[vbezhenar]

So you are saying it should be illegal for me to mute TV when ads are displayed? I must carefully listen to ads and periodically pass an exam to ensure that I indeed listened to them and not thought of other things. What a wonderful feature. For ad companies.

[darkmighty]

That's an extreme example, but I'll play along.

No, I what I mean is TV manufacturers/broadcasters, if they so chose, could make it so that if you use their TV and press the mute button, you accept the TV will inform the broadcaster -- who may deny you service in the future. They should be free to decide if the consumer who doesn't want to watch any ads can watch their content, or if he has to pay subscription.

As a consumer you're not being "forced" anything: you can always subscribe or not watch the channel. Ideally broadcasters would tolerate muting/black-screening many ads up to a point, and if they see you're automatically blocking every ad they may ask you to subscribe.

[tripzilch]

You can't be seriously arguing for that TV muting analytics thing! That'd be, in my opinion, a terrible invasion of privacy.

Also, what if people have their TV plugged into a separate sound system? They could always use the mute button on that. The only way around that would be to equip the TV with a microphone, to check if the expected sounds are in fact audibly in the room ... (I kid)

(Another thought, would they also block deaf people for using the mute button on their TVs? But maybe they could request a special permit or something ...) (again, I kid)

[darkmighty]

1) We are using TVs to extrapolate what's acceptable for the internet. Why not just argue about internet directly?

2) If you want to keep using the TV analogy, ad blockers are like distributing a device for automatically muting/blacking out every TV ad, for free. Do you think free over the air TV broadcasts would exist for very long if such a device were the norm?

[Dylan16807]

And you want it to be illegal to stop my TV from phoning home (or to make it phone home false info)? That's nightmarish!

[darkmighty]

False identity is already illegal. You don't have the right to fake you're not who you are for anything legally binding. Is the law currently nightmarish?

I don't think this is a necessity for TVs, I was just playing along the extreme example.

I meant you can stop your TV from phoning home, just don't complain if they stop providing you service. If you instead falsely convey you are watching their ads, that is what would be illegal. Ads are a form of payment so to speak, and by actively concealing it you are making a false payment -- I'd expect that to be illegal just like false identities are.