https://files.catbox.moe/a6111d.png / https://nitter.poast.org/LinusTech/status/1825956050685800834
If you go the video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsjHMzGl-VY. You will see it’s gone. So Youtube being Youtube.
Here’s a Odysee mirror of the video, https://odysee.com/@jopec:7/linus-tech-tips-degoogle-your-life-part-2-adfree-youtube:0.
He’s right that it’s piracy, he doesn’t go on to say piracy is wrong, and neither would I.
It’s piracy to block ads, and piracy isn’t always wrong, so who cares?
I put the local football game on my tv over antenna. Oh a commercial, I guess I’ll walk away to take a piss now. The swat team busts down my door. I run for my scabbard to resist but with one peg leg I’m not quick enough. The seas are rough sailing for pirates willing to skip ads mateys.
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I DVR the game. Later that night I come home to watch. Oh it’s commercial time, I guess I’ll just fast forward 2 minutes.
Peter pan and tinkerbell float through my window. They capture me and tie me up. They shout at me, “Watching ad-supported media without watching the ads is a crime you monster!” as they hold my eyes open while ad after ad replay on the tv. Crime like this isn’t worth it folks.
That’s not the same because the advertisement company has already paid the content creator.
Creators also get paid for in video ad reads and product placement. Media providers also make money on data collection regardless of the ads you skip. And furthermore advertising prices have always been based an statistics of reach. Companies like youtube have clearer data than the old Nielsen ratings but they’ve had a pretty accurate numbers of how many users skipped ads through time shifting too that have only gotten better since.
It legally is not piracy in most places. Ethically just watching they are probably making money off of you even if you skip the obvious ads but if you really want to go over the top you could still skip and just find other ways to give money to the platform or creator.
If it’s funded by live ads and the ads fund the creators, then skipping the ads means skipping your payment.
It’s not legally piracy, but it’s the same spirit and the effects are indistinguishable on the creators.
This is nonsense. Your argument is that you’re a pirate if one corporation with no relation to the content fails to pay a corporation which distributes but does not own the content. If you watch an ad then the advertising company refuses to pay you do not suddenly become a pirate.
If a struggling McDonald’s franchise fails to pay some franchisee fee that does not mean you pirated your big mac.
I don’t see how your example is even vaguely similar to mine, and the fact that you used that as an example means you don’t understand my argument.
A little ham-fisted, sure, but if you think it’s irrelevant you evidently didn’t take any time to actually think about it (you did also reply instantly, so I’ll take that over you lacking reading comprehension).
I’ll simplify.
Digital piracy is illegal copying of unlicenced content.
Alice creates content.
Alice licences the content to Bob.
Bob decides to distribute the content with advertisements from Charlie.
You download the content.
Charlie does not pay Bob.
You did not breach any licences.
You did not pirate the content.
And just to further clarify, Alice is the person who made a video, Bob is Youtube, Charlie is an advertiser. Your argument is not an ad is piracy if “the advertisement company [hasn’t] paid the content creator.” The advertiser pays the distribution company, and the relationship between those two companies is irrelevant. The advertiser failing to pay does not retroactively turn you into a pirate.
The whole argument is pointless in the first place, it’s irrelevant whether or not you consider ad blocking to be technically piracy. A sensible adblock argument would be around the ethics of manipulation versus payment, or security versus whatever it is advertisers want. Arguing semantics doesn’t matter.
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I’m close to shore on my ship. “Arr FM plays the best shanties” I say as I tune my radio to my favorite station. After listening for 15 minutes, “Not another ad, I hate these.” I turn the dial to another station still playing some music for 3 minutes and then start to turn the dial back to Arr FM. Just then a cannonball whizzes across my hand. “Oh no, the HMS Pearl is on my tail” I shriek, but it’s too late chain shot has already shredded my sails.
Robert Maynard boards our vessel and puts a sharp sword to my throat. “What say ye in defense you dirty ad-skipping pirate?”
I yell out “But ad-skipping and even ad-blockers are legal! Even the FBI itself suggests using ad-blockers. It’s the responsibility of companies that serve free ad-supported media to ensure the efficacy of their ads but there’s no legal doctrine that says I can’t skip or block ads. Sure it might violate their TOS but they can find ways to block me or make the ads harder to avoid - or even switch to a paid delivery format that is covered by the legal system.”
“That’s no excuse!” he says as he decapitates me. A just punishment for a obvious pirate trying to squirm out of responsibilities such as I. Don’t steal free media kids.
Next time ““piracy”” comes up this is how I want to write a reply.
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Actually think that’s a rather apt description. Entertainment companies already went after Dish when they had an “AutoHop” commercial feature which included basically a streaming server from your home it would download and be accessible through (link). Kinda interesting because I didn’t know Dish was thinking ahead and had a pre-setup package for people wanting to remote stream home content.
