Ad blocking is the same as game pirecy

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Anyone who walks past a bus stop without stopping to read the ads on the side are pirates.

It is your moral duty to look at ads. Think about the children!

Yar har! I be an advertisement Pirate! I don't look at billboards, magazine ads or buses. Nay, I don't even look at anything at all! By being blind I am the modern equivalent of Blackbeard himself! Yar har har!

OT: I don't use ad blockers outside of what Firefox does automatically. When I see an ad on Youtube, I hit refresh. I don't think not looking at ads is the same thing as stealing games.

Also, this guy has it right response to this thread:

1- When we buy a game it's a conscious decision to spend money
2- Ads are *forced* on us, nobody forces us to buy a game.
3- Many ads can/have/and shall be infected with a virus and/or mal-ware that may link us to less savory sites.
4- Since you haven't clearly made a link between website ads and games, I assume the only connection you have between the two is that they are on computers. So therefore changing the channel on the TV is equally as bad if you are using a console!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Here's the thing though, the websites get payed by their sponsors (the ones whose ads are all over it) whether I actually see the ads or not, and since I'd be ignoring the ads anyway I hardly see how I'm doing anything wrong. Besides that, as Bouncing Ferret FIlm said, many ads are fucking obnoxious and in your face and get in the way of the websites actual content.

So if employing an ad-blocker makes me a thief, I can live with that.

 

[Bek359]

The only reason that I have EVER clicked on an ad is that on sites like the Spoony Experiment that use Blip.tv for their video streming, there used to be an unintended feature that if you clicked on one of the video ads, it would open up a new tab with whatever the hell they were selling, and then the ad would go away and you could watch whatever you wanted to watch, even if the ad wasn't done playing. I would then just close the ad tab before it even loaded completely. Unfortunately, they have since patched this out, and I haven't clicked on an ad since, as I don't tend to buy a lot of stuff AT ALL.

 

[Klumpfot]

By the same logic, you are committing a moral atrocity by making yourself a sandwich during the commercial break of the movie you are watching.

A point that you -could- have made, however, is that the use of adblockers is forcing advertising agencies to be more creative and probably, in the long run, more intrusive with their advertisements. Going back to the piracy analogy, it's sort of the same as with DRM in games, in that only people who actually buy the games (or watch the ads) are bothered by it.

I didn't make my point very clearly, and I'm sorry, but I haven't eaten breakfast yet!

 

[Bek359]

This has been a psychological experiment

Illuminate...

"Psychological experiment" on a forum means "troll". Always.

 

[Kouen]

To me i dont see that it matters at least to me i ignore all ads so if i use a blocker for sites only speeds up my surfing

 

[NotSoNimble]

"Ad blocking is the same as game pirecy."

What's pirecy? Oh yeah, you are talking about Piracy.

That out of the way..... what's the point?

Do you want people to rally for and or against something here?

We as people are always inside the box about our thinking, we say that pirecy is wrong but dont care about the needs of websites we try to get something for nothing but that is Communism, right now there are tons of websites that need help from greedy ad blockers and its our job to stop them.

The next time you see a person ad blocking tell them that when they ad block they are no better then dirty pirates, tell them they are no better then thieves, one day we can stop all ad blockers from stealing from the struggling website hosts that have no other way of getting money.

This has been a psychological experiment

Actually, there was this one time on this website when someone told people to use an ad.......never mind, that ended bad. The next time I am watching someone surf the web (cause that happens all the time) I will let them know what you said.

The one thing I want you to explain to me tho, is what part of this was a psychological test?

For the record, I look down on people who pirate. I also never knew someone who uses an ad blocker thingy.

 

[guyy]

I use NoScript, and really can't imagine trying to web-surf without something like it. Not just because of the obnoxious ads everywhere, but also because of the lovely scripts that automatically download viruses or spyware.

Since it only blocks clientside scripts like Java/Javascript, I don't think the server even knows the ads are being blocked. Even if it does, does it really care whether I see the ad and don't click on it, or don't see the ad and don't click on it?

 

[Mr. Gency]

It doesn't matter if the adds blocked or not. I'm only clicking "X".

 

[Paulie92]

You don't get something for nothing in communism.... that is so wrong it hurts my brain

The best summing up of communism is "From each according to their ability and to each according to their need."

