Is Blocking Ads the Same Stealing as Downloading Music From Torrents Is?

Over the last week we spoke quite a lot about how fair (or unfair) stealing of music and video content is - the usual never-ending topic that will always have enough supporters of both points of view (yes, stealing, and no, totally fair) on absolutely any blog or social media site where a discussion begins. This particular discussion was provoked by a new Firefox plugin that allows users to browse Amazon and find the links to pirated music, videos, and even books on torrent sites - and download the content for free elsewhere instead of paying to Amazon (and the content creators) for this same content.

Later on we got to know that the creators of the plugin were two students that developed it as a practical experiment to do the research for their classes and they did not really mean to violate any laws. We can’t know if it was really nothing but a research experiment or if this explanation was only to pretend the guys did not really mean to do anything bad to avoid negative consequences, but it is absolutely understandable that Amazon lawyers were particularly unhappy about someone offering people an easy way to browse their online store and get everything they want for free elsewhere.

But to me the most interesting part was not in the plugin itself (I think people that use torrent sites to get their free content already have enough accessible tools that they are pretty happy with) and not in the Amazon’s reaction (this was more than predictable, of course). The interesting part was in the discussion that this situation initiated everywhere - it was as animated as it always is when people get a new chance to try and prove why stealing content is righteous and persuade everyone no one will be able to stop them from doing so.

My own post about this subject received a very interesting comment that made me think a lot about the attitude of people stealing the content and never even realizing it is illegal and at the very least not particularly ethical:

It is by no means the same as stealing CDs/DVDs off of a store shelf. Products on the store shelves, have a cost associated with producing them and getting them to the store shelves. The business model of selling CDs and DVDs used to be effective, because it cost something to mass produce them. With the digital age, the cost of reproduction is ZERO, which makes the supply unlimited, no matter what the demand. The free market will now allow these businesses to exist with their present business model. Legislation they purchase to keep themselves afloat now will change nothing in the long run.

Of course it is no wonder that people cite virtually non-existent costs of content reproduction as the main reason for why they think that pirating content is perfectly Ok and should never be considered stealing at all - for the simple reason that it costs almost nothing to produce a new copy of a song or a movie to consume it right from the hard drive of your computer. Hence this song or a movie should be free.

But I think the other side of the dispute is absolutely right when mentioning that content is not only about reproduction as it is first required to produce it to be able to reproduce later. And even if the reproduction is really worth nothing, producing a movie or a song definitely has certain costs associated with it and it is no wonder that content producers want to be rewarded for their efforts and for the investments they make to make this content possible.

As a content producer myself (after all, producing content for a blog is only slightly different from writing a book that will be downloaded from torrent sites) I am obviously a supporter of the “pirates are thieves” point of view and I always invite people engaged in such disputes to imagine that they are musicians working long hours to get the best song in their lives recorded and hoping people will enjoy it and buy it - instead only having people downloading it for free from those very torrent sites they support so eagerly.

But while I was talking to the readers here I realized that this problem of pirating content is stealing is very similar to another problem the tech blogosphere and our passionate readers are always eager to participate in again and again - that of blocking ads and depriving publishers of our revenue we could earn if you chose not to use any ad blocking plugin in your browser.

Look, I think the similarities are totally striking here: when you download a song or a video for free from a torrent site you deprive the people that spent their time creating this particular song or video of their well-deserved revenue and when you choose not to watch ads on our sites you do exactly the same as we spend endless hours creating the content that you seem to enjoy and we expect to be able to get a remuneration for these hours in the form of advertising revenue.

I myself totally understand the problem with ads being intrusive in some cases and often making a visitor’s experience on a website less enjoyable than it could be without ads but unfortunately for now we don’t have other options in most of the cases but make you watch some ads. Of course there are ideas of granting paid-for access to our websites and our feeds to the readers that choose to pay - and removing the ads from their view. But unfortunately for now we don’t have such tools that we could consider using without losing all our readers.

What’s more, the mentality of internet users for now actually makes it virtually impossible to even attempt to offer readers and visitors pay something (even when it comes to really small amounts that would hurt no one’s budget and could be an equivalent of what we could earn on one visitor watching ads) because the psychology now is that everything that is available online should be free forever - and this point of view seems to be shared by the majority of internet users.

And advertising is supposed to be an equivalent of paying - but you do not pay with your money and only pay with your attention to our ads and the companies that are generous enough to make existence of the sites you enjoy possible at all. Ads are an alternative of paying that should make every web user happy: he still gets the content for free yet he rewards the content producer who will be able to still pay his rent and buy some food off the revenue we get from these ads.

But while ads are supposed to be a compromise between interests of publishers and content consumers that should make everyone happy, the fact remains: people still block ads and continue to prove their point of view that they have every right to do so because they don’t want ads to distract them from their browsing experience - without realizing that these ads make browsing many sites possible at all because not everything is created by enthusiasts that have enough money not to care about earning revenue at all.

To me the most shocking fact about Firefox is that Adblock Plus is invariably among the most popular plugins in the Firefox directory: it gets over 312 thousand of weekly downloads as of writing this. Yet I think that this plugin (and multiple others intended for the same purpose) should be as illegal as the torrent one that Amazon was so quick to protest to last week. After all, both plugins enable a web user to get their content without paying its producers - so why should there be a difference at all?

I fully realize that this post will bring me a bunch of new comments saying how web publishers should be happy about the fact that people are generous enough to visit our sites at all and how people have dozens of reasons to have the ads removed from our sites. And also that we should be happy about the attention we get - and never care about our income. But I think that I have to say this: the best compliment and the best appreciation a web publisher can expect to get from you is when you choose not to block ads on our sites and think that we actually deserve a few moments of your attention to our ads.

So next time that you want to install an ad blocking plugin, think about all the people that bring you your share of information, news, analysis, advice and even tips that make your life and business better - and sharing our content with everyone willing to listen for free only expecting to get a few cents in return from the advertiser who will pay for your presence on our sites. Don’t you think this is fair?

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