You’re not violating their terms of service by doing that.
It’s really not. YouTube doesn’t get to decide what I play on my browser, I do. I just choose to not load the ads, and I choose to skip over sponsor segments manually. I don’t use sponsor block or anything automated like that, I just use a content blocker and the fast-forward buttons YouTube provides.
At what point did I pirate anything? I asked YouTube for content, and it gave it to me. I didn’t ask it for the ads, and it didn’t give it to me. I fail to see where the piracy occurred.
I’m certainly breaking their TOS, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m pirating their content.
If I find value in a platform, I’ll pay. I pay for Nebula, for example, because I’ve gotten a lot of value from a number of their creators and prefer to watch their content there than on YouTube. I’ll occasionally buy merch from a YouTuber, and sometimes donate. But YouTube actively tracks me in ways I’m not comfortable with, so I block their trackers and their ads.
…So, you skip the ads using an external program, which prevents the youtube channel you’re watching from getting their money.
That’s the part that makes it piracy. Of course you have the right to do this, I have no ethical problem with it, i’m doing it now, but you have to understand that when you’re doing this you’re preventing the youtube channels you’re watching from getting paid, you’re taking their content without paying them what they asked for in return.
If the youtube channel disables the ads themselves, that’s one thing, but you not watching those ads is not what the youtube channels want… because that’s how they get paid. Getting free content without paying the content maker is… piracy.
There’s no external program, it’s just an extension on my browser, which uses APIs within the browser to instruct it which content to load and which not to load. I tell it to block all kinds of things, from malware to large media elements to ads. YouTube doesn’t get to decide what content it displays in my browser, I do, because it’s my computer.
Yes, I’m preventing channels from getting ad-revenue, but that doesn’t make it piracy. What we call “piracy” is more correctly called “copyright infringement.” I’m not violating anyone’s copyright, the video is freely available to load and watch, I’m just choosing to not load and watch the optional extras that get shipped along with the video. I’m violating YouTube’s TOS, but that doesn’t mean I’m violating copyright in any way, and I don’t even need to login to YouTube to do this either, so it’s not like I formally agreed to anything here.
What the channels want isn’t my concern. If they want to enforce payment, LTT can post the videos to floatplane exclusively, or join up with Nebula.
That’s absolutely not true. Piracy is copyright infringement, and I’m not infringing anyone’s copyright here.
Here are examples of things that would be piracy/copyright infringement:
Each of those violates copyright because I’m sharing the video with people I am not authorized to share it with. Just watching the content and refusing to load the ads doesn’t violate anyone’s copyright, it just violates YouTube’s TOS, which, AFAIK, isn’t legally binding in any way. They can choose to block me from the platform, but not loading optional extras doesn’t violate any copyright.
Your copyright license to download the video content from YouTube is granted to you by the YouTube Terms of Service. By not agreeing to them, you do not get a license to watch the content.
Copyright law may be dumb and over-reaching but that doesn’t mean you get to redefine it to just avoid an icky word.
If that was true, I would have to agree to YouTube’s TOS to watch videos. That’s not required, so there’s no legally binding agreement between me and YouTube since I haven’t actually signed or accepted anything. My understanding is, I’m not bound to something that’s hidden in a link somewhere and never presented to me.
But even if I were legally bound to the TOS, nothing in the TOS says copyright is granted on the condition that I watch ads. This is the closest that I could see:
I don’t think blocking ads counts as “disable… any part of the Service,” it’s just blocking certain web requests. It’s close I guess, but it seems they’re more worried about “hacks” on the service to get access to things you’re not supposed to. For example, accessing adult content w/o making an account would probably count as a violation under this TOS.
That’s… external software. But even if it wasn’t, it’s still circumventing the youtube terms of service with software.
You’re breaking the terms of service of youtube by doing this… that makes it piracy…
No, breaking TOS doesn’t make it piracy, those are two completely separate concepts.
The part where the content creator doesn’t get paid and is supposed to according to the rules of the platform is the part where it’s piracy.
It’s really not. Piracy is copyright violation, and an ad blocker doesn’t violate copyright, it just violates the platform’s TOS.
Your definition of piracy is not correct
You’re really spending a lot of energy calling piracy not piracy.
Would you call it piracy to yank out the ad insert from a free newspaper and throw it into the trash without looking at it? Because that’s the exact analog from the non-digital world. Just because the mode of payment changes with the technical abilities of the medium doesn’t change that.
If you show me how that’s physically possible I will concede your point, but until then: No, that’s not nearly the same. You can’t just selectively block physical ads.
While the comparison may make sense when not thinking it through, print is a completely different medium than digital where comparisons only make limited sense. In this one they don’t at all.
Physical media does not track views (directly) or click through numbers, for example.
No because the content creator got paid for the ad.