 

[Romidude]

Wow...I just...can't reply at all to that, I know some basic programming(and grammar) and from what I can tell, no one knows at all that you are using an adblocker. You connect to the page, it downloads the source code, your computer is instructed to display that source code which comes out on the other side as Javascript, CSS or text(at which point the adblock decides what should be blocked, meaning it doesn't allow the code to run) which then goes to your computer monitor and then into your mind. Looking back at that process, They can't tell you are using an adblock so no one gets hurt or loses money, please think before creating threads such as this.

If I am wrong and someone knows how they know you are using an adblock, please reply with how.

 

[darkfire613]

Blocking ads is not piracy, and piracy is not theft. The advertisers have already paid for the ad space, so the website has the money already. Sure, they get additional money from clickthroughs, but people with ad blockers are the people who wouldn't be clicking on the ads anyway. Also, piracy ≠ theft. Theft implies that something has been removed, when in piracy, a copy has been made, and nothing has been taken away.

 

[Gyrefalcon]

1- When we buy a game it's a conscious decision to spend money
2- Ads are *forced* on us, nobody forces us to buy a game.
3- Many ads can/have/and shall be infected with a virus and/or mal-ware that may link us to less savory sites.
4- Since you haven't clearly made a link between website ads and games, I assume the only connection you have between the two is that they are on computers. So therefore changing the channel on the TV is equally as bad if you are using a console!

This.

There is no connection to ad blocking and piracy. I am shoved adds down my mouth, any one can choose to pirate a game. How the hell did you even come to this conclusion?
Oh, and yes I ad block.

Unobtrusive ads on the side are more likely to get my attention than pop-up or screen hogging ads. This is especially true of video ads. I do not have much tolerance for one ad for 4 minutes of video afterward. Escapist is about the only exception to the rule. And if I want to watch several video clips on a site I am inevitably watching the same ad over and over which is really hard to tolerate and makes me much less favorable towards the company/product being displayed than if the commercials at least rotated.

One of the best ads-in-video I've seen has been done on Hulu where they include a few and they are in the middle of a show instead of at the beginning. If you have ever hunted for a specific episode of something on the net and had to sit through the beginning ad 5 times or more hunting for the right one, you understand why the mid-show one works better for the 1/2 hour to hour long shows.

But the more an ad tries to interfere with the very thing I'm looking for, the more likely I will try to click away from the ad, and the more likely I will leave the site altogether. I do try to watch them here because I like this site that much. But elsewhere? Less is more if you want my attention and the possibility of my $$.

 

[one_madrak]

I think you're wrong for two reasons:

1) I'm pretty sure that ad companies pay websites whether people see the ads or not
2) I dunno about anyone else, but I started blocking ads because most websites tried to cram the same ad down my throat over and over and over. If I didn't click on it the first time, I'm PROBABLY not going to click on it the 150 millionth time

Actually, repetative ads have made me firmly decide NOT to buy products, so, ironically, blocking those ads may actually be MAKING money for those companies. I might actually buy their product or see their movie or whatever if my interest isn't bludgeoned to death by the same ad over and over.

-M

 

[Sentox6]

I never click on ads, so I suppose this invalidates your argument.

By that logic, there's no harm in pirating a game you wouldn't have been willing to pay for.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Argument invalid due to the following: Lack of sense, silliness, grammar

Can you be sure he is native to English language? Not everyone has perfect grammar, not even those who write on newspaper or do books. I don't have perfect grammar, because I am not native to English. STOP JUDGING PEOPLE BEFORE YOU KNOW THEIR HISTORY.

Back on topic.
I Don't block ads but I would love to block those IMVU and ads that open new tabs... I never click on them anyway.

 

[Space Spoons]

I'll stop blocking ads when they stop being obtrusive resource hogs that often double as delivery systems for all kinds of spyware and malware. Especially the ads that obnoxiously fill the entire screen, and the video ads that auto-load and play.

I understand that running a website, especially one with lots of traffic like The Escapist, is difficult and costly, but that doesn't excuse the use of ads like those. If they want to play rough, so will I, and at the end of the day, I've got nothing to lose, while they're losing money.