German publisher Alex Springer is preparing a lawsuit against Eyeo GmbH, which develops the popular Internet ad blocker Adblock Plus, for copyright infringement. According to the company that owns Bild and Die Welt, ad blockers endanger digital journalism and illegally "change the programming code of sites."
There is no doubt that without advertising revenue, the Internet would not be what we know it to be. Many sites exist only on the money they receive from online advertising. However, many of them abuse this source of income by literally bombarding visitors with animated banners and pop-ups.
Fortunately, in response to this phenomenon, many extensions and programs have appeared that can block annoying ads, while saving user traffic and reducing web page loading times. The most popular of these tools are uBlock Origin, AdGuard and AdBlock Plus. And if users are satisfied with the availability of such solutions, then various network sites have long been looking for ways to deal with blockers using pop-up windows asking them to turn them off or even through the courts.
It was the latter method that Alex Springer chose. The company said that AdBlock Plus and its users are undermining its business model. However, having gone through all instances of the German judicial authorities up to the German Supreme Court, in April 2018 the publishing house finally lost the lawsuit.
Now, a year later, the publisher is back with a new charge. This time, Alex Springer claims that AdBlock Plus violates copyright. The accusation, reported by news portal Heise.de, appears to push the boundaries of what is generally considered copyright infringement on the Internet.
"Ad blockers modify the programming code of websites and thus gain direct access to publishers' protected material," says Klaas-Hendrik Soering, head of legal at Axel Springer. “In the long term, they will not only destroy the foundation of funding for digital journalism, but also threaten open access to information to shape online public opinion.”
Until the actual allegation becomes public (according to Heise, it has not yet been processed), the exact content of the lawsuit can only be guessed at. However, given the way AdBlock Plus works, it's unlikely that a browser extension can somehow change the code of a web page on a remote server. And even if we talk about the local machine, the plugin only blocks the loading of individual elements of the page, without changing or replacing its content in any way.
"The argument that we're tampering with 'website code' is almost absurd, I would like to call it," said an Eyeo spokesperson. "It doesn't take much technical knowledge to understand that a browser-side plugin can't change anything on Springer servers."
It is possible that Alex Springer may attempt to comply with another aspect of copyright law, such as bypassing technical measures taken by the copyright owner to limit actions he did not authorize. The full details of the lawsuit and future litigation will only become apparent when the lawsuit is made available to the public.
Source: 3dnews.ru