Is it the viewing or clicking of ads that makes money for a site?
I only ask because I'm not clicking any fewer ads as a result of adblocking.
It depends on the contract they have. One, the other or both. They can also get paid for click that lead to purchases.
Amazon tends to do a lot of clicks-that-lead-to-purchases. In my eyes, that's the best sort of advertising. When Internet advertising can either be single-sourced or limited to a small number of trusted sources, and when it's generally tied to the topic that I'm seeing, so I don't need to allow myself to be tracked to see ads relevant to me.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
I used to have a site that monetized based on add revenue. My options were almost nothing and the amount made through clicks and purchases were nearly nonexistent unless I designed my site to require tenthousand clicks. I eventually cut them altogether because, as a content producer, there are better ways to make money (like apparel or goods for fans). I don't know if that translates to news sites, which are a bit more complicated in what they need to operate, but it seems providing added value through the Pandora model (you have a free with some generic adds or a payed with no adds AND substantially additional content) is the best way to go for add revenue. That added content has to be pretty considerable though to make people willing to pay.
Those little steam banners I see some posters here have. I see what game they have been playing and how long and such.
I can for example see that Shadowhope has been playing XCom2 for 60 hours in the last 2 weeks.
Since Shadowhope probably changes games every once in a while and this is explicitly a gamer website, it hits posters with a small, almost subliminal ad attached to the content they want to see: Shadowhope's posts. It positively affects the game(and steams) reputation.
If advertising was more like that banner, we wouldn't be talking about how much we hate Internet ads
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I would like to mention, I haven't really been playing for 60 hours, I accidently left it running while I was at work one day, so it's really probably much closer to 50. I don't have a problem!
I have a problem.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Is it the viewing or clicking of ads that makes money for a site?
I only ask because I'm not clicking any fewer ads as a result of adblocking.
It depends on the contract they have. One, the other or both. They can also get paid for click that lead to purchases.
Amazon tends to do a lot of clicks-that-lead-to-purchases. In my eyes, that's the best sort of advertising. When Internet advertising can either be single-sourced or limited to a small number of trusted sources, and when it's generally tied to the topic that I'm seeing, so I don't need to allow myself to be tracked to see ads relevant to me.
My hobby is knitting (Shut up! It's fun!) and I've come across more than a few knitting sites that have links to Amazon saying "Hey! If you're in the mood to buy knitting books or craft supplies then click this link, because that way we get money from Amazon. Woo!" It's a kind of advertising that works on me every time I have any cash to spare. If I'm browsing a knitting site I'm in the mood to start a new project anyway, and if there's a link for stuff right there that also supports the site? I'm sold.
Can...can we stop using bad analogies? The longer this thread goes the worse they're getting. The syphilis taint injection one was sadly the only one that even remotely seemed to work, and it wasn't so much that it worked as it Was at least entertaining.
So you know what the most effective advertisement on me has been in recent memory? A quick endorsement for Casper in front of a podcast and I happened to need a new mattress not long after and I remembered someone I subscribe to on YouTube doing basically an unboxing video of one and thinking it looked cool.
Crunchyroll also has this thing where a lot of animals reviewers will have links to a free trial that I think they get a kick back for which seems like a good strategy also.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Can we please not turn this into another theft versus copyright infringement discussion?
There is literally only one way for this to happen, people to not call things theft or stealing that are neither of those things. Should they do otherwise the content and nature of the discussion requires that it be addressed.
Or...and just hear me out...we could not get constantly stuck on tangents about theft versus copyright and instead talk about solutions to the current advertising and revenue generation issues that the internet is facing.
Alternatively, we can just rename the thread to "Click now to learn the ONE WIERD TRICK that Apothe0sis uses to derail the thread AND save money on your car insurance in {yourstate}!!!"
Because, literally another way for this to happen is just to let it go, and get off your soapbox. Because there are literally more than one option available. Literally.
