[pdkl95]

Request level blocking isn't going to work when advertisers finally figure out that embedding into the actual document (like a data: URL today) is much harder to block. As the entire point of WebAssembly is to make a small download that is efficient in parse-time and size, it will be practical to embed images (less overhead than a base64'd data: URL).

As for bypassing the DOM, it's a question of when they do that, not if; for evidence, a lot of people tried that with flash already, and lots more try things like trying to block UserAgent context menu. Yes, these were ineffective, but they were (and still are) used by a lot of businesses.

Yes, I think we have a huge problem, because hoping that nobody decides to abuse technology for personal gain doesn't work. With new technologies like WebAssembly, we shouldn't be caring about technical benefits, but instead asking how the technology will be abused. If we give everybody tools to serve a non-document, then we shouldn't be surprised when non-documents are used. The only way to prevent this is to restrict the UserAgent to standards that can only be implemented as an open format, which is what HTML/CSS tried to do.

If you're not feeling the doom-and-gloom, you might want to watch PHK's "Operation Orchestra" talk, and consider that there are a lot of businesses that would love to serve up something closer to cable TV than the current environment where the user can control the rendering.