Begun, the iOS 9 ad blockers legal wars has.
Germany’s Axel Springer, a company which owns major newspapers like Bild and Die Welt, is trying to sue the developers behind Blockr, an ad blocker for iOS 9.
The move comes through Axel Springer sub-company WeltN24, which aims to stop development of Blockr, as well as its distribution. The problem is that Blockr strips ads from the desktop and mobile views of Die Welt, and many other sites, which is exactly as intended.
However, Axel Springer’s lawsuit isn’t going uncontested. In a hearing last week, Blockr argued that their software is legal. The court tentatively agreed, and argued that Axel Springer can always shut off access to its sites for people with Ad Blockers installed.
The case should be settled on December 10th.
Obviously, Cult of Mac would prefer you read us without ad blockers installed. Ads pay the bills here! That said, short of asking you politely to ad us to your whitelist, we’re not against ad blockers for intrusive sites, and we think the idea of actually suing ad blockers for doing what they’re supposed to do is silly.
It’ll be interesting to see if Apple gets involved here. After all, they pointedly allowed ad blockers to exist in iOS 9. Seems like only a matter of time before publishers try to sue them too.
Source: Techcrunch
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
6 responses to “German publishing giant sues dev behind iOS 9 ad blocker”
Sad to say this but ad blockers are here to stay.
They are the result of abusive ad placement & intrusive methods used by ad firms to collect information on people browsing the web.
Yes, I use an ad blocker. The reason is simple. Most of the time it takes so long and uses so much more bandwidth on a mobile device and said bandwidth (in Canada at least) comes at a very high premium that, allowing ads to flow just doesn’t feel I am using my had earned money optimally.
So, in a sense AD companies shouldn’t bash on ad blocker makers OR on website users for using them. They should bash on themselves for abusing of ad placement AND on telecoms for making bandwidth such a premium good.
I use adblockers and do not look back. You would prefer us not to? I would prefer you not have 17-35 trackers/adnetworks on this page alone. It isn’t jsut the ad companies reason I am blocking them, I also hold sites like CoM accountable too. Your site has them scattered everywhere, I get slow page loads, Ads show well in advance of the content, etc. Sorry but I feel no sympathy.
If CoM wanted to block me from the site for blocking ads, its their business to do so. Just like it is my business to reduce bandwidth, reduce the eye sores, and not have to be a victim to ad comapnies and web sites any more.
Ad Guard actually reports 46 blocked content for this page alone at the moment.
Ghostery shows 116 trackers. Showed 109 before I started typing in this box. A lot of them seem very unnecessary; if anything they need to consolidate. And I bet most of these are tracking the exact same things; they’re prob just proprietary for the hundreds of vendors them seem to have.
Do you guys test page load speed ever?
now 119
I don’t… i just suffer the slow speeds on LTE & enable ad blockers :)