I'm still reeling over the idea that the internet is headed towards some sort of collapse because we didn't monetize and incentivize creators enough. It is akin to making a new hammer and yelling that everyone has to use it or building will cease to exist as a concept. We can hold creation, commodification, and consumption separately in our heads because they are quite separate ideas. Talking about the internet doesn't mean those fundamental differences go away! And again, if we are going to make purely capitalistic arguments regarding the value of media then we as consumers should not care in the slightest that Wired will cease printing one day because of a model that they have failed to adapt or adjust to.
Denying that theft of intellectual property is theft flies in the face of established international law, as well as the moral right of creators to control and to attempt to profit off of their content if they so choose.
I don't believe that there's a "moral right of creators to control" their content.
They have a moral right to attempt to profit, but that is more or less a moot point. Nobody has a moral right to profits, and just because somebody fails to receive profits from a venture doesn't mean that something is rotten. It just means their business model sucks.
But here's the thing - there's a difference between a creator failing because nobody wants their creation, and a creator failing because nobody wants to recompensate them for their creation.
This is far too binary an analogy, because we all have limited means to compensate content creators for their content, and all of the content creators are competing for a share of that compensation. So we have to choose whom we wish to support. Content provider failures can occur both due to a failure to receive any compensation, or a failure to receive sufficient compensation. The ones that receive more compensation have, in general, a product that is more desired.
Additionally, regarding entitlement (seriously?): there is a fundamental threshold of value assessment that occurs. When internet users cross that threshold, they are willing to pay for content and things on the internet. If it doesn't cross that threshold, it still isn't the user's problem!
Third thought: We are going to have this very same discussion as mechanization and fabrication become more readily accessible and the automation of jobs continues to increase. We should get more comfortable with re-evaluating what is valuable to us.
for the case of paywalled content, for any portion of the paywall which is executed on the end users machine then circumventing it is moral and should be legal
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
for the case of paywalled content, for any portion of the paywall which is executed on the end users machine then circumventing it is moral and should be legal
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
If I fetch the text of your website but decide not to fetch the images or run the javascript because you have shitty autoplaying videos or a ram-gobbling inifinite scroller that doesn't break the internet
If everyone in the world turned on adblockers tomorrow 90% of communities like this would be gone tomorrow (although probably not this one because of the premium content model), as would YouTube, Google, Wordpress and pretty much every other site we read, use and enjoy and the method of disseminating the wonderful "free" (hint: it's not free) content would cease to exist.
The problem is that this is not a status quo that will continue as is; it's a bubble that will burst if something is not done. Gametrailers is gone, Wired is on the way, and that's just this week. This isn't a hunch or a theory - the Internet as a platform for art and content will contract if creators cannot effectively monetise that content. Which is why I feel the philosophy of right and wrong WRT copyright and theft of irrelevant and instead want to talk about how we stop this from happening as it's happening right now.
Adblocking isn't the primary force killing impression-based advertising. Most of the FUD about adblocking online is being spread by advertising companies like PageFair. Industry average for lost revenue due to adblocking is about 8%. To quote Slate,
“The overall impact of this phenomenon is exaggerated in terms of financial impact. Focus on all these costs of going after these ad blockers and the opportunity cost of focusing on new platforms,” said David Stern, director of product development at Slate.
That said, adblocking rates are higher among more tech-savvy readership. Adblocking is certainly responsible for a larger reduction in revenue among tech-oriented sites like Wired.
Even Wired observed that mobile was drinking impression-based advertising's milkshake as far back as 2010:
In the media world, this has taken the form of a shift from ad-supported free content to freemium — free samples as marketing for paid services — with an emphasis on the “premium” part. On the Web, average CPMs (the price of ads per thousand impressions) in key content categories such as news are falling, not rising, because user-generated pages are flooding Facebook and other sites. The assumption had been that once the market matured, big companies would be able to reverse the hollowing-out trend of analog dollars turning into digital pennies. Sadly that hasn’t been the case for most on the Web, and by the looks of it there’s no light at the end of that tunnel. Thus the shift to the app model on rich media platforms like the iPad, where limited free content drives subscription revenue (check out Wired‘s cool new iPad app!).
