[ndriscoll]

I spend almost no time getting around them. As you say, it takes 10 seconds to install a malware filter to block them.

There is no contract with me at all. It is not theft. It is preventing others from misappropriating my computing resources, and in fact the US government recommends citizens use ad blockers. It's basic computer security.

[johnnyanmac]

You've been lucky in that case. Or you simply visit mainstream programs and never had to deal with not-ads-but-still-intrusive elements that you make custom domains to filter out. Google is doing A/B tests going to war with ads so it may be a bumpy few months.

>There is no contract with me at all. It is not theft.

Hence my wording:

>Indirect contract are those where there is no direct contract between parties but the law presumes that there is a contracts between the parties and such could be enforced.

>is preventing others from misappropriating my computing resources,

You chose to access their servers, I don't see how YouTube is "misapproiating your resources". You're basically getting a service and refusing to pay for it. That's theft.

It's like I said, I don't care if people still from a trillion dollar corporation. But people who really only think software can't be stolen really shouldn't be considered a software "engineer", as many here claim to be.

>in fact the US government recommends citizens use ad blockers. It's

1. The fbi is not the government. For good reason given their history.

2. Their context was for malware, not for getting around undesired ads for an otherwise "free" service.

[ndriscoll]

As far as I can tell, this "indirect contract" thing does not exist as a concept in American law, and runs completely counter to the idea of a contract. Contracts must have mutual assent. How could you ever agree to a contract if you don't even know it exists? Do you have an example of case law for this?

On misappropriation, do you think it's okay if e.g. a blogger puts a crypto miner on their page? If you choose to request a web page, is it okay for them to run background workers on your computer, and in fact it is theft of service if you do not allow it? Do you also need to give them e.g. location, accelerometer, microphone, and local filesystem access if they'd like to have it? Why are ads special among malware payloads in that you must run them? Why are computer ads special unlike physical ads (e.g. in the mail or inserts in a free newspaper) where people toss them in the bin without opening/looking at them? Or an ad-blocking DVR?

Many of e.g. Google's tracking domains are simply blocked on my network. I don't have any idea of what web pages are going to try to get me to load them, but it doesn't matter because none of them are allowed to. It's ridiculous to say that I must allow my computers to reach out to malicious servers and run scripts they deliver. Must I allow random North Korean servers to run scripts too?

The FBI is part of the government, and the context was that certain search engines (e.g. Google) were presenting ads for scams, and so to protect yourself from fraud, you should install an ad blocker so that you do not see ads.

On morals, I'll put forward that if you have children, it is in fact a moral imperative to remove as many sources of advertising from their lives as you can. Ads attempt to shape them into worse people (pushing them to embrace materialism and hedonism), and their influence should not be tolerated.