Is using adblock the same as piracy?

[MAPK phosphatase]

Watching ads is essentially a ritual people perform to attract advertisers to the content creators they watch. In the strictest sense, the advertisers are the ones who pay for content. But in a looser sense, I can see how this ritual is a form of "payment". That is, compensation for services rendered.

But once the content has been distributed it's technically my copy of the video, so I can do with it what I want. If someone gives away free books and the first couple pages are ads, I'm free to take my copy and cut out the ads without looking at them. It's my copy. Why should that change when a mechanical bean counter is looking over my shoulder and won't pay the writer if I don't read the ads at the start of the book? Sure, the only reason you could give it out for free is because the bean counter sees enough people watching the adds, but on the other hand it's my copy. I can record a TV show and fast forward through the ads. I'm not pirating the TV show. Why am I not allowed to achieve the same thing more efficiently on YouTube?

 

[milk]

back in the old days, we had internet quotas; due to this I always interpreted internet ads as non-consensual downloads that rob me of my download quota.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

If there was an extension that charged advertisers money every time they tried to load digital HIV onto my screen; I'd use that. Sadly I can only block; not punish them. Ads are a disease and it makes me literally angry to see them.

 

[Stasi]

>Watch non subscription/free TV
>Ad break comes on
>Go take a piss and not watch ads

Someone call the police, that is literally stealing!

It's a silly example but essentially the same thing when you boil it down. For someone who makes their living on the internet it's an astoundingly stupid thing to say for Linus. Is it an early April fools joke or is he this much of an idiot?

 

[Thumb Butler]

This sums up all out of touch Youtube "stars". Fuck this guy and his annoying content that the minions are spamming everywhere.

 

[AmpleApricots]

There's addons like SponsorBlock, (basically a community driven database that skips the sponsor segment in videos automatically) together with the regular adblocking of youtube ads that things like ublock etc. do gaining popularity with normies because the amount of adverts in this content is nuts at this point, not even comparable to the worst times in TV advertising. Expect a lot of "youtube personalities" getting butthurt about adblocking this year which of course is the reaction instead, y'know, tuning the greed down a little.

 

[Spud]

No it's not, there is nothing wrong in using ad blocker as you did not consent to being shown said ads (https://adnauseam.io/ Will block ads for you and "Click" ads it costs advertisers for the clicks then google have to refund for said clicks cause it's a fake click). I use the Brave Rewards program to be advertised to because they pay me for seeing said ads, no one would have an issue with ads if they're an opt in program that rewards you for your attention.

 

[Stasi]

because the amount of adverts in this content is nuts at this point

Its honestly crazy, I was watching a video recently on my work laptop (not allowed to install extensions or other browsers so no ad block). It was a 10 min video with 2 ad rolls, a little banner ad thing at the bottom of the video and an almost 2 minute sponsor segment. What the actual fuck.

 

[The Periodic Gamer]

If there was an extension that charged advertisers money every time they tried to load digital HIV onto my screen; I'd use that. Sadly I can only block; not punish them. Ads are a disease and it makes me literally angry to see them.

Isn't adnasuem a thing? It won't put money in your bank account, but it certainly costs the advertisers.

 

[There Is Light At The End]

Maybe it's just a completely innocent love for foxes....
View attachment 2937087View attachment 2937090

How many of you think that at least one of these plushies has a strategically placed hole with fleshlight in it?

 

[Ed Special]

Linus is a faggot shill who unironically wants "hate speech" laws, so I genuinely don't give a toss about his retarded opinions.

 

[Welsh Catgirl Enjoyer]

If Adblock is piracy, then Linus should take Gaben's famous words and think about them: "Piracy is almost always a service problem"

If people are going out of their way to install adblockers, then the fault lies with how ads are being utilised and presented.

 

[Gar For Archer]

>Watch non subscription/free TV
>Ad break comes on
>Go take a piss and not watch ads

Someone call the police, that is literally stealing!

It's a silly example but essentially the same thing when you boil it down. For someone who makes their living on the internet it's an astoundingly stupid thing to say for Linus. Is it an early April fools joke or is he this much of an idiot?

Same as skipping the sponsor section in a video.

Like, nigga, you literally got paid already, and I wasn’t going to buy your shitty earbuds anyways. What’s the fucking difference if I skip past your fucking three minute long ad segment?

 

[khaine]

Only a retard would say it is. For starters, a TV receives a signal on a given frequency and processes it regardless of what is being transmitted. Where as a computer receives packets, interprets them, and the decides what to do. The fact remains in both cases, once the information hits my property, its entirely in my domain as to what happens with the signal: whether its ignored or processed.

These whipped cunts don’t like that fact, but its the truth. I am well within my rights to ignore ads, and tell my machines to ignore them as well.

