[HDThoreaun]

The extension is stealing from them. I get stealing a zero marginal cost good is minor but the agreement you make with YouTube is that you watch an ad in exchange for the video. Why should they serve you the video if you refuse your part of the agreement?

[asadotzler]

TOS is not an agreement, it's a notice, an assertion from the provider that mandates absolutely nothing from you.

TOS is like me putting a sign up at the end of my driveway saying if you approach my home, you owe me $10. If you pull up to my house, I demand the $10, and you don't pay me, I cannot forcibly take $10 from you, nor can I call the cops or sue over the $10.

You never agreed to anything and certainly not in any legally binding format.

Notices are not contracts and TOS notices are notices.

[HDThoreaun]

Taking something without paying for it is theft. You can get into whatever legalize you want but that doesn’t change the fact that you are doing what the vast majority of people recognize as the common definition of theft. Is it illegal? No idea frankly but it’s certainly a decent reason for YouTube to stop serving you videos. Getting mad at YouTube for not serving you when you are not playing by their rules makes absolutely no sense to me and really just seems overwhelmingly entitled.

[mjx0]

> Taking something without paying for it is theft.

You keep using the word "theft". Let's grab the definition of "theft" from a legal dictionary:

> Theft is the taking of another person's personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property. Also referred to as larceny.

The intent of depriving another of their property is a key element of theft. When one receives a copy of data, no one is deprived of their property. It's substantially similar to how I can not steal your car by taking a photo of it.

Not only that, but the typical intellectual property industry nonsense of referring to unauthorized copying as "theft" does not apply. Google, who have acquired a right to distribute this data, are serving it to you.

> You can get into whatever legalize [sic] you want but that doesn’t change the fact that you are doing what the vast majority of people recognize as the common definition of theft.

The legalese matters because it's the best way we've come up with to consistently reason about topics like this regardless of shared values.

There is no theft happening in the case of blocking ads.

Your claim about "the vast majority of people" is patently absurd -- because you have not provided and almost certainly do not possess any evidence to substantiate it -- and lacks a basis in fact. Regardless, we do not reason about these things based on the fluctuating opinion of the masses. There is no case in which blocking ads meets "the common definition of theft".

[sodality2]

> the agreement you make with YouTube is that you watch an ad in exchange for the video

I never made that agreement. And if some software on my computer somehow gets YouTube to deliver me the content anyway, that's not my fault. In my view, it's a cat and mouse game, they can do whatever they want to try to stop me, and vice versa. If they win, I won't complain; but if I do, so be it.

[HDThoreaun]

> I never made that agreement

By clicking on the video you did. It is in their terms of service.

How is you purposefully trying to block ads not your fault? Whose fault is it that you installed an Adblock? If you went to a grocery store and told the clerk you already paid and they let you leave would that not be your fault either?

[asadotzler]

No, you didn't make that agreement.

TOS is a NOTICE, not a contract.

There's zero agreement happening when you visit a website.

Assuming you didn't do something actually illegal while using their service, without a contract the most they can do is ban you from the service, or try to.

[jiriknesl]

It is legally binding. By accepting ToS, or using service with ToS, you are entering a legal contract. And as long as ToS isn't breaking laws (like Digital Services Act in EU, or Online Safety Act in the UK) it can be fully enforced.

Here is an example of ToS being enforced: https://kennedyslaw.com/en/thought-leadership/article/2023/n...

Another example https://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case392.cfm

[sodality2]

Terms of service aren't legally binding. Theft is of course illegal.

[jiriknesl]

It is legally binding. By accepting ToS, or using service with ToS, you are entering a legal contract. And as long as ToS isn't breaking laws (like Digital Services Act in EU, or Online Safety Act in the UK) it can be fully enforced.

Here is an example of ToS being enforced: https://kennedyslaw.com/en/thought-leadership/article/2023/n...

[sodality2]

> By accepting ToS, or using service with ToS, you are entering a legal contract

Half right. Only if I accept them affirmatively with a clickwrap, like your article mentions. Implicitly accepted ones do not count. I’m not signed into youtube.com, so there is no acceptance of ToS.

[jiriknesl]

Even browse-wrap is legally binding, if visible enough (and it is visible just under the confirmation button on that massive Cookie Acceptance modal dialog when you come to YouTube).

