22August

Het Grauniad informs us of some nutjobs who think that advert blocking is theft, so blocking Firefox is the way forward. Webmaster source addresses the direct points, but let's see how we might disagree with their analysis.

1) Advert blocking is not theft. Many things can prevent advertisements from appearing on a web page. For instance, the script to call adverts may not be installed correctly, or may be misconfigured. The server supplying the commercials may be offline, or unreachable by the viewer. The viewer could be using a screen-reader, which will only request the bare text and ignore sundries. The viewer could be behind a firewall that attempts to filter out commercials before they reach the screen. None of these things are in the control of the visitor, and it would be unethical to punish the visitor for failures beyond their control.

2) Advert blocking is not theft. When visiting web pages, the visitor is in control. They can ask for an entire page, or the first half of a page, and they can stop the download of a page at any time. The author puts up their work to be downloaded in whole, or in part; visitors are perfectly entitled to download the whole page but ignore certain bits of it.

3) Advert blocking is not theft. The advertising contract is between the author and the advertising agency. The visitor does not enter into any contractual relationship with the author, nor with the advertising agency, so cannot possibly be depriving either of legitimate income.

4) Advert blocking is not theft. Assuming that it is encourages people to think of the web as a resource they can harvest for their own commercial ends, rather than a resource that is freely available for all.

5) Blocking Firefox is not the way forward. Only because Firefox includes modules that block advertisements, and continually update themselves, does this problem arise. Those who prefer the bloated, near-useless, non-compliant, load of corporate uselessness that is Internet Explorer deserve all the opprobium that is coming, quite correctly, their way. These people have no love for community, or for honest work, preferring to grow fat on the innocent mistakes of others.

6) Blocking Firefox is not the way forward. Can you tell why their method doesn't work? Why, it relies on Javascript, and no-one with an ounce of sense would allow an unknown site to run Javascript. That's why Noscript exists, so that people can browse the web without encountering sneaky little tricks like this.

7) Advertising is theft. So, let's get this right. You're asking us to use our computer power to download advertisements through our line, display them on our screen, but won't let us use our software to do whatever we want with them? Quite frankly, that attitude stinks.

8) Firefox plus adblock equals communism? Vive la revolution, comrades!

Our Steganography Department writes: You might like to re-read this article in Internet Explorer.

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