Hi guys, I have some news (not very good) about AG filters policy.
There are multiple websites that opt to detect ad blockers and prevent people from using the website unless ad blocking is disabled. Our policy on that was always simple -- if an adblock wall messes with the way people use the website, it should be removed by the main filters. This approach is "pro-user", but it has a serious flaw. Publishers have a right to talk to their visitors and to establish their rules on who can or cannot access their content. Unblocking it "by default" without user consent is a controversial solution. From now on, most of the "anti-adblock walls" rules (if a wall allows to proceed to the content) will be added to the Annoyances filter (enabling this filter counts as a "user consent"). If a wall does not provide any alternative at all, it should still be added to the English filter. Comparing to the original "remove if limit or interfere" policy this is not a serious change.
Now to some really bad news. There is another type of walls -- "adblockwall+paywall" like the one used on bild.de. Bad news about it is that blocking such a wall might be illegal and it imposes additional restrictions on us. Unfortunately, I don't feel that we can fight this battle on a legal field at the moment, given that it was already lost once. I'd like to emphasize that these restrictions apply to AdGuard filters due to us being a legal company. It does not mean that you should follow, you still can set AG up to override any of these restrictions (by adding a third party filter or adding a rule to the user filter). Why changing it now? There're two reasons. First of all, AG became popular enough to attract attention and second, we're now an EU company and should take EU courts decisions very seriously.
What's my personal opinion on this? I am okay with the first part (actually, this is fully my decision). Circumventing "walls" is not a solution, it simply leads to more complicated walls. To solve this, we should let publishers know that we do not accept this kind of limitations by not visiting these websites. And the policy change is just a first step on the path.
Regarding the second part, I hate it. Applying the copyright law to an ad blocking case is completely illogical, and I want to return to this once we have enough resources to fight it alone on a legal field, or once we find allies to back us up on this.
This is not a final solution. Stay tuned, we will have a bigger announcement later.
UPDATE: affected websites
bild.de
faz.net
tweaktown.com
accuweather.com
ondemandkorea.com
easybib.com
zentralplus.ch
blick.ch
heatworld.com
mercurynews.com
globalsecurity.org
cincinnati.com
postandcourier.com
bismarcktribune.com
doodle.com
EDIT: This will help English speakers to understand this: http://transblawg.eu/2012/04/22/liability-of-googleyoutubestorerhaftung/
There are multiple websites that opt to detect ad blockers and prevent people from using the website unless ad blocking is disabled. Our policy on that was always simple -- if an adblock wall messes with the way people use the website, it should be removed by the main filters. This approach is "pro-user", but it has a serious flaw. Publishers have a right to talk to their visitors and to establish their rules on who can or cannot access their content. Unblocking it "by default" without user consent is a controversial solution. From now on, most of the "anti-adblock walls" rules (if a wall allows to proceed to the content) will be added to the Annoyances filter (enabling this filter counts as a "user consent"). If a wall does not provide any alternative at all, it should still be added to the English filter. Comparing to the original "remove if limit or interfere" policy this is not a serious change.
Now to some really bad news. There is another type of walls -- "adblockwall+paywall" like the one used on bild.de. Bad news about it is that blocking such a wall might be illegal and it imposes additional restrictions on us. Unfortunately, I don't feel that we can fight this battle on a legal field at the moment, given that it was already lost once. I'd like to emphasize that these restrictions apply to AdGuard filters due to us being a legal company. It does not mean that you should follow, you still can set AG up to override any of these restrictions (by adding a third party filter or adding a rule to the user filter). Why changing it now? There're two reasons. First of all, AG became popular enough to attract attention and second, we're now an EU company and should take EU courts decisions very seriously.
What's my personal opinion on this? I am okay with the first part (actually, this is fully my decision). Circumventing "walls" is not a solution, it simply leads to more complicated walls. To solve this, we should let publishers know that we do not accept this kind of limitations by not visiting these websites. And the policy change is just a first step on the path.
Regarding the second part, I hate it. Applying the copyright law to an ad blocking case is completely illogical, and I want to return to this once we have enough resources to fight it alone on a legal field, or once we find allies to back us up on this.
This is not a final solution. Stay tuned, we will have a bigger announcement later.
UPDATE: affected websites
bild.de
faz.net
tweaktown.com
accuweather.com
ondemandkorea.com
easybib.com
zentralplus.ch
blick.ch
heatworld.com
mercurynews.com
globalsecurity.org
cincinnati.com
postandcourier.com
bismarcktribune.com
doodle.com
EDIT: This will help English speakers to understand this: http://transblawg.eu/2012/04/22/liability-of-googleyoutubestorerhaftung/
