Adblock and piracy?

[J Dubbs]

If it were piracy, I think the RIAA would be suing everyone from the dev of UBlock Origin to Brave Software who put an adblock in their browser on all platforms. Never mind that on many non-YouTube sites, ads sometimes have malicious scripts even if the site itself is legitimate and otherwise safe. Ignoring the annoyance of ads, an ad blocker that prevents stuff like XSS attacks is borderline mandatory for personal cybersecurity in this day and age.

Yep a lot of folks aren't aware of how dangerous ads are becoming... way more than just a nuisance anymore. JavaScript is a downright menace, favicons are not much better, and now they're adding tracking links in the URL itself to get around the ad blocking and tracker blocking features of browsers like Brave.

Fortunately Brave is now removing the tracking info embedded at the end of the URL... but they'll come up with something else, they always do. Our data is what makes big tech and bad players rich... so the game will never stop :-\

 

[anon(50597)]

Just started using Brave a few weeks ago. So far so good.

 

[EnthalpiousKitten]

Just started using Brave a few weeks ago. So far so good.

Yeah and it also randomizes your fingerprint which most other ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools do not do. Best browser EVER. Just make sure to turn off the "privacy preserving" telemetry in the settings and it will be perfect.

 

[anon(50597)]

Yeah and it also randomizes your fingerprint which most other ad-blocking and anti-tracking tools do not do. Best browser EVER. Just make sure to turn off the "privacy preserving" telemetry in the settings and it will be perfect.

It was on. Thanks for the info!

 

[L0n3N1nja]

Some websites are able to hide their content if it detects an ad block, other services could do the same.

It certainly isn't piracy, piracy is the stealing/downloading of files, I've never considered ad free streaming to be piracy. Moral gray zone perhaps but it's not theft or the ability to redistribute the files.

 

[EnthalpiousKitten]

Some websites are able to hide their content if it detects an ad block, other services could do the same.

It certainly isn't piracy, piracy is the stealing/downloading of files, I've never considered ad free streaming to be piracy. Moral gray zone perhaps but it's not theft or the ability to redistribute the files.

There are ways around those "turn off your ad blocker things". Many sites are poorly coded so client-side removing the overlay that blocks use of the page can on numerous sited get around that. Using the page source inspector to inspect suspect parts of a page and deleting the code locally can get you aroud ~40% of the ad block disable walls. No coding knowledge needed. I don't see it as a form of illicit hacking or anything cause in that case the page content is already loaded in my computer's RAM and I have a right to locally edit that to get access. Another way around these things is carefully refreshing the page (preferably on an already slow or artificially speed limited internet connection) and clicking the "X" loading stopper button at just the right moment after the main content loads but right before the overlay loads. I mean my computer already has the information, why should I not be allowed to see it?

I bet this stuff will one day cause another spicy court comedy like this one:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...t-illegal-or-hacking-prof-tells-missouri-gov/