 Is AdBlock the same thing as piracy? This is a topic that I've been needing to discuss here for the last couple of weeks because a couple of weeks ago I made a video about an audio player that takes audio from free streaming platforms on the internet and basically plays that audio in your desktop client on your computer. But by doing this in this desktop audio client what it does is it no longer serves you ads, you're not bombarded with all those ads you would be bombarded with had you actually viewed that content on the website itself using a web browser right and people were asking well that's is that legal because you're supposed to view those ads to view that content. Surely this is illegal and a lot of people wanted to equate this sort of ad block to being piracy and this is a debate that constantly comes up. I've been seeing this same tired argument for at least a decade now. People that like to claim that ad block is piracy and I just think that's that's ridiculous because we should go into a deeper discussion about the pros and cons of ad block and you know is ad block is it a moral thing to do to block ads or not but let's talk about the legal aspect because piracy is actually illegal. When we're talking about online piracy it's illegal in most countries in the world ad block is not illegal because ad block is not the same thing as piracy. We've actually had court cases about this but you know when we talk about piracy on the internet if you go and view the definition of piracy in any popular dictionary they'll say that online piracy is essentially the unauthorized use of somebody else's work or the illegal copying of somebody else's work and the copying part is what most people think when they think of piracy is the illegal copying of somebody else's work right you go to some file sharing website you download some music or movies or books or whatever that you didn't actually purchase right you have no rights to actually consume that content but somebody was willing to share their copy that either they purchase legally or they got illegally and then they want to pass it along to you illegally essentially it's a free copy right and that is illegal and that certainly fits the definition of piracy but here's the thing with ad block ad block there's no copying aspect to ad block right when you enable an ad blocker in your web browser and it blocks an ad you didn't get anything right you you didn't copy anybody's work or anything so if you're talking about the illegal copying aspect of piracy clearly ad block is not piracy but what about the first part of the definition of piracy which was the unauthorized use of somebody's work well still that ad block does not fit that definition either because the unauthorized use of somebody else's work you would have had to enter into some kind of legally binding agreement with that person most websites anything on the internet most of them do have terms of service if they're a big company smaller sites often don't even have a terms of service but most of the sites that do have terms of service nowhere in those terms of service usually is a requirement that you actually have to watch ads to be on the site and consume that content there's very very few sites actually add that to a terms of service and there are sites that do add that to a terms of service again they're very few but in that case would it be illegal for you to circumvent well that that may be the case but at least when it's been tried in court and we've had several court cases especially in Europe and Germany ad blocking cases come up all the time we just had a couple of weeks ago actually if you check out the news there was a case in the German Supreme Court about an ad blocker a popular ad blocker plug-in being sued by a company and they won the case and there's been several of these cases in Germany and every time the German courts have always cited with the ad blocker and the German courts have actually stated that ad blocking is not illegal and that you have a right to block ads so you're not really breaking any laws by enabling an ad blocker so we've already settled this and court it's not illegal because it's not illegal don't equate it to clearly illegal practices like piracy because again you didn't enter any kind of legally binding contract when I go to my website I open my web browser and I enter a web address a URL right I don't enter into a contract before typing in www.whateverthenameis.com right until I get there hell I don't even know if that site's gonna have ads or not right so how could how could I be responsible for having an ad block enabled when I first go to a site right obviously I can't and that's one of those things that nobody likes ads generally speaking no one likes ads no one that consumes content the people that cry foul about ad block are usually content producers but not all obviously I produce content I depend on ad revenue I don't cry about ad block because I understand what ad block is but the people that are crying are almost always content creators right but generally normal people just the general consumer they all hate ads nobody wants to be served and the reason is I go to a website and I get bombarded with all these ads they just blast ads all over the place to me every time I go to a new page yada yada yada and I have absolutely no control I also don't don't get any kind of warning right when I type a web address in the URL bar in my browser before I get to the site there's no warning hey you might not want to go to this site because it's gonna have a lot of ads no I get there and then boom you know a million ads so no warning no control and that's really the problem with the whole ad revenue model is no one has control of it made the consumer right I can't control which ads I get served how often I get served an ad many times you get served ads for products services that are not appropriate to you you're not interested in or depending on what part of the world you're in and then what that ad is for it may be something that you can't even purchase so that ad is really just a waste of your time and when I say that the consumer has no control over the ads you know as someone that has ads obviously on my videos but I've made websites before and used ad networks like Google Adsense you know as a webmaster as a website owner I have no control over the ads either all I can do is insert some code on my web pages that will serve ads I have no control over what ads get shown or anything like that you know all of that is controlled by these third-party ad networks so even the site owners have no control over what ads get served or any any other kind of controls right so obviously the consumer has no control in this either but the thing with the consumer is the consumer isn't getting paid right the site owner obviously is getting paid but any even that site owners they don't make anything adsense pays literally nothing I mean we're talking about pennies on the dollar well really we're talking about for thousands of impressions sometimes you get paid pennies you know so obviously because the ads pay so little I've got to serve more ads right and that's why these sites these big websites serve so many ads is because the ads pay so little to make enough money they feel like I can't serve one ad to you I've got to serve 10 ads to you I've got to serve a million ads today just to make enough money to fill up my car with gas or you know whatever basic needs I have and this leads to another problem why pretty much everyone hates ads is because all these ads because every these site owners have to serve so many ads just to make a few pennies so much bandwidth is sucked up by ads being served to you so you go to a website and it's serving all these ads you know that's sucking up your internet bandwidth especially mobile users mobile users you know typically pay for their data and so much of their data is wasted by being served ads that again they don't even want to view in the first place there have actually