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
for the case of paywalled content, for any portion of the paywall which is executed on the end users machine then circumventing it is moral and should be legal
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
If I fetch the text of your website but decide not to fetch the images or run the javascript because you have shitty autoplaying videos or a ram-gobbling inifinite scroller that doesn't break the internet
This is the type of solution that only a tech savy person can use. Most people are on iPads or a laptop from WalMart, and don't have the tech skill to do this.
Are there any statistics on how many "bad actors" there are in advertising that try to use scams or malware, versus legitimate (if terribly thought out) ads? I'm curious if this is a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the lot.
This is the type of solution that only a tech savy person can use. Most people are on iPads or a laptop from WalMart, and don't have the tech skill to do this.
And whatever the button looks like in iOS 8+.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
It's not really an ideal model to follow.
Except that it worked and provided the world with a huge amount of quality music and all kinds of other good things.
I don't understand what this has to do with how we set up public utilities like the internet though.
for the case of paywalled content, for any portion of the paywall which is executed on the end users machine then circumventing it is moral and should be legal
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
If I fetch the text of your website but decide not to fetch the images or run the javascript because you have shitty autoplaying videos or a ram-gobbling inifinite scroller that doesn't break the internet
This is the type of solution that only a tech savy person can use. Most people are on iPads or a laptop from WalMart, and don't have the tech skill to do this.
Are there any statistics on how many "bad actors" there are in advertising that try to use scams or malware, versus legitimate (if terribly thought out) ads? I'm curious if this is a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the lot.
If you Google:
owasp appsec malvertising
You should be able to find presentations and maybe PowerPoint notes with some statistics.
There a lot and a lot of type of bad actors
The one I saw had some good background on the ad market space
Can we please not turn this into another theft versus copyright infringement discussion?
There is literally only one way for this to happen, people to not call things theft or stealing that are neither of those things. Should they do otherwise the content and nature of the discussion requires that it be addressed.
Or...and just hear me out...we could not get constantly stuck on tangents about theft versus copyright and instead talk about solutions to the current advertising and revenue generation issues that the internet is facing.
Alternatively, we can just rename the thread to "Click now to learn the ONE WIERD TRICK that Apothe0sis uses to derail the thread AND save money on your car insurance in {yourstate}!!!"
Because, literally another way for this to happen is just to let it go, and get off your soapbox. Because there are literally more than one option available. Literally.
You will find that I didn't bring up theft or stealing if you read backward. You will also find that the thread is about the morality of using adblockers, something I didn't bring up either.
Secondly, if it isn't clear to you that there are two options when someone uses an argument that rests on an equivalence between theft and not-using-an-ad-blocker and/or intellectual property infringement (assuming one disagrees with the conclusion) if one wishes to engage in the thread then I am not sure that we have even remotely similar understandings of what it is to construct an argument:
You can accept the equivalence and argue that theft is justified (aka, my family is starving and I need the bread)
You can reject the equivalence and argue that it is neither theft nor like theft
Your characterisation of the thread and its currents is absurd, did you actually read any of it?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
for the case of paywalled content, for any portion of the paywall which is executed on the end users machine then circumventing it is moral and should be legal
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
What are you talking about? As has been explained multiple times: a client-side paywall sends the content to the client and uses formatting functions within JavaScript/CSS/HTML to hide the content from the end user.
The tangent is objecting to the idea that one is obligated to respect this paywall and the position that Riemann, myself and more than a few others have staked out is that circumventing it is fine. The argument is not that the companies are wrong to have done so, but that given they have provided you with all the content and given it is your prerogative to determine how your machine renders any content it sends there is no transgression in circumventing that paywall.
