Website owners ready to sue the developers of Adblock extension

[Darrian]

I pay for my own web host, and I only have a personal webpage with some pics of my kid for the family to see and a 'blog that I update infrequently. For the luxury of having my own domain name and a web host where I have control over my site content (Globat) I pay a whopping $5 a month. A business would want the other package that is offered, which is still only $20 a month. Both plans offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space. There are really only a handful of websites out there that probably get millions of visitors every day, and those sites might very well actually need the revenue generated by ads to stay online. As for the other 99% of the websites out there, I'm sorry, but if you can't afford $5-$20 a month to run your site I don't care. If I can do it, so can you, and nobody is going to care if you disappear.

[HeartsOfWar]

Personally, the argument over ad blocking on the internet is ********, and quite honestly websites just don't know how well they have it.

First, Websites can and regularly exercise their right to display whatever ad they want, when, and where, just because they feel like it. They can pop-up ads taking over your machine, and run ads that trick the user into installing software, etc.

no other advertising medium, in the USA, has this capability

Second, how many people do you know of that pay a monthly subscription for television? Now ask yourself, how many advertisements do you see in a single hour? What about the movie theater? Ads don't counter-balance having a free service.

Third, and the most disturbing to me, I should have the right to modify any object / data I want, within the confines of my property, provided I'm not making a profit off it / re-distributing / or intending to harm someone. In other words, I should have the right to record a T.V. broadcast for my own personal use, I should have the right to duplicate a CD / DVD I purchased, and I should have the right to block any ads.

I use ABP... and I won't stop

[bjoswald]

If they sue the developers of Adblock Plus and win, I will find something else to use instead. I have not, nor will I ever browse without an ad blocker.

[spenser.d]

I never understood how it's so hard for many of you to just ignore banner ads. The only type of blocking I've ever used is a pop-up blocker, but as far as banner ads and such, I rarely even take notice of them. They're not exactly hard to ignore.

-Spenser

[ncoday]

What really bugs me about website ads and is THE #1 reason I use AdBlockPlus is the highly annoying "intellitext" ads, at least they are very annoying to me!

Here is a screenshot from the main Neowin.net web site with ABP turned off. When your cursor just happens to move over the text, the window pops-up and does not go away unless I go and click the "X" to close it

:

If I did not have to deal with those types of ads, I would not use ABP.

[surrealvortex]

What really bugs me about website ads and is THE #1 reason I use AdBlockPlus is the highly annoying "intellitext" ads, at least they are very annoying to me!

Here is a screenshot from the main Neowin.net web site with ABP turned off. When your cursor just happens to move over the text, the window pops-up and does not go away unless I go and click the "X" to close it

:

<snip>

If I did not have to deal with those types of ads, I would not use ABP.

This only happens if you have not registered and logged on to Neowin.

[cyrl]

adblock is the best thing that happened to the web

and even if they sue ad block plus they would have to sue other internet security developers as well such as kaspersky etc which blocks adds.

[revvo]

I never understood how it's so hard for many of you to just ignore banner ads. The only type of blocking I've ever used is a pop-up blocker, but as far as banner ads and such, I rarely even take notice of them. They're not exactly hard to ignore.

-Spenser

The ones that flash "YOU WON!" or make you punch a monkey or do 20 chin ups are the problem.

[spenser.d]

The ones that flash "YOU WON!" or make you punch a monkey or do 20 chin ups are the problem.

Yes, I take notice of those for about a second or two longer than than normal ads. Then I ignore them.

I dunno, I guess its just a personal thing - I just don't really care enough to be bothered by them.

-Spenser

[ncoday]

This only happens if you have not registered and logged on to Neowin.

I am registered and logged on to Neowin, that is how I am posting in the forums:

Granted, I am not a "paying" member of Neowin.net

If there is someone from the Site Staff that can confirm I would not see that intellitext ads if I became a paying member, I would do it in my next paycheck the middle of Sept.

ETA - Nevermind, I just became a "Tier 2" subscriber to Neowin. I figured I have been coming here for a while now and have learned alot, time to support the website! :)

Edited August 10, 2009 by ncoday

[Arkangel]

Rubbish... In Adblock's defense they could argue that the lists are not maintained by them and the extension that has been created is merely a tool to facilitate a safer net environment from rogue sites.

[i_was_here]

I never understood how it's so hard for many of you to just ignore banner ads. The only type of blocking I've ever used is a pop-up blocker, but as far as banner ads and such, I rarely even take notice of them. They're not exactly hard to ignore.

-Spenser

The reverse can be true too. How can a person so easily ignore an ad? Ads are meant to catch your eye and theyre easily distinguishable from actual content.

[redvamp128]

What if-- Okay -- if they don't let Adblock be used (which on Neowin is disabled)

We as users choose not to install FLASH -- So then are they going to sue us for not installing it. I mean after all some system administrators block adobe and do not allow the install of flash. (the reason is that stops a lot of the downtime/non productive time of employees).

I don't find neowins ad's that intrusive-- but the sites that are suing have those adds that make users install things they don't-

(gross exaggeration to prove my point)

YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH SPYWARE AND 1,000 REGISTRY ERRORS. That when the user clicks on it the link installs something like lets says SPYWARE Sheriff - or some program that they really don't need.

Or the sites that put way too much advertising on their sites that you can't enjoy the content- Like the shoot the IPOD on the side plus about 10 other Flash advertising. I mean some sites with ads actually take 3 min to load up because of the ads.

That is why people use adblockers. Now granted I think They should have simple block text with a link for the adds not the Flash ones. Simple solution to block the blockers.

The ones that get me are the ones about my registry being corrupted (I am running Ubuntu- LInux) and I don't even have a registry. :wacko:

[nully]

I never understood how it's so hard for many of you to just ignore banner ads. The only type of blocking I've ever used is a pop-up blocker, but as far as banner ads and such, I rarely even take notice of them. They're not exactly hard to ignore.

-Spenser

look at the post below yours - you are a bit wrong!.

Web adverts have a really bad reputation and this has been going on since the internet got going properly 15 years ago.. I've done most of my browsing in FF using Adblock for years now, however I've just started using Chrome for a change and this is without any ad-blocking and the 'news' site I go on really don't have intrusive amounts of webverts (is that a word lol) infact some adds actually compliment the content in the same way adds in magazines do.. Obviously there are lot of bad sites out there but you get to decide which sites to visit.