been some studies in years past where there were estimates of 20% to 40% of your data bandwidth on mobile for some users was taken up by being served ads and those these are people that spend all of their time on their phone on ad heavy sites so this would be the people that hang out on Facebook all day you don't realize it but that is actually costing you money not only are you not the one making money when you get served these ads those ads are actually costing you money and of course this applies to all media streaming platforms any kind ads that you get served again those ads they take up bandwidth they just slow down everything they make the whole experience of consuming that content so much worse to the point where you're basically driving your consumer away when you're serving all those ads and I think all of the content creators and media platforms the music industry the film industry the gaming industry all these industries that rely heavily on ad revenue and many of them are the ones that cry fell with ad block right ad block is piracy well we've already dismissed that right we've debunked that myth it clearly isn't piracy is it wrong is it immoral to block ads and you should you be consuming those ads so your sites and creators or whatnot make a few pennies on the dollar well that's up to you but again I understand the negatives of it and you have to make that choice for yourself I will say most people have already made that choice they refuse to be bombarded with ads that they don't want right because honestly the whole ad revenue thing it's a filled business model and that's the problem that's the problem with these content creators and media platforms that cry foul about ad block is they have not come to the realization that the rest of us have known at least for 15 20 years now and that the ad revenue model is a dying model it's a failed model if you're dependent on Google AdSense for example or Facebook ads for example for all of your income guess what you are destined for heartache and failure and the reason for this is that your whole business model is built around pissing people off before they even consume your content and we've seen this play out the music industry is a dying industry right the film industry it's in shambles all your online publications almost all of them are now long dead the ones that are still available online most of them are on life support I think people that depend almost entirely on ad revenue for their source of income really should rethink their whole business model come up with a different business plan instead why don't you make quality content that people are willing to pay for willing to sign up for have a membership for a subscription for or in my case what I often do you know I ask for donations right and free and open source community we often ask for donations for our work and that's a good model you would actually be surprised how many people are willing to open their wallets and freely donate to a project or to content that they consume anything that they find useful because if they find it useful they want to keep getting that content because it helps them in life right and if they know them donating a few bucks a month will help produce that content they will gladly do that and if you're one of these networks or online publications or whatever serving ads maybe you want to start selling subscriptions or memberships what you should do is make sure that if you do that you offer a perk to the people that are actually purchasing that subscription make sure that they don't get served any more ads if they're willing to pay you a few bucks a month because remember the ads they're low-paying ads anyway if somebody's willing to pay you five bucks a month or no ads on a streaming service or online publication trust me that five dollars a month that person gave you is far more than the few pennies you would have got off of them by serving them a bajillion ads right so just make that a perk hey if you're gonna sign up to a membership on this site guess what I'm gonna make sure my site no longer serves you ads again I think that's a happier consumer because again you're not pissing them off with all those ads I just think every website every streaming platform should do this for paying customers now I have been complaining for years now about the state of the web I the worldwide web in my opinion is a dumpster fire right it's garbage right 95% of the web is straight trash low quality garbage websites why is that well in large part the reason the web is so filled with all of this garbage is because of the ad networks because that's what the spammers do they crap out 100 low quality websites or a thousand or 10,000 you know with thousands of page on each of those 10,000 websites and none of these pages are good content most of it is auto generated content or gibberish it's just there so they can put ads on these low quality websites so hopefully their websites come up in the Google search algorithms and maybe somebody will accidentally click on a link to that website at some point get served that ad and they make a couple of cents right and this has produced so much spam on the internet the reason there is so much spam on the internet is really because of Google AdSense they are the primary fuel for that fire now as far as ad block goes should you use it should you not use it as far as a moral thing I will say this I don't think it should be a situation where it's hey you either view all ads on all sites or you block all ads on all sites I think the ad blocking programs themselves I think they need better control some of them do some of them allow you to basically add a site to a white list or a blacklist depending on you know should you block all ads by default or allow all ads by default and I think that's a better way to do it what I would suggest is allow all ads by default and then when you find the scummy sites or the sites that go way over the top with ads you know they don't deserve your money anyway they don't deserve your time they don't deserve the bandwidth that's of yours that's being consumed by those ads yeah add them to a blacklist and then block their ads right but the ones that are serving ads in a more responsible manner and that you find their content appealing and actually useful yeah view those ads for me what I've done most of my life is I don't use ad block the only time I use ad block is on the browsers that I use on my machines when I'm recording videos I have to block ads because for one thing it's just a bad look with ads coming up while I'm trying to record my desktop the other thing is some of those ads are multimedia ads and there could be copyrighted content for example if it plays music or something you know that could get that video in trouble so I have to block ads on you know my machines that I record on that I make these videos on but really before doing the YouTube channel I refuse to have ad block because I'm I was one of these people that used to build websites and depended on ad revenue for things I did writing articles and even now you have to force doing the video content you know I know what it's like depending on that money so if I go to a website you know I'll view the ads I'm not gonna view them but you know ads get served you know I'm one of those people I've got middle ad block you know when I see an ad it's like it's not there anyway I never actually read them but I understand their purpose and I understand the struggle that it is to be a content creator so I've hit on a lot of points talking about ad block here and I think the bottom line is that ad block is clearly not the same thing as piracy at least not as piracy is traditionally defined and anyone telling you that ad block is piracy they have their own agenda their own motives fair enough but regardless of their agenda it is irresponsible for anyone to equate a perfectly legal action with a clearly illegal action and the people doing that need to be called out on their bullshit peace guys