I am loath to use analogies but if someone sends you a sample magazine with stickers over half of the articles that say "to read the full thing, subscribe!" then you aren't doing anything wrong by peeling off those stickers and reading the whole magazine.
The idea that the objection is that one's computers resources are being used is frankly absurd and is in fact the objection that would be ignorant of how the Internet works in general.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
It's not really an ideal model to follow.
You are thoroughly confused - the top of the quote tree is Knitdan's criticism at what he sees as mental gymnastics trying to justify not paying for things, which is born out of a multi post exchange between multiple posters (including myself, of course) where one of the most obvious points of conflict was that one side were very steadfastly arguing that receiving a benefit without recompensating someone else was wrong and this formed both the cornerstone of their other arguments and a central point of conflict. The other side very clearly do not believe that this is in fact a well formed moral principle/captures our moral intuitions accurately.
The argument is not that we ought follow hip hop's model, but rather a simple demonstration that the maxim is false as it stands. Read my post to Knitdan or spool's follow up.
Apothe0sis on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I think people in this thread (not all, but a great many) are playing with a pretty narrow definition of digital advertising is. Yes, it is banner ads. It's also pre-roll on YouTube, the sponsored emails you get from Amazon, sponsored content on websites, Facebook ads, search, and so on.
When taken as a whole, people are engaging with advertising far more than they think they are.
I can't speak to most of the rest (because except for google's paid results I avoid all of the other examples you mentioned) but I don't think anyone could be unaware of the pre-roll in YouTube and from what I understand everyone hates it. I certainly do. I'd be mystified that anyone is engaging with them rather than simply eagerly awaiting the skip button.
I reject the "stop arguing about the semantics of 'theft'" criticism because it is ill-aimed.
"Stop bringing up the word 'theft'" is better. By asking people to "drop the tangent" you are effectively asking people to accept or take for granted something they don't agree with. It's important to challenge those beliefs, particularly within the framework of a discussion like this. And frankly it's unfair.
Switch: SW-7690-2320-9238Steam/PSN/Xbox: Drezdar
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
It's not theft, and there's so much wrong with your definition up there that it's not really worth addressing other than to say you have it wrong. To argue this point intelligently you have some reading to do.
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
It's not theft, and there's so much wrong with your definition up there that it's not really worth addressing other than to say you have it wrong. To argue this point intelligently you have some reading to do.
That's the legal framework under which it can be prosecuted.
By any reasonable moral framework, it's theft.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
this is the wrongest thing said in the thread.
sampling music has been illegal since the beginning of copyright. Hell, one of the earliest cases dealt with the legality of player piano rolls.
reading other people's replies, I'm not sure you've said a right thing on this page.
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
It's not theft, and there's so much wrong with your definition up there that it's not really worth addressing other than to say you have it wrong. To argue this point intelligently you have some reading to do.
That's the legal framework under which it can be prosecuted.
By any reasonable moral framework, it's theft.
"By any reasonable moral framework" is such a weasel-worded construction. And a pointless one. And offensive, as if people who disagree with you are automatically "unreasonable" whatever that's supposed to mean.
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
this is the wrongest thing said in the thread.
sampling music has been illegal since the beginning of copyright. Hell, one of the earliest cases dealt with the legality of player piano rolls.
reading other people's replies, I'm not sure you've said a right thing on this page.
I reject the "stop arguing about the semantics of 'theft'" criticism because it is ill-aimed.
"Stop bringing up the word 'theft'" is better. By asking people to "drop the tangent" you are effectively asking people to accept or take for granted something they don't agree with. It's important to challenge those beliefs, particularly within the framework of a discussion like this. And frankly it's unfair.
