this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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I know the topic of whether adblock is piracy is debated, but I am guessing there are a lot of adblock users here and I was wondering if anyone has seen the youtube adblock warning message in the wild. I use ublock origin and still haven't seen it once.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

It's one of Lienus's L takes. People are giving it the benefit of a doubt because he has a huge following.

I started parroting "using a VPN to bypass region block is privateering" in response. LMG taking any VPN sponsorships after that L take is hypocrisy in my book.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah it's even more ridiculous when you apply this logic to sponsored segments.

It's an ad, I skip it by seeking in the video, therefore it is piracy?

Also, people get arrested and fined for piracy where I live (because it is, well, illegal), so people blocking ads should go to prison?
When the face of LMG talks about things like this in a main channel video they should look into the consequences of the opinion they present.

Excuse the language, but what the actual fuck was Linus thinking?

Like what is the actual end goal here?
Linus says people should be punished for blocking ads, and the best way he thinks it should be executed is by law enforcement? Last time I checked that is how illegal actions are usually handled.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why hyprocisy? It's a fair point to say circumventing paying in some way is piracy. It's possible, so anyone can decide for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The hypocrisy lies in Linus preaching "ad blocking is piracy" while taking VPN sponsors which enables piracy in another way.

Gotta work on that reading comprehension friend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

LTT also did videos about PiHole and YouTube Vanced, so I personally don't think it's hypocrisy advertising VPN's (as long as those VPN ads don't lie about it's benefits).

I do believe that Linus once again uses words in ways not commonly used. I.e. if they define piracy as

consuming content without paying how the creator intended

then blcoking ads is piracy. But the commonly used definition is more like wikipedia's

[...] Online piracy or software piracy is the practice of downloading and distributing copyrighted works digitally without permission [...]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If blocking ads is enough to constitute piracy then piracy ceases to lose meaning since then every act of using any website with an Adblocker is an act of piracy. At that point piracy becomes a meaningless phrase when even the FBI endorses the piracy tool.

For Linus to insinuate that a crime is being committed by comparing it to piracy is ridiculous, since last I checked there isn't a country where adblocking is a crime. He can argue it's morally unfair for people to legally visit YouTube and legally not disable Adblock to view his channel, but it's not a crime. He's basically implying that people should be running around without Adblockers on the web, which itself is a security risk to do. But, hey blocking ads is piracy and you wouldn't want to be a criminal would you?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't remember whether Linus said blocking ads is a crime. It isn't a crime, and that's really important.

At that point piracy becomes a meaningless phrase when even the FBI endorses the piracy tool.

I don't think it's right to call something a piracy tool. We have the similar discussions about "hacking tools". Nmap can be used for commuting crimes, just like BitTorrent, the Internet or my kitchen knifes.

With this it isn't a problem for the FBI to promote "piracy tools", since almost everything can be used for good and legal purposes. uBlock is one of the most important tools to be secure on the internet, just like nmap to make sure systems are secure.

He can argue it's morally unfair for people to legally visit YouTube and legally not disable Adblock to view his channel, but it's not a crime.

Agreed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I brought up the crime aspect, since piracy to me is an act where laws are being broken that can result in fines or imprisonment. Pirates were outlaws and hanged, so kind of reason why digital lawbreakers got the moniker pirate. Not really in the category of even legal malicious compliance.

Was meant to draw attention to how ridiculous it was to even label a completely legal action as an act of piracy just because he was upset about adblockers. Might as well call out Brave browser next with it blocking ads out the box.