[goodplay]

What does ad-blocking have to do with copyright circumvention or copyright enforcement? The only think on that list is the domain name.

I'm certain that including a name in a list does not fall under copyright (ample precedent that backs it up). In the unlikey (and unfathomable) case that it is protected under copyright, I bet it would fall under fair use.

Trademark law isn't relevant to an entry in a machine database.

[warcher]

I think the argument would be that, say, the New York Times wrote an article, and that article included ads for their sponsor. This third party tool is making unauthorized edits to the New York Times' copyrighted material.

I'm a hardline free speech dude, but I find it difficult to justify "We changed around your copyrighted work to remove stuff we decided we don't like." If you don't like ads, pay up or go elsewhere. You do not have a right to anybody else's IP.

[goodplay]

>This third party tool is making unauthorized edits to the New York Times' copyrighted material.

It's not a third party tool. It's a tool used by the first party (user) to modify information that was sent to him without effecting the publisher. I don't see how the publisher has any authority over what the user chooses to do with the information he obtained.

> I find it difficult to justify "We changed around your copyrighted work to remove stuff we decided we don't like." If you don't like ads, pay up or go elsewhere.

That's an interesting take on IP rights. By generalizing your argument, would you argue against newspaper snippets because a reader would only collect the article without adjacent ads? (with scissors made by a third-party, no less.)

> You do not have a right to anybody else's IP.

Fair use, Noncopyrightable items, old expired IP, and the public domain are all examples of rights I have to others IP. Rights have been - and I hope will continue to be - balanced between the concerns of IP "owners" and the rest of society to best serve everyone's interests. Tipping the scale in one side's favor like what you advocate here will disrupt that balance.

[WovenTales]

For the sake of argument, there's a difference between someone's IP and the wrapper it comes in. I'd be more than happy to pay for an audiobook through Amazon (or just get Audible), but until a recent hardware upgrade, I literally couldn't listen to them on the device I had access to during the period I had time to listen to them because Amazon decided I had to have their software to do so. So I found another place I could get the actual content in a different wrapper that did let me play it on my old Sansa+Rockbox (Downpour, if anyone's wondering). I'm more than happy to see an ad beside or before the main content, but whatever site I'm on did not make the ad and taking it off the page is no more changing their IP than taking a black marker to a physical newspaper.

I do block ads, though, despite actually wanting to see them to support the site. My problem is in the potential for viruses and tracking, and while that's a separate issue a few other threads are already talking about, there's been disappointingly little actual progress in making sure you can browse safely without resorting to nuking everything. I've been following the development on Brave because their proposed methods seem like one of the few ways to actually make it work.

[codedokode]

> We changed around your copyrighted work to remove stuff we decided we don't like.

That is totally ok. For example, if I record a video from TV and remove the ads is that a violation? I think it is not as long as I use this video for myself and do not distribute it.

Copyright laws should not regulate what I do in my house or on my computer. I should be able to modify any copyrighted work as I wish as long I am not redistributing it (and yes, I should be able to inspect and patch copyright protection schemes too).

[SomeStupidPoint]

> I'm a hardline free speech dude, but I find it difficult to justify "We changed around your copyrighted work to remove stuff we decided we don't like."

How?

How can that possibly be hard to justify for anyone that even believes vaguely in the notion of freedom, much less someone "hardline"?

Do you think I break the law (or ethics) if I take the ads insert out of a newspaper I buy without reading them? How about if I hire a secretary to do so?

> This third party tool is making unauthorized edits to the New York Times' copyrighted material.

At the request of the first party (you) after receipt by the first party. They're not packaging it up and reselling it, they're automating your curation of a work you legally own a copy of for the purposes of your own consumption.

> You do not have a right to anybody else's IP.

Then the NYT should stop giving it away free.

[warcher]

I get in a lot of arguments with dudes who believe they have a right to stuff other people made without payment or consequence. The last one I remember is a bunch of DJs who didn't want to get permission to use samples.

I find the arguments pretty spurious and it's best not to engage.

It's their website. If you don't like their website, we got a whole other internet to enjoy.

[goodplay]

This has nothing to do with believing that we have right to other people's work without payment. The fundamental issue is that these publishers are allowing public access to their work than expecting to have some control over how it is consumed. Hanging your painting in a public park and then demand that people not wear sunglasses when looking at it, or demanding that onlookers look at it sideways would be absurd. Don't hang your paintings in public parks. Hang it in a private gallery, and make no-sunglasses a term for admission.

Publishers would be better served if they restricted their articles, by demanding payment upfront before serving the article, rather than unreasonably and unrealistically demanding that people consume their content in a certain way. Don't blame your users for your failed business model.

As a side note, Copyright is not the place where this issue should be tackled as no copyright is being infringed (Content is not being redistributed).

[codedokode]

It is their website but after I download the content to my hard drive it becomes my files and I can do whatever I want with them privately (as long as I do not redistribute it, claim authorship etc). That is how copyright should work, but of course the actual laws might be biased to the interests of some party. There is nothing new if you learn the history of human society, some groups of people always wanted to have more rights than others.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Two points:

Free sampling for the purposes of cultural remixing is explicitly built into (US) copyright (across media) as a mitigation to some of the harmful effects of artificial monopolies on culture. It's a compromise between those who think artificial monopolies are the only way to encourage the creation of culture and those who view such contrived monopolies as a net negative. There's a fundamental difference between copying and stealing. You seem to be intentionally conflating them by using phrases like "stuff other people made". It's not really "stuff" that they're "taking" and the copy is made by the copier, not the original composer. Nothing has been taken besides the right to artificially restrict the behavior of other people for the purpose of rent extraction.

Secondly, they give me a copy free when I request it. It just has ads included. But there's no reason I'm obligated to read the ads. It's exactly the case where they give me a free paper with an ad insert and I have the secretary throw away the ad insert before I read it.

Do you think I'm a monster because I throw out the ads in my weekly periodocal unread?

(For the record, I'm taking about ad blockers, not bypassing paywalls -- I generally just don't go to those sites. Your arguments hold more weight when discussing bypassing paywalls.)

[danarmak]

Admiral's domain serves software that enforces access restrictions to copyrighted content. Including their domain in an ad-blocking list is a way to circumvent the restrictions.

Whether distributing a list of domain names counts as distributing "tools" or whatever the exact language of the act is, I don't know. This other subthread contains a better discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14991624

[goodplay]

I doubt failing to contact a server would circumvent DRM. Blocking their servers would only make their DRM scheme fail and prevent access to said copyright material.

Using the DMCA to protect company's defective and flawed DRM scheme does not constitute circumvention. As such, I do not believe that DMCA's anti-circumvention laws are relevant.

[codedokode]

They might use a scheme that would allow access by default and block it with a script from that domain. So blocking the domain becomes a circumvention (today I finally learned how to write this word).

Or that domain could be used to collect views stats for copyrighted content and make decisions based on that stats. Blocking this domain is obviously messing with copyright protection scheme which is illegal inder DMCA.

[codedokode]

For example, the web page with copyrighted content can load a script from admiral's domain that would check whether a user is allowed to view the page or not. Adblocker is blocking that domain and therefore circumventing copyright protection scheme which is illegal under DMCA.

The people who invented this are really smart I must admit.