But instead of this being a thread focused on advertising and advertising issues, half of the thread has been focused on copyright infringement versus theft. People often use the word theft not because of the semantics with it regarding physical goods and reproducability, but because it invokes a certain moral position.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Exactly, it should be perfectly feasible to describe the position without using 'theft' or 'stealing', it is not possible to have a contrary position without disputing the term once it has been deployed. It is also independently possible to explain why theft or indeed any other transgression is a transgression without simply resting on the connotations of the word.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
Let us try a different approach:
Your position in this thread has been to declare that "it"* is theft, and, by extension it is a moral transgression in the same way that any other theft would be. I, and others, have given reasons why we don't think it is theft. Your response has not been to address those reasons but to simply repeat that it is theft and we are defending theft. This is an argument by assertion, and if our response was simply to declare "no, it isn't theft" then the only question the exchange will answer is who can pound the table the hardest.
Now, it is the case that "theft" describes an actions that our moral framework has evaluated as bad kinds of actions. Declaring that "X is theft" and using the consequent implications to condemn X assumes we share a common understanding of theft and agree that it is categorically wrong. When we disagree that X is wrong in response to such an argument there are two options available to us:
Accept your definition of theft, but then reject the notion that theft is inherently wrong. Consider a discussion of murder - if we define 'murder' as "killing another person" then we must reject the notion that "murder is wrong" because there are situations in which such an action is not only justified but that it would be monstrous not to do so (i.e. Self defense, defense of an innocent, times of war). Such a discussion is therefore an attempt to sort different actions into "good murder" and "bad murder". This, I think, is not a good option because it requires us to use the word 'theft' in a non-obvious way and reduces the utility of language. To meaningfully engage with we, your dissenters, you would have to argue that this is a bad kind of theft and we would argue that it is a good kind of theft. It would be weird and confusing.
Alternatively, we can preserve the common definition of theft*** and argue that "it" does not fit the criteria of theft, specifically it doesn't fulfil the requirement that the act is wrong. Instead, we must examine the concept of theft and identify why it is that we (rightly) consider it wrong and then whether "it" also has the same properties. This is a much better option, but it requires you to explain why you think they are alike and address our points as to why they are not.** To return to murder, in this scenario we are agreeing that murder is always bad but trying to sort different actions into "murder" and "not-murder".
When we have referred to the non-scarce nature of copyright protected content we have been attempting to draw a contrast with what we perceive as the salient moral property of theft. Specifically that as physical things are finite there is a zero sum restriction on the possession and use of physical goods - if something is taken from person A without their consent then they lose the ability to use that thing. This is not the case for non-scarce things, person A cannot deprive person B of it. The argument being that the bad thing about theft is that once something physical is taken the person who owns it cannot use it anymore, thus, as it is related to a non-scarce things it isn't theft and if it is wrong then it is so for a reason other than it being theft.
So, we have said "it isn't theft, and here is a reason" - to engage with us in a discussion you ought say "no that isn't the reason theft is wrong, theft is wrong because of <reason X>" or you should say "ok, so it isn't theft, but it is wrong nevertheless because of <reason Y>”. Please do not merely assert "it is theft and you are defending theft" because it gets us absolutely nowhere!
* for the purposes of this post, I will assume that the "it" in question is a end-user infringement of copyright AND that you think this is at minimum analogous to using an adblockers contrary to the wishes of the webmaster. I think there is good reason to think that using an adblocker does not share the moral features of infringement regardless of whether infringement is like theft but for the purposes of this post I will grant arguendo that there is some equivalence between adblocking and infringement.
** Also, note, as I have previously that there are other ways for things to be wrong than it being theft. You could, entirely consistently, argue that even though "it" is not theft it is still wrong. In the same way that infidelity isn't theft but it is certainly a moral wrong!
*** I don't think the definition of theft you offered is a good one either, but the point I am trying to make stands independently of that.
It is fascinating, the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not paying for something.
Paying for what?
Information
An object
A service
yeah I mean, people invented hip hop
how dare they go through such mental gymnastics
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
this is the wrongest thing said in the thread.
sampling music has been illegal since the beginning of copyright. Hell, one of the earliest cases dealt with the legality of player piano rolls.
reading other people's replies, I'm not sure you've said a right thing on this page.
