[jordanb]

Google torrent lawsuits. Tens of thousands of people have had their lives ruined due to torrent use.

Claiming that there's anything illegal about adblockers is a real stretch, although I can definitely believe that they will eventually be outlawed either by statute or through some torturous legal argument agreed to by corrupt judges.

[Jensson]

> Tens of thousands of people have had their lives ruined due to torrent use.

That is a tiny fraction of the number of people who did it. There are companies that got destroyed due to lawsuits as well, I wouldn't say lawsuits are less of an issue for companies than people, significant lawsuits are very rare in either case.

> Claiming that there's anything illegal about adblockers is a real stretch

It is legally questionable, I didn't say it was illegal we were talking about questionable actions.

[lucianbr]

So in which sense was it "hammered out"? Since not many people got in trouble for it, is it now legal to torrent copyrighted content, and to block ads?

If you're claiming it's still legally questionable, then it was not "hammered out" at all, was it?

[sroussey]

I can think up a few legal ideas off the top of head in regards to adblockers:

From a copyright point of view… adblockers make a derivative work so they should pay the content maker for those. Those are worth orders of magnitude more than the ad would have paid.

Or maybe unfair business practice. Their whole aim is deprive another business of income. Or how they shake down companies for money so the blocker becomes less effective on that site.

Just ideas