UK Culture Secretary Compares Ad-Blocking to Piracy

[WYP]

The UK Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, has compared Ad-Blocking to Piracy and says that "if people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist".

Read more on the UK Culture Secretary's opinions on Ad-Blocking.

 

[Roobubba]

Ridiculous.

How about the bandwidth taken up by adverts that I don't have any interest in seeing - my bandwidth that I pay for - is being stolen from me by these adverts.
Equally obtuse, but probably more valid than this cretinous argument from, who is this fool? Jesus wept.
The whole premise behind the world wide web is that you can put in an address and receive the publicly available content on that website. It is entirely down to the website owner to decide what content is available to the public and what is not. If they don't like people using ad-blockers, then there are several alternatives to them, including making their content not publicly available. Once the content has been sent from the server to the client, the server has absolutely no say any more what happens, barring the existing laws on copyright and so on. The client can request as much or as little as they like, and is under no obligation whatsoever to decide what must or must not be displayed to the end user. The data given over the internet in this way is a gift: once it's left the server, it's given. If you want to attach strings to that gift, then that's entirely up to you as the server owner!

Of course, as a Tory, he should be all over a capitalist solution to the 'problem' - the market adapts.

I've just started being self-employed, and my business model will not be based in any way on advertising, because as a consumer, I hate it. This will very likely mean in the short term that I don't make as much money as I could, but equally, my company will aim to attract and retain customers through quality. I would rather make 1/10 of the profits I could and not use advertising than the other way around.

That is how I as a customer choose much of what I buy. I actively avoid advertised products as much as I can (ie me seeing your advert is likely to make me NOT buy your product), and I go back time and again to companies who offer great quality products and service. Like UnknownWorlds Entertainment games, not EA or Ubisoft, as just one example.

So who is this clown and why does he have an important position? If he's expressing views such as this, I have no confidence in anything he says or does. Time for a change of culture secretary, methinks.

 

[Rwoody81]

No one is forcing companies and site developers to have free access to their content. If they don't want to let people be on their site for free, charge a membership fee. And sure, if they charge a membership fee, they'll say "people won't come to our site if they have to pay for it." To which I would reply "Then you obviously aren't selling a quality product that people want to pay for."

Some sites restrict access if they detect an ad blocker. Maybe others should follow suit. I don't see why this is an issue.

 

[demonking]

If i like the site or use it regularly, i whitelist it on my adblocker.
Turn off data harvesting and stop making every ad i see about something that i have looked into an i might turn it off completely.
I have nothing to hide but i hate that i'll go on a site and i may have looked an item once say like for a birthday present. But soooo many sites are trying to get me to buy something similar.
Also misleading ad's need to go. sooo many people want to download something but on the download section there is about 200 download buttons and 199 are to download something else that the site is advertising. the actual thing you want to download is hidden or difficult to see just so you accidentally download something else most of the time malware, spyware or bloatware.

I hate politics. the people in it don't live in the real world

 

[tinytomlogan]

I agree tbh. We rely on ads to survive.

No crappy google banners here only ads from relevant companies. Would make my life a great deal easier if ad blockers were less prevalent.

 

[Dark NighT]

I agree tbh. We rely on ads to survive.

No crappy google banners here only ads from relevant companies. Would make my life a great deal easier if ad blockers were less prevalent.

Which is why i always have adblock disabled on this entire site, wish more people would do it.

 

[demonking]

Which is why i always have adblock disabled on this entire site, wish more people would do it.

The ads on this site are relevant, non intrusive and from reputable sources. If all sites were like this one I would un-install my ad blocker. Keep it up Tom

 

[SPS]

I agree tbh. We rely on ads to survive.

No crappy google banners here only ads from relevant companies. Would make my life a great deal easier if ad blockers were less prevalent.

Trouble is, it's the other sites that are spoiling it for everyone else not adblocker. If I only visited this site alone I probably would have never looked for an adblocker, yet alone have one installed.

 

[WYP]

Trouble is, it's the other sites that are spoiling it for everyone else not adblocker. If I only visited this site alone I probably would have never looked for an adblocker, yet alone have one installed.

you are right there, I do not use ad blockers at all and the insistence of so many sites having takeover ads, video and audio ads really es me off.