I reject the "stop arguing about the semantics of 'theft'" criticism because it is ill-aimed.
"Stop bringing up the word 'theft'" is better. By asking people to "drop the tangent" you are effectively asking people to accept or take for granted something they don't agree with. It's important to challenge those beliefs, particularly within the framework of a discussion like this. And frankly it's unfair.
But instead of this being a thread focused on advertising and advertising issues, half of the thread has been focused on copyright infringement versus theft. People often use the word theft not because of the semantics with it regarding physical goods and reproducability, but because it invokes a certain moral position.
Oh, okay, so next time we have an abortion thread I hope someone calls it murder so we can have this same exact conversation over semantics and whose responsibility it is to avoid turning a thread into an unproductive clusterfuck.
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Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I only ask because I'm not clicking any fewer ads as a result of adblocking.
It depends on the contract they have. One, the other or both. They can also get paid for click that lead to purchases.
Amazon tends to do a lot of clicks-that-lead-to-purchases. In my eyes, that's the best sort of advertising. When Internet advertising can either be single-sourced or limited to a small number of trusted sources, and when it's generally tied to the topic that I'm seeing, so I don't need to allow myself to be tracked to see ads relevant to me.
Those little steam banners I see some posters here have. I see what game they have been playing and how long and such.
I can for example see that Shadowhope has been playing XCom2 for 60 hours in the last 2 weeks.
Since Shadowhope probably changes games every once in a while and this is explicitly a gamer website, it hits posters with a small, almost subliminal ad attached to the content they want to see: Shadowhope's posts. It positively affects the game(and steams) reputation.
If advertising was more like that banner, we wouldn't be talking about how much we hate Internet ads
I would like to mention, I haven't really been playing for 60 hours, I accidently left it running while I was at work one day, so it's really probably much closer to 50. I don't have a problem!
My hobby is knitting (Shut up! It's fun!) and I've come across more than a few knitting sites that have links to Amazon saying "Hey! If you're in the mood to buy knitting books or craft supplies then click this link, because that way we get money from Amazon. Woo!" It's a kind of advertising that works on me every time I have any cash to spare. If I'm browsing a knitting site I'm in the mood to start a new project anyway, and if there's a link for stuff right there that also supports the site? I'm sold.
Crunchyroll also has this thing where a lot of animals reviewers will have links to a free trial that I think they get a kick back for which seems like a good strategy also.
Or...and just hear me out...we could not get constantly stuck on tangents about theft versus copyright and instead talk about solutions to the current advertising and revenue generation issues that the internet is facing.
Alternatively, we can just rename the thread to "Click now to learn the ONE WIERD TRICK that Apothe0sis uses to derail the thread AND save money on your car insurance in {yourstate}!!!"
Because, literally another way for this to happen is just to let it go, and get off your soapbox. Because there are literally more than one option available. Literally.
This is far too binary an analogy, because we all have limited means to compensate content creators for their content, and all of the content creators are competing for a share of that compensation. So we have to choose whom we wish to support. Content provider failures can occur both due to a failure to receive any compensation, or a failure to receive sufficient compensation. The ones that receive more compensation have, in general, a product that is more desired.
Third thought: We are going to have this very same discussion as mechanization and fabrication become more readily accessible and the automation of jobs continues to increase. We should get more comfortable with re-evaluating what is valuable to us.
This ignores the basis of how many of modern computing technologies work and without those technologies, the internet wouldn't work.
If you want to argue that a website or advertiser is immoral for using your resources for their gain, then I can accept that stance. I don't necessarily agree with it, because I feel it's part of an unspoken agreement about website/the internet use in general (that is, they feed some information and my computer processes the rest, at my cost). But I can understand it.
A blanket statement like this ignores reality, however.
Hip hop came out on the same path that Uber is trying to use. Get in before stuff is regulated, do things you know you won't get away with in the future, and try to make it big before the bubble bursts.
It's not really an ideal model to follow.
