Websites are not giving you the content for free, they are giving it to you with an expectation that you take the ads along with them, or you pay for the subscription.
This excuse is so played out it's annoying. You could say this about anything:
That's not how the real world works. Stores offer you things for free on a shelf, you walk up and take the item, and the store responds by letting you have it. How you pay for that item is 100% up to you.
But that's not true. Just like how a store expects you to pay for something, the website expects payment in the form of a subscription/payment, or by running the ads. (and i'm just using the comparison as an analogy, I know digital vs physical is a whole other discussion, and i'm not implying that viewing a page without ads is the same as stealing physical items)
Where do you draw the line there? Is it okay to flip some bits in your bank account and give yourself money because the computer responds letting you? Are you allowed to download paid software for free because someone somewhere served it to you?
> Websites are not giving you the content for free, they are giving it to you with an expectation that you take the ads along with them, or you pay for the subscription.
No they aren't, if that's what they were doing they would present you with a contract stating that. A contract is not something that happens secretly or implicitly and putting a "terms of service" link in small print at the bottom of your website is not a contract. There has to be a meeting of the minds [1] where both parties understand the arrangement.
That's not what happens with ad-driven websites.
> Where do you draw the line there? Is it okay to flip some bits in your bank account and give yourself money because the computer responds letting you? Are you allowed to download paid software for free because someone somewhere served it to you?
No, that would be exploiting a bug on their server, knowingly. Blocking ads or changing styles with Stylish is not exploiting a server bug; your browser says GET / and their server says 200 OK. It really is as simple as that.
Does the situation change with HTTP2? When your browser says GET and the server responds with not only a 200 and the HTML, but also the JS, CSS, images, and more all pushed to your machine?
Their web server can just as easily send a 401 if you haven't logged in with your account after paying for access. They don't have to give you a 200 when you GET /. Nothing is forcing them to give your browser the OK just because your browser requested their site.
I don't feel any more guilty blocking ads then I do throwing away the advertising brochures unread that bookstores often put in your bag when buying a book.
"Expectations" don't inherently generate revenue. Performing activities that generate revenue... generates revenue. Put another way: expectations don't entitle you to revenue.
On the legal side, the store gets paid when I buy something because I risk arrest if I don't pay. On the ethical side, I don't steal because doing so deprives someone else of the good I have stolen.
You claim "I know digital vs physical..." and yet you still trot out that tired analogy... because yes, you are implying that viewing a page without ads is the same a stealing physical items, and suggesting that you aren't is just intellectually dishonest.
> Is it okay to flip some bits in your bank account and give yourself money because the computer responds letting you?
Again: adding money to your account necessarily deprives someone else of that money, so, no. There's also a legal deterrent (a fuzzy one, but a bank could probably get a CFAA violation to stick), and just the futility of it: the bank will notice the error and claw the money back anyway. If you spend it, you're still on the hook for it.
> Are you allowed to download paid software for free because someone somewhere served it to you?
If the creator of that software is the one serving it to me, sure! (Just as is the case with ad-supported web content.)
It is just completely baffling to me how people can equate serving up ads with any other form of, y'know, actual payment, and suggest that it's somehow unethical to avoid seeing ads.
This excuse is so played out it's annoying. You could say this about anything:
That's not how the real world works. Stores offer you things for free on a shelf, you walk up and take the item, and the store responds by letting you have it. How you pay for that item is 100% up to you.
But that's not true. Just like how a store expects you to pay for something, the website expects payment in the form of a subscription/payment, or by running the ads. (and i'm just using the comparison as an analogy, I know digital vs physical is a whole other discussion, and i'm not implying that viewing a page without ads is the same as stealing physical items)
Where do you draw the line there? Is it okay to flip some bits in your bank account and give yourself money because the computer responds letting you? Are you allowed to download paid software for free because someone somewhere served it to you?