Of course it does, the part where the content creator doesn’t get paid and is supposed to according to the rules of the platform is the part where it’s piracy.
Honestly you’re just showing your complete lack of knowledge on the topic. Using your logic, downloading a pirated movie and watching it myself, then immediately deleting it, is not copyright infringement.
Despite the fact that it literally is.
Not according to German, French, and I suspect most of other european countries laws. Only torrenting copyright-protected content is against the law because you’re uploading the content (distributing) while downloading.
I can torrent without seeding btw
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That… isn’t at all what is being talked about here.
It’s like a free booth that offers products and says donations welcome. It legally is not stealing if you take a free product and don’t give a donation. The enrichment of the creator legally has nothing to do with whether skipping ads is piracy. The creator has the option to stop offering their content for free in the future if they don’t like the money they’re getting from the amount of people watching the ads.
…except that’s violating youtubes terms of service, and skipping paying the content creators.
Which makes it for all intents and purposes piracy.
A restaurant has a sign that says “no shirt no shoes no service”. I walk in barefoot and order a burger. They serve me the burger. They had the right to deny me but they served me anyway. The responsibly to enforce their own terms of service is on them. Similarly youtube has the right to deny service to people blocking ads and sometimes does. That does not make ad blocking piracy for all intents and purposes. The onus to enforce their own terms of service is on them. And it would be very easy for them to take more drastic measures but they don’t.
I get that you’re trying to make an argument that morally it can feel like piracy, but it’s just not actually piracy. No copyright was violated. Youtube’s TOS doesn’t change that.
It’s actually not easy for them to take more drastic measures, and they’re actively working on enforcing it.
The part where the content creator doesn’t get paid and is supposed to according to the rules of the platform that you’re violating is the part where it’s piracy.
I understand your reasoning for calling ad-blocking for piracy, but I’m not sure I agree, or else we have to split “piracy” into degrees.
So what if it has to be split into degrees? The world is a complex place and wishing it was simple doesn’t make it so.
Just use another word for something that is in some ways similar to piracy, but isn’t piracy.
By describing what you mean, instead of a word which often leads to discussions on word definitions, you can avoid the latter.
I found saying “homophobia” lead to talk about “I don’t fear them” (phobia) rather than discussion on mistreatment. So instead I would say “aversion to homosexuality”.
2pt… Had an important point: piracy = copyright infringement.
Blocking ads is a ToS violation, not piracy.
Request I watch an ad but give me content either way means I can decline the ad. Demand I watch ad and withhold until I do, then I have to watch the ad (or seek another distributor). They asked for a donation, not payment.
If they could they would do that, they just can’t stop you.
They’re trying desperately these days, it’s just a hard problem.
Paywalling content would easily make this a transaction, but they choose to make this optional.
If Google didn’t have such influence over web browser specifications maybe they would give up on adverts - while users are the ones in control of their computers then it will never be up to YouTube what is played on our machines.
Could use the same argument for most games, streaming services, movies that you bought etc. Games that require you run Denuvo or Steamworks to function, streaming sites that require you run that particular browser or app with that particular DRM software, Blu-ray discs that require HDCP to work etc.
You can avoid these companies dictating what you run on your computer by doing one thing…
There is an argument that bypassing cryptographic and security features is a violation of the DMCA and therefore a copyright violation (not piracy unless you distribute though), but that’s also a gray area. E.g. I flashed my Bluray drive with software that allows copying the raw footage after it has been decrypted, so I’m not breaking the encryption, I’m just bypsasing it by copying the decrypted content while it’s in memory. I’m guessing that’s covered under the DMCA.
But blocking ads is nothing at all like that. I’m not breaking any security measures, I’m just not loading their ads. It’s like a DVR only storing the non-ad parts of the video, and those were commercially sold and AFAIK totally legal. I am not legally required to download everything the website asks for, requiring that would be insanity.
And yeah, I could completely avoid these companies, and I could choose to actually pirate content and likely totally get away with it. But what I’m doing (blocking ads, bypassing copyright on content I own and not distributing copies) is in a gray area. Blocking ads isn’t illegal AFAIK, and ripping DVDs and Blurays is in a gray area of the DMCA because I own the physical media (so it could be considered a “backup,” which is allowed).
Let’s go to the early days of “piracy”
You are claiming that fast forwarding the opening trailers and adverts on a rented VHS is piracy.
No, i’m explicitly not, those aren’t tracked and nobody gets paid based on whether or not you fastforward. That makes it not piracy. The content creator gets paid.
You know skip exists. Advertisers only pay when viewers watch at least 30 seconds of a long ad or engage with it.
Is it piracy if I skip the ads on the DVD I bought?
No, the ads on the DVD you bought have already paid the company that made the DVD.
You skipping those ads has no consequences for anyone, and nobody cares if you skip them.