If I fetch the text of your website but decide not to fetch the images or run the javascript because you have shitty autoplaying videos or a ram-gobbling inifinite scroller that doesn't break the internet
Adblocking isn't the primary force killing impression-based advertising. Most of the FUD about adblocking online is being spread by advertising companies like PageFair. Industry average for lost revenue due to adblocking is about 8%. To quote Slate,
http://digiday.com/publishers/slate-washington-post-bloomberg-others-combat-ad-blocking/
That said, adblocking rates are higher among more tech-savvy readership. Adblocking is certainly responsible for a larger reduction in revenue among tech-oriented sites like Wired.
Ad revenue is decreasing, but adblocking isn't a primary factor behind that. It's also the search acceleration technology in IOS9 which caches search results, reducing the total impressions seen by Google users on iPhones. It's also the growth of mobile apps over desktop websites where you have less screen space for ads and consequently fewer overall impressions. It's also the underbelly of clickbot fraud.
Even Wired observed that mobile was drinking impression-based advertising's milkshake as far back as 2010:
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is the type of solution that only a tech savy person can use. Most people are on iPads or a laptop from WalMart, and don't have the tech skill to do this.
Are there any statistics on how many "bad actors" there are in advertising that try to use scams or malware, versus legitimate (if terribly thought out) ads? I'm curious if this is a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the lot.
And whatever the button looks like in iOS 8+.
Except that it worked and provided the world with a huge amount of quality music and all kinds of other good things.
I don't understand what this has to do with how we set up public utilities like the internet though.
If you Google:
owasp appsec malvertising
You should be able to find presentations and maybe PowerPoint notes with some statistics.
There a lot and a lot of type of bad actors
The one I saw had some good background on the ad market space
I thieved his intellectual propertums.
I demand recompense for my creative output.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
You will find that I didn't bring up theft or stealing if you read backward. You will also find that the thread is about the morality of using adblockers, something I didn't bring up either.
Secondly, if it isn't clear to you that there are two options when someone uses an argument that rests on an equivalence between theft and not-using-an-ad-blocker and/or intellectual property infringement (assuming one disagrees with the conclusion) if one wishes to engage in the thread then I am not sure that we have even remotely similar understandings of what it is to construct an argument:
Your characterisation of the thread and its currents is absurd, did you actually read any of it?
What are you talking about? As has been explained multiple times: a client-side paywall sends the content to the client and uses formatting functions within JavaScript/CSS/HTML to hide the content from the end user.
The tangent is objecting to the idea that one is obligated to respect this paywall and the position that Riemann, myself and more than a few others have staked out is that circumventing it is fine. The argument is not that the companies are wrong to have done so, but that given they have provided you with all the content and given it is your prerogative to determine how your machine renders any content it sends there is no transgression in circumventing that paywall.
I am loath to use analogies but if someone sends you a sample magazine with stickers over half of the articles that say "to read the full thing, subscribe!" then you aren't doing anything wrong by peeling off those stickers and reading the whole magazine.
The idea that the objection is that one's computers resources are being used is frankly absurd and is in fact the objection that would be ignorant of how the Internet works in general.
You are thoroughly confused - the top of the quote tree is Knitdan's criticism at what he sees as mental gymnastics trying to justify not paying for things, which is born out of a multi post exchange between multiple posters (including myself, of course) where one of the most obvious points of conflict was that one side were very steadfastly arguing that receiving a benefit without recompensating someone else was wrong and this formed both the cornerstone of their other arguments and a central point of conflict. The other side very clearly do not believe that this is in fact a well formed moral principle/captures our moral intuitions accurately.
The argument is not that we ought follow hip hop's model, but rather a simple demonstration that the maxim is false as it stands. Read my post to Knitdan or spool's follow up.
I can't speak to most of the rest (because except for google's paid results I avoid all of the other examples you mentioned) but I don't think anyone could be unaware of the pre-roll in YouTube and from what I understand everyone hates it. I certainly do. I'd be mystified that anyone is engaging with them rather than simply eagerly awaiting the skip button.
