[gregcohn]

It did occur to me that he might have been threatened by a lawsuit (or more than one). I suspect he would have been direct about that, if in a position to, but a large corporation is in a position to put tremendous pressure on a small/indie business, even if they don't have the legal high ground.

IIRC, there was a lot of drama between tv networks and Tivo, once upon a time, over the ad-skipping issue, which netted out in a pretty lame detente (Tivo pulling the 30-second-skip button out of standard UI).

At the end of the day, the issues are similar (30-second-skip == going the bathroom during the commercial break, but someone productizing it was not). Over a longer period of time, we all started time-shifting tv content and commercials took a big hit anyway (due to Netflix and to Tivo clones and licensees).

If anyone thinks a developer like Marco is somehow complicit in the death of traditional, ad-supported media, I hope they're having similar introspection over using spotify instead of buying records.

The world doesn't owe a living to people who can steal content, write clickbait headlines, and convert paragraphs into multi-page galleries the most effectively. They will have to adapt.

And some will die.

And ad-blockers are forever a thing on mobile now.