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This URL used to host an FBI recommendation to use ad blockers for personal security.

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

It's gone now. I wonder if that's a policy choice.

Edit: It just moved to https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2022/PSA221221

  The FBI recommends individuals take the following precautions...

  Use an ad blocking extension when performing internet searches. Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements. These ad blockers can be turned on and off within a browser to permit advertisements on certain websites while blocking advertisements on others.
The FBI caring more about people's rights than the German justice system? That would be an interesting twist.
> Axel Springer’s argument is that when Adblock Plus blocks or manipulates its website code (‘computer program’) present in the user’s browser, that amounts to a violation of its exclusive right of modification available under § 69c (2) and its reproduction right under § 69c (1).

A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck, then the publisher's copyright has been infringed.

>A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck,

No, that type of manipulation isn't the legal argument Axel Springer is trying to use. It has nothing to do with re-using newspapers/books as birdcage liner, or fireplace kindling, etc.

Instead, Axel is focusing on the manipulation of the text/bytes itself (i.e. the HTML rewrite). A better direct analogy would be the lawsuits against devices deleting ads or muting "bad words" from tv broadcasts and movies. E.g.: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/child-safe-viewing-a

That's the legal angle they used to pressure ReplayTV to remove the automatic Commercial Skip feature from their DVR.

And yes, sometimes us nerds really want to slippery-slope those lawsuits into wild scenarios such as ... "But doesn't that also mean that when I shut my eyes at a tv commercial during a baseball game or go the bathroom during an ad it's a copyright violation?!?" .... No, the courts don't see it as the same thing.

Probably the more convincing analogy to justify ruling against Axel is the more prosaic "Reader Mode" in browsers that analyze HTML and rewrite it. Is Apple Safari Reader Mode a "copyright violation" ?!? I hope not.

Wouldn't using a microfilm reader also violate this right? I know lots of older newspapers were only available on microfilm when I was younger.
I assume (tell me if I'm wrong) this only applies to published origami duck versions of newspapers, because they're still copies. Or (?) published tools with the purpose of folding a specific newspaper up into an origami duck. Or (?) for folding any newspaper. Because, I don't know why, makes no sense. But anyway it doesn't apply to things you do privately. Or does it?

Edit: a sibling comment points out that it's about editing the text, not folding the paper, but I still have the same questions: is it supposed to be a copyright violation (even if too small to sue over) if you cut and paste with a newspaper you bought, in private? And is a tool with the specific purpose to help you do this - "newspaper scissors" - also a copyright violation?

> A direct analogy here would seem to be a newspaper publisher arguing that if a reader chooses to fold up the newspaper into an origami duck, then the publisher's copyright has been infringed.

That only shows how idiotically abusive are protections awarded to proprietary software.

Modern websites are software. That's a fact. According to the rules, Axel Springer is right. It's just that we don't want them to be right because applying the rules here leads to bothersome outcome.

I hope Germany rules according to the letter of the law and bans browser extensions that modify web applications. Because only suffering can make law change to something more reasonable. Lenient rulings protect bad laws.

It is more like if the reader chooses to cut out the advertisement from the newspaper with scissors, then that is supposed to be copyright infringement. But that would only be the case if the reader would try to resell her/his newspaper.
This is a true story. My mother would cut out many advertisements in the newspaper when we were young that she did not want us to see. She was the first ad-blocker and it scares me to think she would have been arrested for "piracy".
Technically, a more direct analogy would be that some newspaper print on demand service exists, and the instructions for printing are distributed to the machines that print the newspapers, but are modified during distribution before the newpaper is printed by the reciever.

As much as I'm pro ad blockers, this seems like a reasonable reading of the law. An interesting way to convince yourself of this is to find a solid line that you could draw based purely on a set of principals grounded by some legal standard about what the difference between a desktop computer program, a downloadable JavaScript program, CSS and HTML really is in terms of how they cause a computer to act on the information.

That said, I think you could fairly reasonably find that section 69e of the copyright act (english translation [1]) applies to adblock software, though I'd imagine the plaintiff would probably argue that the use of an adblock software interferes with their interests.

---

Section 69e Decompilation

(1) The rightholder’s consent is not required where reproduction of the code or translation of its form within the meaning of section 69c nos. 1 and 2 is indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:

1. the acts are performed by the licensee or by another person authorised to use a copy of a program or on their behalf by a person empowered to do so;

2. the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been made readily available to the persons referred to in no. 1;

3. the acts are confined to those parts of the original program which are necessary to achieve interoperability.

(2) Information obtained through acts as referred to in subsection (1) may not be

1. used for purposes other than to achieve the interoperability of the independently created program,

2. given to third parties, except when necessary for the interoperability of the independently created program,

3. used for the development, production or marketing of a computer program which is substantially similar in its expression or for any other acts which infringe copyright.

(3) Subsections (1) and (2) are to be interpreted such that their application neither impairs the normal exploitation of the work nor unreasonably impairs the rightholder’s legitimate interests.

---

[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur...