I put out for output.
"Stop bringing up the word 'theft'" is better. By asking people to "drop the tangent" you are effectively asking people to accept or take for granted something they don't agree with. It's important to challenge those beliefs, particularly within the framework of a discussion like this. And frankly it's unfair.
And yet, "theft" is an accurate description for "obtaining something without providing compensation and/or reimbursement to the creator and/or seller, and by obtaining the item in a way that the creator and/or seller feels is inappropriate."
If you can't defend theft, the problem is with your position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#.22Theft.22
It's not theft, and there's so much wrong with your definition up there that it's not really worth addressing other than to say you have it wrong. To argue this point intelligently you have some reading to do.
That's the legal framework under which it can be prosecuted.
By any reasonable moral framework, it's theft.
this is the wrongest thing said in the thread.
sampling music has been illegal since the beginning of copyright. Hell, one of the earliest cases dealt with the legality of player piano rolls.
reading other people's replies, I'm not sure you've said a right thing on this page.
"By any reasonable moral framework" is such a weasel-worded construction. And a pointless one. And offensive, as if people who disagree with you are automatically "unreasonable" whatever that's supposed to mean.
Please change "regulated" to "enforced".
But instead of this being a thread focused on advertising and advertising issues, half of the thread has been focused on copyright infringement versus theft. People often use the word theft not because of the semantics with it regarding physical goods and reproducability, but because it invokes a certain moral position.
Let us try a different approach:
Your position in this thread has been to declare that "it"* is theft, and, by extension it is a moral transgression in the same way that any other theft would be. I, and others, have given reasons why we don't think it is theft. Your response has not been to address those reasons but to simply repeat that it is theft and we are defending theft. This is an argument by assertion, and if our response was simply to declare "no, it isn't theft" then the only question the exchange will answer is who can pound the table the hardest.
Now, it is the case that "theft" describes an actions that our moral framework has evaluated as bad kinds of actions. Declaring that "X is theft" and using the consequent implications to condemn X assumes we share a common understanding of theft and agree that it is categorically wrong. When we disagree that X is wrong in response to such an argument there are two options available to us:
When we have referred to the non-scarce nature of copyright protected content we have been attempting to draw a contrast with what we perceive as the salient moral property of theft. Specifically that as physical things are finite there is a zero sum restriction on the possession and use of physical goods - if something is taken from person A without their consent then they lose the ability to use that thing. This is not the case for non-scarce things, person A cannot deprive person B of it. The argument being that the bad thing about theft is that once something physical is taken the person who owns it cannot use it anymore, thus, as it is related to a non-scarce things it isn't theft and if it is wrong then it is so for a reason other than it being theft.
So, we have said "it isn't theft, and here is a reason" - to engage with us in a discussion you ought say "no that isn't the reason theft is wrong, theft is wrong because of <reason X>" or you should say "ok, so it isn't theft, but it is wrong nevertheless because of <reason Y>”. Please do not merely assert "it is theft and you are defending theft" because it gets us absolutely nowhere!
* for the purposes of this post, I will assume that the "it" in question is a end-user infringement of copyright AND that you think this is at minimum analogous to using an adblockers contrary to the wishes of the webmaster. I think there is good reason to think that using an adblocker does not share the moral features of infringement regardless of whether infringement is like theft but for the purposes of this post I will grant arguendo that there is some equivalence between adblocking and infringement.
** Also, note, as I have previously that there are other ways for things to be wrong than it being theft. You could, entirely consistently, argue that even though "it" is not theft it is still wrong. In the same way that infidelity isn't theft but it is certainly a moral wrong!
*** I don't think the definition of theft you offered is a good one either, but the point I am trying to make stands independently of that.
Oh, okay, so next time we have an abortion thread I hope someone calls it murder so we can have this same exact conversation over semantics and whose responsibility it is to avoid turning a thread into an unproductive clusterfuck.