Yes these ads make more money per view, but they are the sole reason why people use ad block and it hurts us who do ads properly.

 

[xnax2802]

I don't know if Chrome has the same feature, but Firefox lets you disable sound on individual tabs now, but that still doesn't remove the nuisance of ads that expand themselves, hiding the site's content in the process.

 

[MadShadow]

"Culture Secretary", wow what a job

 

[jimma47]

Ads that take over your screen or hijack your browser or open other tabs are the worst. There are arguments for and against but I don't use adblockers (aside from the ones we have forced on us at work) but I also don't equate it with piracy.

It would be the same as saying if you leave the room during an ad break on the telly to make a cuppa you're stealing from the TV station.

 

[Excalabur50]

It's just the state of things nowadays there's more ad's than content look at free to air tele, I run adblocker but am more than happy to turn it off for this site and as has been said shame more web sites aren't like this one but to label adblock as piracy the guy needs to stop smoking crack

 

[SuB]

The same guy who is going to turn off the free access to iPlayer for watching catchup. I can see that service losing some stats in due course.

 

[SykesIT]

I don't use an ad blocker as most sites you see ads on the side and are not really intrusive.

The worst are the pop up ads and sites like PC Pro which takes forever to load because ads are loading and most of the ads are irrelevant to the content on the site.

I don't know many people who actually click on the ads anyway.

 

[BigDaddyKong]

I agree tbh. We rely on ads to survive.

No crappy google banners here only ads from relevant companies. Would make my life a great deal easier if ad blockers were less prevalent.

I have this site white listed. If every other website would learn how to tastefully and skillfully advertise like OC3D, it would never be a problem.

What we are stuck with is websites going after the lowest hanging fruit for advertising dollars that are not only obnoxious, but very intrusive at times.

It's all porn hubs fault for hijacking browsers. As funny as that sounds, porn sites do generate a lot of traffic on the web. This proliferated many people wanting control of their browser back. Let's just call a spade a spade and not be shy about it. This advertising mentality spread to other places looking to generate all the revenue possible. A lot of sites don't care how they do it. It's all about the money.

 

[Damien c]

Me and my dad use adblock on our pc's but for some sites it's disabled.

The ones that it is left on for though are those that have intrusive ad's and also if the site is abit suspect in my opinion, as my dad decided the other day to go on a site to look at something and the next thing he knew, was firefox opened about 5 times with a constant refreshing page of ads every 5 seconds.

He would close the browsers down but as soon as he did anything related to firefox it started again, he ran spyware tools etc to get rid of it but it would not be fully removed in the end he ended up reinstalling windows.

Maybe he should find a way to deal with those types of ad's which causes some people to use adblock instead of trying, to label us all as thieves.

Either way if the ad's were as they are on this site then I would not need to run it, but if they are like Forbes and many others then I really don't mind running it.

 

[Wraith]

It's the age old question "to Ad Block or not" the problem these days is that many sites rely on the Ad revenue, some quite aggressively I might add. But it's all down to the Web developers of said sites to make the sites correctly, invasive advertising I find offensive especially the latest targeted advertising by collecting your search data even using your mobile mic to listen to your conversations for key phrases.. (it happens)

As for us being thieves the Culture secretary can kiss the darker section of my posterior, I find most of the advertising today to be an invasion of my privacy and plain dirty marketing tactics.

Data monitoring and collection for marketing, targeted adverts, unwanted adverts using my bandwidth that I pay good money for.... now who's the thief?

If ISPs took a share of the Ad revenue and we got Internet access for free then it's fair game in my eyes, until that time I don't want to see Ads I have no interest in or that I'm paying for.

N.B I don't block on OC3D, the ads are banner or sponsor which is epic cool.

 

[Greenback]

I have adBlock running this site and it's YT channels are all whitelisted, part of the reason I installed it was some Yt channels have 30 minutes video's and ad's every 4 minutes, now I know it's how they make their money but for me it's a never look at a video from them again msg. Yes the YT I sub to are all whitelisted if I like the content enough to sub they deserve my time watching an ad or 2