[NEWS] Blocking Adblockers is Illegal in the EU

[ghost]

https://medium.com/@profcarroll/blocking-adblockers-is-illegal-in-the-eu-accf0212829

Thought this is kind of a twist to #1034.

[reek]

that's very good news 👍

[xxcriticxx]

👍 💯 👍

[smed79]

• https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=29941#p91990

[gnits]

@IDKwhattoputhere

http://blockadblock.com/adblocking/claim-detecting-adblock-may-illegal/

[ghost]

Didn't even click the link. Why would I care how a developer of anti-adblocking software interprets this? Can't get more biased. I'd expect what members of the European Commission say to be infinitely more neutral.

[gnits]

@IDKwhattoputhere What an abundance of logical fallacies in a few short sentences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias ...

Also, it's not about "interpretation". It's about facts. If you'd have dared to read the article, you'd know that by now.

The facts are: said "privacy activist" obviously misrepresented in his enquiry to the EU how anti ad blockers work. Actually, they guy doesn't seem to understand the concept of a browser cache, or how scripts work. Anyway, the EU merely answered his question rooted in these false assumptions and in the complete lack of understanding of how web browsing works. And even then, they didn't say that anti ad blockers are illegal.

They merely said, that if anti ad blockers would really work the way the activist implied (which they don't), then they'd be subject to the same privacy law that governs the use of cookies. Which, we all know, are not illegal per se either. That's exactly what's written in those documents embedded above.

Again: this is not subject to interpretation. These are just the basic, undisputable facts. And you'd just have to read those documents above to realize this.

So, contrary to what the title says, anti ad blockers have been DEFINITELY not declared illegal in the EU. If anything, they have been confirmed perfectly legal as long as they follow EU privacy laws.

Unfortunately, the same thing can not be said about aak, which seems to directly violate the DMCA and similar anti-circumvention laws. Like those of member countries of the EU, you know.

[ghost]

What I meant is that laws always have room for interpretation and I trust the interpretation of members of the European Commission more than people who have financial interest in interpreting the law in a certain way. I mean does "gaining of access to information" imply that the information is transferred? But even if you're right then certain anti adblock methods are illegal since they do transfer that information (like the one used by bild.de).

[gnits]

@IDKwhattoputhere As already explained, even if some anti ad blockers would store and/or retrieve information the way as it is implied in the letter, and even if we interpret the word "information" in the broadest sense possible, it would still not mean that they're illegal. The only thing it would mean would be that their use would be governed by the so called "cookie law" (referenced as Recital 66 in the letter). Which in turn would mean that it would be perfectly legal to employ them, as long as the appropriate data protection requirements are met.

So, any statement, that declares that anti ad blockers or ad block detection in general are illegal (or even just might be illegal) under EU law, just because they are able to detect ad blocking, is a patently false statement. And this activist does exactly that. Either because of his sheer ignorance, or because of intentionally lying about things even he knows are not right/true.

That doesn't mean that there's no way an anti ad blocker or the company operating it could do anything illegal, and thus operate illegally or be illegal. Of course they could, in many, many ways. But since any web page or any object can be used to do illegal things, a classification or generalization that somehow implies that "ad block detection = illegal" is just pointless and plain out wrong. Because it's not ad block detection that's illegal, but something else they might do besides that.

On top of that two wrongs don't make a right. So even if an ad block detector would be somehow operated illegally (which has not been established yet as a fact about any ad block detector out there), circumventing an anti ad blocker based on it would still not be legal either. Ie. aak wouldn't be legal (because of the anti-circumvention laws) even if it would only target anti ad blockers operated by entities not following the appropriate privacy laws. Which it obviously doesn't, and doesn't even attempt to (ie. to restrict its operation to only those).