I think most apt analogy would be someone taking pile of free to distribute newspapers and feeding them to machine that automatically cuts out the adds and then distributes them again...
No, because when you fold up a newspaper, that doesn't create a new copy.

The problem is that copyright laws, at least in most jurisdictions, have never been updated to cope with the fact that computers copy things so many times. Including to load content into memory so they can display it to you. (And on the web, they also often count downloading it to a tempfile in your cache as a separate copy!)

So while the website may grant you a license to download its content as-is for viewing, that doesn't mean they grant you a license to modify it and copy it again.

Yes, this is an utterly idiotic interpretation of copyright law, that effectively breaks the internet and much of what computers do. However, from a particular point of view, it is one that follows logically.

Folding it into a paper duck is tranformative. Where a webpage, but without the ads is not transformative.
What’s next, a dark mode browser plugin is an illegal modification too?

Fuck off Axel Springer. Their “Bildzeitung” helped the rapid Verblödung (dumbification?) and radicalization especially against foreigners of the German population. Similar to what Fox News is doing in the US.

Or if you would just not look at a billboard on your ride to work and you would be fined for that. Imagine that.
Anti-circumvention laws are heinous. Governments look like absolute fools giving legal backing to this absurd premise that people have no right to modify or change the world about them. We can re-paint a car, rip a page out of a book.

The idea that a page that's been copied over to us must sacrosanctly be viewed only as intended is absurd. Our speech rights must grant us a right to use tools to view and see things as we might dream, not merely as provided to us.

The war within the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace has really really come to a roiling boil in the past couple years, with all sorts of states trying to declare control over how their populations connect to the global information system. In 95% of cases, I think it makes the state look like an absolute fool.

And very rarely is it being done in accordance with the will of the states people, which is quite chilling!! So called democratic states, with elite capture, doing ill against the free thinking world. These are losers, professional idiots at best, an actively working against humanity for shitty shady hidden motives more likely alas. They are losers, and while this will likely only intensify & make the world tenser and worse and obstructed and jammed up, I have some faith that they will continue to lose their war, that JP Barlow's triumphalism over their shitty ways will keep proving out. These people are idiots, and powerless, and the courts trying to enforce these bad unenforceable dumb laws only illegitemizes the idea of governance. Which I believe strongly in, and want to be a force for good!! But alas, not here.

So if someone attempts to run malware when I visit their page, I am legally obliged to let them run it? Absurd and absolutely non-enforceable.
While it is completely absurd, I don't see why it would be non-enforceable. They can very well enforce it.

Here is one way to do it: they could take a page out of google's Web Environment Integrity proposal and make it illegal to serve any page within Germany unless the integrity is proven. Done. VPNs are problematic? Ban them. Seems very enforceable to me.

Why do you think it is un-enforceable?

It is 100% enforceable. So get your host files ready if you live in Germany becasue all the ad blockers are about to be gone.
You can instead have your browser abort and not show the page instead of trying to modify it.
If users are compelled to view ads than websites should be liable if those ads violate privacy laws or distribute malware.
My infrastructure is my infrastructure. If i choose not to pass certain data, then that is my decision. There is no way in which i can be forced to pass through certain data on it. Contracts and TOS may require access to certain data locations in order to function correctly, but this does not absolve them from enforcing it. Sorry, but my current DNS resolver does not work very well with certain data points that just want to show me ads :)
Seems like their argument would also apply to:

1. using antivirus software to infringe on copyright of viruses

2. using any bookmarklet

3. scratching out typos in a book you're reading

4. game mods

> For German publisher Axel Springer, ad blocking solutions are mechanisms that fundamentally undermine the company’s ability to generate revenue.

So they want to change the law so that they can impose their business model on people?

That's absurd.

What does the ad-free internet look like?

People hate ads, they are annoying and provide virtually no value to the end user.

People hate subscriptions, they cost money, are annoying to track, and gravitate towards being impossible to cancel.

Donations are feel good, but no one donates. Conversion rates tend to be <5% of users.

This topic always draws tons of outrage and anger over ads, but no one ever provides a solution besides "Users are entitled to everything on the internet and don't owe anyone anything. If you put content online, you are dumb to expect compensation, but I really love your work!"

Wait, that means that whenever I'm looking at a billboard, somebody is getting money from me.

Sounds like stealing by just obstructing my view.

How do I get these filthy hands out of my pocket?

Many adblockers work by blocking dns resolution, which does not alter code. It's like putting on glasses which block out certain words of a book you're reading. No alteration of the source material or host.
So the law which they're using here says that only the copyright owner is allowed to modify or rearrange (whatever that means) a program. Couldn't you argue that an adblocker doesn't do that? I run the "program" of the web site host, which produces a DOM tree in the browser. Then I run a second program, the adblocker, which removes certain elements from the DOM tree before rendering. At no point am I modifying their code. At most, I'm modifying the browser's program, but since the browser has an interface to facilitate precisely that in the form of addons, we can safely assume that the manufacturer of the browser is fine with that.