[Toritori12]

I've never said they should, they are free to implement any anti-ad-block for all I care. I just pointed out their lack of honesty about the source of the problem, they should say they are actively blocking the extension rather than the extension is malfunctioning.

[squigz]

> Why should they serve you the video if you refuse your part of the agreement?

I've held the position that, if YT wants to, they can block me from their platform for using an adblocker, and I would have no moral ground to stand on.

However, that isn't what they do. They try to circumvent it. They try to make it technically impossible. They try to mislead users into thinking their extensions are malicious.

[mcphage]

How are you making an agreement? You can’t say “I’ll watch this video in exchange for X minutes of ads” because YouTube will never tell you how many minutes they’re going to show you, and because they have zero interest in committing to some number of minutes of ads. It’s constantly getting worse, and this process will continue until it kills the service.

[nradov]

It won't kill the service. The media executives who run YouTube are well aware of how advertising volume affects viewership so they'll titrate up or down as needed to maximize profit.

But don't worry, something else will eventually kill YouTube. Most likely they'll miss some sort of disruptive innovation. Like maybe in 30 years everyone will have content beamed directly into their neutral implants and only a few old people will still watch online videos.

[mcphage]

The time line for these sorts of things seems to be: they’ll slowly make YouTube worse and worse, but just not bad enough to kill it. And then something else will come along, and people will be so dissatisfied with the quality of YouTube that people dump it en masse.

[HDThoreaun]

The agreement is you watch the ads YouTube serves you. Why would that agreement have to include the amount of ads served? If you are unhappy with their business model you can always pay for premium or stop using it. Or you can steal from them, that’s what I do. I’m just not afraid to admit it.

[asadotzler]

There is no agreement. TOS is a notice not a contract. It's not stealing because it's public content, publicly accessible to anyone with the technology to do so.

If Google wants to make YouTube a service with actually binding contracts and not TOS notices no one reads or respects, it can put the whole thing behind a login and end un-authed public web traffic. They're free to do that but they won't because they know that would kill the site dead, and quickly so.

[mcphage]

That’s not an agreement, that’s just YouTube doing whatever they want. Which they can—but then—I can just do whatever I want, too. You don’t need to imagine some sort of covenant being involved.

> Or you can steal from them, that’s what I do. I’m just not afraid to admit it.

I don’t even do that, I just watch it as-is. I just don’t need to imagine that YouTube and I have agreed to anything.

[rwmj]

I think you need to read about contract law before continuing to double down. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract#Common_law_contracts is as good a place as any to start). A notice you put up on a website does not form a contract.

[anticensor]

Contracts of adhesion are still contracts, just that they have less enforceability and narrower legal scope.

[anticensor]

Couldn't they fix at 1:1 ad:content ratio and codify it into the charter so that they couldn't give a better or worse deal to the parties even if they wanted?

[mcphage]

They could commit to any number of things, but they don’t want to.

[tshaddox]

I never agreed to that. Shrinkwrap contracts don’t count. Also, if they don’t want to serve me the video without ads, they’re welcome to do that.

[aucisson_masque]

> Also, if they don’t want to serve me the video without ads, they’re welcome to do that.

That’s what they are actually trying to do lol.

[tshaddox]

Are they really trying? They have vast resources and engineering talent. I doubt they are sincerely trying and failing to implement something that radio and broadcast television have managed to do for the better part of a century.

[BriggyDwiggs42]

I’m happy to make the agreement I need to so I can access the thing I like, then turn around and violate those terms when it benefits me. Why should I feel a sense of personal obligation towards google?

[asadotzler]

You're not even making an agreement. You're reading a notice, if that. In most cases it's entirely moot legally and only really useful as a policy tool for the provider to hang its "we're blocking you" authority on.

Having said that, I 100% agree. If Google allows for non-logged in users, it's a public website and we can consume it however we like, until Google decides to try to block us. That's what it's doing now, trying to block users from consuming the content however they like, a core feature of the public web. Fortunately, blocking us is very very hard for sites not behind a login. If they want not-logged in use, they either go to war with my tech, favored by platform, or they let it slide.

Now, Google owns Chrome, so they can also go to war in the browser and standards bodies as well. But for now, the web is open and accessible and that means, wiht the right technology (Firefox plus uBlock Origin for me) you can watch all those video ad-free and there's nothing Google can do to stop you.