviour of the browser according to the user's wishes - the actual "software" from the website is unmodified, only the browser's behaviour in how it interpretes and displays the website is modified.

This is different from e.g. compiled software which provides a strict set of instructions for the CPU, and there are no easy provisions for a user to modify how a CPU executes these instructions - instead the provided software has to be modified if a user wishes to execute it differently. However, even here, if the user controls the execution environment in such a way that the software behaves differently, this is almost never considered a copyright violation. For example, the user can disable access to network facilities and thus prevent software from sending telemetry or other data to its developer, and doing so is not in any way considered a copyright violation.
Selectively executing javascript code or selectively displaying only certain parts of the HTML DOM sent over by the website is no different from selectively reading only some pages of a PDF document, or selectively providing access to only some parts of a PC to a native program (e.g. denying network access).

>>106343804
Half the country was a Soviet satelite state until the early 90s, and they have been doing their best to sabotage the rest of the country since unification out of spite for being poorfags.

>>106344262
theres no such thing as a right wing jew. a right winger by definition supports a strong leader/dictator/king and the entire purpose of jewish intellectual shenanigans is to convience the goyim to never ever have that because a strong leader/dictator/king can wave his hand and 100% destroy all their soft power instantly. Thats why those leftist billionare fucks stage those fake 'no kings' protests. They want to be unaccountable aristocrats with no lord looming over them and keeping their bullshit in check.

>>106347266
ok retard

>>106343745 (OP)
creating unenforceable laws is a sign of a dying nation

>scammy "adblock" company injects "acceptable ads" into websites
>makes dough
>gets btfo in court for infringing on copyright
adblockers aren't getting banned
the only question is why the Mozilla troons want to make a stand here. maybe that's the business model they were planning on to keep their shit company afloat?

>>106347696
you're talking about "brave"

>OH NO SOMEBODY THINK OF THE DISABLED
>(and their accessibility apps)
Also, it's the Eyeo GmbH (== LLC, Ltd., etc.) getting sued, not some dev-collective or lone wolf or anything.

>>106347557
Why would the Royal Airforce use some German gun?

realistically how are they gonna enforce something like a ublock origin ban for germans.

>>106347828
>Also, it's the Eyeo GmbH (== LLC, Ltd., etc.) getting sued, not some dev-collective or lone wolf or anything.
But it can establish court precedent and this can then be used to expand enforcement powers.
>Eyeo gets successfully sued for "modifying webpages"
>gorhill gets sued for the same, maybe unsuccessfully but still with a chilling effect
>browser (google and mozilla and brave) get told by german courts to disallow adblocking addons, and put in mechanisms for compliance to avoid a legal battle
>after some lobbying and interference, the mechanisms are expanded to stifle adblocking properly even without a court order
Something like this is not at all unlikely, the main saving grace is that right now it's just germany and hopefully nobody else does anything of the sort. But we are seeing right now how the UK added age ID laws and now suddenly the EU and US are considering similar laws as well. If this shit spreads internationally then it could be a very very bad precedent

>>106347750
confirmed then
maybe their former CEO would agree to a merger

>>106347852
The (bong..) RAFs is the classic mod logo. The hans Rotee Armee Fraktion were famous for, among other things, trying to blow up Axel Springer in 70s Hamburg. Or failing him, his offices. It's his publishing co - owners of German tabloid trash like Bild - who brought this lawsuit.

>>106347882
Mozilla blocks German IPs from downloading it.
>Now you understand why always online apps suck
In retrospect, it was like climate-fags and nuclear energy, except our meltdown will invariably happen with time, whereas nuclear meltdowns are basically just highly complex MBTFs, i.e. "managable" (or you're just really unlucky).

But it was always clear that the more important all this interconnectivity got (and thus vital to daily life/the economy), that "they" would take control of it some day.

That being sad... the internet is a DARPA invetion, but it was universities and their fat data connections in the days *before* dial-up that helped shaped the foundation (hence also UNIX being everywhere; AT&T guys hated shit shit).

