The Internet was designed around the concept of information exchange, and when sites try to force advertising contents onto *my* computer, I and everyone else have *every right* to block it. Making adblock illegal is no different than someone being harassed because they change the channel, turn off the TV, walk away or fast forward through TIVO every single time they are bombarded with useless content.

The expense of creating a page, registering a domain and uploading it’s content is *paltry* in comparison to national advertising on the radio, TV or newspapers and magazines. Those advertisements are all expenses, and their sales and use are designed to make up for those costs. People know ahead of time that watching a TV show involves commercials, or reading a magazine will involve advertisements tailored for the readers.

Having a business web page *is in and of itself* an advertisement for your good or service. If I am a heating and refrigeration company, I can create a website, be referenced by any search engine…and people will be able to interactively read about everything I have to offer. They, after reading about me, will hire me because of my content. However, in virtually every case where adblock becomes necessary, the website is attempting to *pimp content for other websites* in an attempt to make back some money. In other words, they feel they have the right to take up my bandwidth foisting things I wasn’t looking for or asking for onto a machine they don’t own. They want to take the minor expense of running a website and reverse it from being a small business expense for their good or service into one that becomes a private money-maker off of the bandwidth back of users. That is not possible in other forms of advertisements because they are not interactive. Hence, traditional advertisement patterns have been replaced with aggressive domination of the users they are attempting to sway with their content.

This is not about people hating advertisements. If TV or radio shows had the same equivalent content to advertisement ratios as web sites, there would be about 5 minutes or less of useful content for every hours worth of broadcast. People would simply stop watching TV.

Companies that have blatantly abused and exhibited hostile patterns of user control are the ones who have just been hit with this broadside shot. Users do NOT have to pensively sit and be forced to waste time and money wading their way through useless content that has been aggressively forced on users. Had companies not taken this abusive stance, then people would not have deemed such a tool necessary.

So before calling the rest of us “f@#%ing idiots” because you are too immature to rationally argue with the rest of the world that disagrees with you, I suggest you switch to decaf and grow up.

If you want totally captive advertising, go buy some TV ads. Otherwise, please leave the internet alone- you’ve inspired plenty of morons to install JS that redirects me to your page when I visit their site with AdBlock installed.

Which is funny, all they’ve accomplished is to lose a potential reader. I guess they’ve also brought your neurotic ramblings to my attention.

• Secondly attempting to stop adblock will only make it worse, rather than just adblock because of the antiadblock code I also installed noscript, this is probably much worse for you since not only am I blocking the ads on your site I am also blocking all the stealth scripts that are harvesting my browsing habits without my permission and probably selling them onto market research companies, also the stuff that keeps track of your websites visits. without the scripts your site is perfectly navigational and it bypasses your anti-ablock code.

• The next step for you would be an attempt to make the scriptcode a necessary part of the sites viewing experience, for instance encrypting all the text then using javascript to decode it, the script would also include the anti-adblock code, but then I can use Firebug to modify your script itself to decode it but bypass the blockcode. At this point I would probably be annoyed enough to upload the changes to userscripts.org so anyone can bypass them.

• A much better idea would be to put a small floating image asking people to kindly turn off their adblock for your website and explaining that the ads are minor and out of the way, most will probably ignore it but then most people will ignore your ads anyway. Also change your revenue system, rate a book and then link to amazon.com entry with your affiliate id etc… Although I’m sure in future there will be heaps of bloggers giving inflated reviews in order to sell crap (well there are probably already is heaps).

• After i bypassed the ablock software I did check the site without adblock (I use filterset.G and it killed them automatically), the ads on your site are minor and out of the way so I personal wouldn’t object to seeing them and wouldn’t have bothered to block them myself, but I also no that I’m never going to click on them so there would be no point in me displaying them (unless you get payed perview rather than click/sale which I’m sure is not the case). In my case displaying them would only be costing the advertisers bandwidth (although not much).

• By blocking the adblockers, it makes them less likely to recommend your site to other people, If I was talking to someone about something, googled about it and found your site, I would be included to just cut and paste your site to them rather than try and explain to someone why the link I sent is a message about ablock and not whatever I was talking about. Granted this might be a copyright violation but this is the internet and if I really though you would be going to the effort to try and sue me I would post through Tor

• Lastly by posting anti-adblock you are just alienating your audience, maybe 1 or 2 will go, “oh I never though of it that way” but %99 will just immediately hate you. This happed when someone else did it and it ended up on Digg “Why firefox is banned”, this did result in a lot of views on that guys site but they where all views of the anti-adblock message followed by thousands of posts that where obviously not favor of the site.

• In the end its not too different to the RIAA, they have legal and ethical rights to money from artists, even if its overpriced or crap or in a CD format when everyone wants MP3s its still the consumers choice not to buy or to buy and put up with it, but the fact of matter is everyone will just pirate the music and probally with justifications such as I wasn’t going to buy it anyway, or the RIAA are scum, the old business model is busted. In the RIAAs case they can just sue people and probably get more money that way than from legal sales, if it goes well for them lawsuits will be their business model and primary revenue stream, they already have a website where you can pay your infringement with credit card and bypass the pesky system of justice.

From here ( http://markevanstech.com.nyud.net:8080/2007/09/11/adblock-plus-is-still-evil/ ) “…Text ads running along the side of a web page don’t take up much bandwidth, aren’t distracting, don’t suddenly jump all over the page or make noise, and are, occasionally, useful when I’m searching for something I might want to buy … I’m perfectly content to leave the text ads…”

Tah-dah! AdBlock Plus directly makes the web enjoyable for AdBlock Plus users, and indirectly makes the web enjoyable for others. Win win.

I’ll filter and block any dang thing I want to on it’s way to being written to my hard drive cache, thank you. If your content is so valuable, why are you giving it away? After you give it away, why are you whining about not being paid?

I see ads as I see sales calls interrupting in my evening - a byproduct of purchasing phone service. Do YOU listen patiently to sales phone calls at dinner time? I imagine not. I’m not interested in “Please wait to read my web page while this advertisement loads on your hard drive … and while we load these cookies … and while we send your IP data … and while we coordinate your browsing history … please wait … the web page you are seeking is coming soon … really soon … in moments, really … this advertisement is almost completely finished loading … hey, while we’re here, we see that you’re out of hard drive space - wanna upgrade your computer?” No thanks. I do not give you permission to clog my hard drive data storage space, nor my network connection bandwidth, with anything I don’t want!

“…If this continues, between bad ads, ad blockers, virus and spam, the net will start winding down…” Yeah, right. Maybe YOU’LL start winding down.

I can read an entire book or magazine or even a newspaper before purchase (or not). So, how are you gonna convince me that your content is valuable if you won’t show it to me?