Edit: nevermind, I read the whole thing. The lower court argued as I did, but in revision they apparently found that the DOM tree is code generated by code and thus an expression of the program.

> Axel Springer’s argument is that when Adblock Plus blocks or manipulates its website code (‘computer program’) present in the user’s browser, that amounts to a violation of its exclusive right of modification available under § 69c (2) and its reproduction right under § 69c (1).

It's really interesting, because the addition of Ads is not wanted nor in any way beneficial to the consumer in this transaction, it just happens to be part of the business model of the seller that he now seeks to protect.

Would the same apply if I buy a printer and modify it to use 3rd party cartridges?

How about a company that could remove the addictive elements of cigarettes?

If you want me to provide additional revenue on top of the transaction, then enter a contract with me. Just because you made it "free" doesn't mean you must be legally allowed to force me into some other consumption...

A little bit tangential but: I hated while living in Germany that some movies were legally available ONLY with german dubs. While making the only alternative, piracy... risky.
> The decision notes that this is not just about “changing variable data in the memory of a computer, but rather changing code created by the bytecode of the website ‘computer program’ as a form of expression of the website programming itself.”

Everyone who actually writes software, meanwhile, and understands that code IS data, is collectively facepalming right now. I felt the tremors. Nevermind that almost since its inception, JavaScript has always been an optional component of the web, and my browser very well lets me turn that off. The ability to do so is critical to my security posture. That it also happens to remove distracting visual noise is a nice side bonus.

Firmly, without reservation: if you deliver to me content A, I am under NO OBLIGATION to actually consume content B, merely because you included it in the same package.

This is going to be easily overturned. The ad blockers use the dns service and that is not part of what copyright protects. Modifying the results of dns requests is not protected by the copyright law itself. The argument could be made that giving "false" or "changed results" could be modifying the websites programming but you can't have it both ways, saying that your use of a free and public service is part of your copyright rights is surely drawing a long bow. It could be managed by implementing dns on the website (encrypted) to prevent normal dns from being used and hence blocked
Quarrels about copyrights is one of the most favorite entertainment of Germans. Don't make mistake of engaging into this hopeless endeavour, and of course don't let them influence your local regulations.
This is satire at its finest. Axel Springer's taboid "Bild" already blocks adblockers. Springer has a cooperation with copyright infringer OpenAI. Altman gets the Axel Springer Award:

https://www.axelspringer.com/de/ax-press-release/sam-altman-...

Large scale copyright theft is fine, individual consumers have to watch ads.

When considering law, it's always worth noting that the specific particulars are arbitrary and path-dependent. I think it'll be hard to draw any kinds of conclusions on this ruling (which doesn't find against ABP, merely kicks the issue down to the lower court for reconsideration, not unlike Oracle v. Google with regards to API copyrightability) without reading the whole thing.

(One piece in particular I'm personally naive on is what German legal precedent says about consumer's right to modify consumed material. In the US, an author's copyright doesn't stop me, the reader of a copy I bought, from highlighting the book up, or crossing out passages I don't like, or tearing pages out, or turning the thing into a delightful booksafe. Naively, I'd believe ABP should be considered in that category of thing: an accessibility tool people use to modify the material they consume to better fit their needs. It doesn't modify the author's original work and it doesn't grant the reader the right to transmit the modified work to someone else, so I'm unclear on how copyright protection should be thought to enter in here, and I bet the text of the ruling clarifies).

Previously:

Germany at it again: now trying to reopen the "adblockers are illegal" debate

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44934571

Is Germany on the brink of banning ad blockers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44912085

Are ads "blocked" if, instead of being presented to a human, they're redirected and read by an AI?

Ad Reading As a Service.

What bothers me the most is that these websites do not even know what advertisements they are publishing. It is not like a newspaper where they would have some editorial control.

Maybe I would not have a problem with this law if the websites were held responsible for the ads that contain malware.

Would an ad-blocker that put a black square over the screen where ads were placed, instead of rewriting the HTML, then bypass these laws?
Wouldn't their complaint be solved if ad blockers actually loaded the image (thus generating an 'impression') but didn't actually display it? Or displayed it with 0 opacity, or what-have-you?

Then everyone wins except the advertiser / ad network.

I begin to miss older politicians and judges. They at least did know that they don't know about 'computers'.
Ok so what if I run the website in a VM allowing full execution of ad/tracking code, and then stream the video to a "browser" that blocks out the adverts?
Right, so can it be a violation of my site's content if a german politician accesses it without a crotchcrusher 5000 plugged in and functional?
I cannot even believe that is a question at all.
Europe is absolutely cooked with it comes to Tech. No wonder they fall further and further behind on the world stage.
> This affects all cloud-based applications such as computer games, standard software, SAP, etc.

Court overreach

They decided the brits can’t have top spot for most shit internet legal framework
Large scale theft and/or brokering of personal information, let's call that piracy too.
If they ban ads then they must force companies to provide ad free options with realistic pricing. Ads are a hard line that I will not cross. Forced propaganda consumption is immoral.