That was two generations before my time, though, and I ain't the youngest anymore either... o7

>>106343745 (OP)
>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
lol? in that case browsers themselves are "infringing on copyright", webshit is literally the polar opposite of a "protected computer program" and relies entirely on interpreters made by 3rd parties to even run

>>106348704
I think it's time we need "tech judges," quite unironically.
You're basically asking a judge to understand computers and web development.
We delegate that to expert hearings, yes.
But I'm saying: Those guys need a legally valid veto or something along those lines, too.

>>106343745 (OP)
>Axel Springer
No one wants to read their trash anyway, god I fucking hate journos. Are they going to sue the archives too, since people can easily circumvent their retarded paywalls through them?

>>106344084
"americans" with large noses.

>>106348704
By what they're saying it would be illegal to develop a web browser as no web browser 100% complies with everything in the HTML, CSS, and JS manifestos

>blocks ads and trackers at the router level
>THAT'S ILLEGAL

>>106344206
>It would only be a violation if you were to then try to distribute that material, which isn't what anyone is doing.
It's exactly what Adblock Plus was doing.
They block ads, but run an acceptable ads program on the side which you have to pay for to have your ads white-listed. It's basically a racketeering scheme.
Except worse. Apparently they've also dabbled with replacing blocked ads with white-listed ads from other sources. And *that* would directly constitute distributing altered copyrighted material to the end-user, if we see that mutation as something that - though running on the end-user's local machine - is under remote control of Eyeo, the organization marketing ABP. And thus is them redistributing altered content to the end-user.


That said, the EU Commission explicitly considers tools such as ad blockers acceptable and suitable means of providing or refusing consent under the GDPR for having your data processed by adtech technologies as well as a suitable automated means of executing the right to object to processing. That quite literally means, Germany's courts cannot rule that what ad blockers are doing is illegal, because the EU considers it legal and that supercedes whatever the fuck the Germans themselves think they have to say about it. Any ruling to the country would be a direct violation of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which is basically half of what makes up the EU's constitution. The European Court of Justice would no-sell any such ruling immediately, if requested to do so.

>>106348972
>it's illegal to refuse certain incoming connections

>>106347218
Hint: The English version of the Wikipedia article may be biased.
Conversely: So may the German version be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhandanstalt

Not only did the younger brother have to endure the oppression.
You also looted him afterwards
(Or your elites, for that matter.)
But, oh well, there was no blood shed.

t. foreign-born (Western) German (who lives here now)

>>106345263
While HTML is not a turing-complete machine, on account of the fact it isn’t even A machine, the discussion is about HTML/CSS - it’s a well-know fact that CSS is, in fact, turning complete, so long as you consider the driver HTML to be part of the machine (which in this case we do).
Furthermore, most ads are loaded via javascript - which undoubtedly is a programming language.

>>106343745 (OP)
Germany stopped being relevant 80 years ago. Just ignore them. Unless you happen to live in the EU, they probably can't actually do anything to you. They're basically like a slightly more competent version of the British.

Everyone log off the internet and turn off the tv.
Do this as long as humanly possible (2 weeks kek)
What are they gonna do?? Mandate a certain amount of viewing? Fuck these people.

>>106347903
>internationally then it could be a very very bad precedent
Imagine having to be the judge for this.
(No offense, your Honors,) some ancient sixty-year-old geezer having to decide on whether or not adblock infringes on copyright.
Considering such a precedent may in fact completely change the face of the German internet, one might wonder whether it needs to even be delegated all the way to the top...

>>106349041
>Germany's courts cannot rule that what ad blockers are doing is illegal, because the EU considers it legal and that supercedes whatever the fuck the Germans themselves think they have to say about it.

Haha, why do they even do this whole "EU" thing? I don't live there so I'm completely out of the loop about it. It's like they've just decided to give all their country's power to a higher authority. Maybe there's benefits?