Website owners ready to sue the developers of Adblock extension

[Nimrod]

Hundreds of webmasters around the world and especially in the US, frustrated with the economical problems caused to them by the Adblock extension, are ready to sue its developers, which they call “economical disaster”. According to discussions in forums, a mass action against the Adblock developers is prepared. Some webmasters report even 70% lower earnings by advertisements since Adblock appeared on the Web. They also find a huge difference between the pageviews of their web sites and the views of advertisements because of Adblock.

Adblock is an addon for Firefox browser that blocks advertisements on web sites. Since Firefox is becoming more and more famous and since the Adblock extension is suggested even by Mozilla when visiting the addons site, it is obvious that it is the biggest danger for the free Web as we know it today.

Most web sites are based on advertisements for paying their hosting and if Adblock does not allow the display of advertisements, two things may happen:
1) Web sites with free services will be eliminated from the face of Earth
2) They will have to charge their visitors for every service they provide

No one likes either of them. Do remember that Digiex only survives thanks to advertisements.

[Read Nimrods article on the dangers of ad-blocking]

 

[KillerWhiteMan]

I would be outraged if I had my advetisements blocked by Adblock. I think that the website owners should go forward with the lawsuit.

 

[human]

re your article.
fairly put nimrod.
having said that, advertising is an insidious tool that has probably made alot of people very unhappy and a few people alot of money.
funding a site like this - i can see your problem and what the answer is i dont know. i imagine it all started out as a bit of fun or for the love of it so hmmm what to do if the idea has outgrown the original concept??

 

[Titcher]

Suing the creators of adblock is outrageous, people have the right to setup their browsers however they want, if they want to block specific images, then so be it. I know I've permanently blocked several very offensive images, and I use noscript to block the resource hogging flash based advertisements. It's a web site hosts choice to host a website for free, if they don't want to anymore, take it down.

 

[Nimrod]

It's a web site hosts choice to host a website for free, if they don't want to anymore, take it down.

Nice well thought out attiude which shows clear thought.... Lets take down 95% of the pages on the internet! Including most likely the majority of the websites you read, unless its Amazon, Dell, Tesco or some other commercial companies site which is there to increase sales

Content is provided for free on the internet under the assumption that your page view will provide an incremental amount of revenue. When you take your contribution to ad revenue out of the equation, all you're doing is costing the company money by using their bandwith.

Ad blockers should not be used, unless a person wants an internet where there are only subscription only websites. And not many websites would have enough content or desirable enough content to be able to properly make that transition.

If ad blockers ever became popular, the days of finding two-million results during a Google search, would end.

 

[Dark Scyth]

I can understand blocking from specific sites like certain torrent sites.
For the most part pop-ups that don't bring up another Firefox or tab I really don't mind. As long as it'll help the site pop-ups are fine with me, its not like i'm going to remember or even care about the pop-up five minutes later. Although I can sort of understand not wanting to have pop-ups while paying for internet just to be spammed. (The Adverts in the arcade don't pop-up in another tab BTW it loaded over my game, good thing it didn't start yet.)

 

[InsaneNutter]

I must admit Im not really keen on adverts but I haven’t blocked them for a couple of years now, ever since learning how much they can help a website.

Unless adverts popup or have sound I generally don’t mind that much, it’s the websites out there that force adverts to popup, don’t let you close them unless you actually click there advert or have them stupidly annoying flash averts that flash on and off all the time or make sounds that bug me.

 

[Rustwick]

You raise a number of good points in your article, Nimrod. Although I don't use an ad blocker (have tried one before though) I do see why people use them. I think that if the adverts didn't consist of flashing colours that could induce a seizure, irritating sound effects or any of the other stupid stuff already mentioned by InsaneNutter then people wouldn't be too bothered by them.

Some kind of standard needs to be introduced for what is and isn't acceptable for advertisements on websites if businesses don't want people using ad blockers. You've got to think of the people that will actually see this stuff when they visit your website.

Nice well thought out attiude which shows clear thought.... Lets take down 95% of the pages on the internet! Including most likely the majority of the websites you read

Hey, at least people would go outside more. Could be onto something here!

 

[Nimrod]

The problem is Adblockers like Ad Block Plus which is the most popular by default push you onto a list called "Easylist" which blocks all ads, and one of the first entries on the list is Google Adsense, which is not flashing / sound ads, but simple relevent text ads from Google. While I agree some ads with noise and animation can be really annoying, thats not the types of ads that the blockers are specifically targetting, there going after them all, including simple one line text ads. Which i guess is why people are now sueing the makers.

Instead these developers should be looking at just blocking annoying ads by default, and make the user make a choice if they then want to go block every ad. The Adblock crew must have easily cost webmasters millions by now.

 

[Titcher]

Suing the creators of AdBlock for making this extension is like suing Smith & Wessen for making guns. Plus people the right to decide what their browser renders, if they want to set it to block specific images, then it's their own choice. Just because you can lose advertisement income doesn't mean people making blocking advertisements are doing anything illegal.

Plus, what are you going to sue them for? Being nasty?

What I mentioned earlier is still true, you choose to make a website with free access, if you don't want to do it anymore then don't. Sure advertisement income is nice and everything, but you fast forward past advertisements on VHS tapes? You know you did, that's just the same as blocking advertisements on websites.

Oh and if you're going to get high and mighty at me, I don't use AdBlock at all, I'm just used to naturally ignoring advertisements.

 

[KillerWhiteMan]

well its actually Smith and Wesson not that this is relevant. I think the lawsuit is just a matter of peoples opinions. some are for it and others are against it.

 

[Dark Scyth]

Suing the creators of AdBlock for making this extension is like suing Smith & Western for making guns. Plus people the right to decide what their browser renders, if they want to set it to block specific images, then it's their own choice. Just because you can lose advertisement income doesn't mean people making blocking advertisements are doing anything illegal.

Oh and if you're going to get high and mighty at me, I don't use AdBlock at all, I'm just used to naturally ignoring advertisements.

This is all only based on an opinion, yet you make it seem that if someone doesn't agree they wrong to an immoral extent. In certain games there are adverts though people can't take them out, you don't see them bitching about an ad that they can't make go away in a game, most online adds are the same way, just small things that usually don't take much to show. Also you might want to show a bit more respect that high and mighty BS comment, he was only making his opinion known to everyone as everyone else was.

 

[Titcher]

...BS comment, he was only making his opinion known to everyone as everyone else was.

Just preemptively stopping an argument with that, it wasn't meant to be offensive.

The whole point I'm trying to make is people have a choice about what they view, opting not to view advertisements is part of that choice. If you watch TV and leave the room when the advertisements are playing are you wrong? That's for you to decide.

P.S Thanks KillerWhiteMan!

 

[Dark Scyth]

Just preemptively stopping an argument with that, it wasn't meant to be offensive.

The whole point I'm trying to make is people have a choice about what they view, opting not to view advertisements is part of that choice. If you watch TV and leave the room when the advertisements are playing are you wrong? That's for you to decide.

I understand that you could of left it at I don't use Adblock and that'd be all. The high and mighty part wasn't needed of the least bit, though i'll admit I was probably a bit too blunt.

No, its not wrong to leave the room while adverts are on the TV, but the difference is they still get paid.

 

[Titcher]

That may change however, that's why FOX accuse people of stealing if they use TiVOs to skip adverts.

 

[KillerWhiteMan]

As long as the television networks air the commercials, it does not matter if they are skipped over or not. It's the fact that the commercials have been aired that gives the networks their money. And I was just thinking, when people skip through the commercials, they can usually still see what the commercial is advertising (at least I can).