 

[seri0us]

They're obviously two different things. However, it's MY monitor and MY machine. Not a sewer for LTT to dump whatever he likes onto.

 

[byuu]

You shouldn't use adblock for Youtube.
You shouldn't use their crappy website at all and just drag youtube links in your proper video player of choice.

 

[Slav Power]

If Adblock is piracy, then Linus should take Gaben's famous words and think about them: "Piracy is almost always a service problem"

If people are going out of their way to install adblockers, then the fault lies with how ads are being utilised and presented.

I really like that quote, because Gabe really knows what's up with piracy. His way of thinking is a great example of why people flipped back from streaming services to piracy again.

When Netflix had everything on it, people gladly paid that subscription because they've had access to everything, legally and easily. And after all the other corporations smelled that Netflix money, they wanted a piece of that cake too. So they've pulled out of Netflix and made their own platforms, which resulted in people giving up on being legal consumers because they're not gonna pay 5 subscriptions per month or flip between them. They're just gonna pirate, because it's much easier for them to do so.

And this is the greatest anti-piracy measure. Don't make it so that pirates cannot get your shit for free, make it so that they don't need to, because you offer a much better deal.

 

[Equivocal_Iki]

You cannot steal a car/TV/handbag infinite amount of times and generate infinite amount of revenue loss. There's a reason why piracy is penalized under a different law than theft.

The biggest reason being: imagine police raiding your house because you downloaded an MP3. Once people realize what it takes to enforce copyright they're a lot more hesitant on it.

Intellectual "Property" is not real and can only be enforced by harshly monitoring and controlling what innocent people can do with their own property.

When Netflix had everything on it, people gladly paid that subscription because they've had access to everything, legally and easily.

This was a good thing. With piracy, there can be no monopoly on digital goods, because they would always have to compete with the pirated version. They would have to make something more convenient than pirating it, thus benefiting the consumer.

 

[byuu]

The biggest reason being: imagine police raiding your house because you downloaded an MP3. Once people realize what it takes to enforce copyright they're a lot more hesitant on it.

Intellectual "Property" is not real and can only be enforced by harshly monitoring and controlling what innocent people can do with their own property.


This was a good thing. With piracy, there can be no monopoly on digital goods, because they would always have to compete with the pirated version. They would have to make something more convenient than pirating it.

It's really just business law. It exists so another company can't just take some other companies' shit and sell it themselves.
It should never be applied to a private person who doesn't make a cent from it.

 

[Frail Snail]

It's piracy because you circumvented a digital protection to access content without paying (either in the form of money or time)

When I download the contents of a YouTube video page, the URL links to video and audio of all available qualities are already right there in plain text. I'm not circumventing any sort of protection. Parsing a web page outside of a browser or injecting a piece of Javascript to the page with a userscript isn't piracy. The fact that Linus, a supposed tech public figurehead, doesn't mention this shows he's full of shit and nobody should listen to him. This is what makes the web truly open and free, everything is unlocked and you can inspect anything you want. I previously compared LTT to the Genius Bar, but after reading this I'm downgrading him to the I FUCKING LOVE SCIENCE peanut gallery of tech, a walking mouthpiece with no brain that you can tell to say anything for a right price.

I said that "everything" is unlocked inside a browser, but that's not necessarily true. There's now in-browser DRM that you would need to somehow circumvent or break its encryption. An example is Spotify. There is no way to, say, download a JRE podcast episode unless the official player allows this. If this fucking soulless leaf brings a similar lockdown to YouTube, I'm gonna hate Canada even more than I do now.

View attachment 2937478

Not only does he have a fascination with foxes (feral foxes at that), he (and his followers) believe that Byuu legit killed himself, and deny the official US reports:
View attachment 2937482Nitter https://archive.md/AcfiL
But also he loudly and proudly sucks the tranny dick:
View attachment 2937484
Rate me MATI, but I cannot wait the day when his pandering to the tranny crowd will be his demise. That or when his morbid obesity finally catches up to him.

This is a business decision, just like Linus's ignorance and corporate shilling. The field of technology is very cooperative and is analogous to academia, lots of cliques and social pecking orders. If you don't toe the party line, if you don't suck the tranny cock, suddenly you get frozen out of networking circles that further your employment. People might start ghosting you, kicking you out of private mailing lists/IRCs/Discords where research is organized, refusing to help provide sources and follow-ups to your own research or contributing code to your projects. Look at how many FOSS contributors, project leads, programming language developers and maintainers, hardware hackers, etc. are troons or just degenerate freaks. He may genuinely guzzle the Kool-Aid, but there's also a profit incentive to do so. Especially if you're a tech reporter or making YouTube videos.