Are you stealing?

I started this with a juicy title, because this is much more substantial than the previous blurbs for the day. This is a conversation that Ryan and I were having the other day, and I found this site that brought it back to mind.

The underlying issue is, are you essentially stealing by blocking advertising? This has become very relevant more recently with various technological innovations that block/remove commercials. One example from a few years ago was the commercial skip feature on ReplayTV's. This actually ended up being removed in later firmware (like mine) because of pressure from media groups. The web browsing world has something similar with the AdBlock extension for Firefox. Since this is perpetually one of the top five downloaded extensions, I would say people are using this in large numbers as well.

The site I linked to in the title and above has noticed the effect this has on their advertising revenue. They have created some code to check for this extension and display a message telling the user that it is bad.

Which brings up the question, is it bad? Do I have the right to block annoying advertising? I think the answer is absolutely, yes. Now, I'm smart enough to realize that nothing is free. The content that I am getting for free is likely subsidized by advertising. If everybody quits viewing the ads, the site doesn't make as much money, and I lose good content.

However, I maintain that blocking ads is fine. As long as people are blocking them conditionally, as I do, not simply grabbing a list and blocking every ad in site. I say this because I purposely do not block google ads. They are unobtrusive, targeted, and generally do not annoy me. Thus, I think with selective ad blocking I am essentially telling advertisers to create better ads or I will ignore them. The problem is that rather than doing that, most would rather simply find more ways to circumvent blocking techniques. So, it becomes an arms race. There will always be new ways to block the new ways to circumvent the old techniques of producing annoying advertising. How's that for a tongue/mind twister?

What this really points at is a complete shift in advertising in my mind. Move toward pay for content, rather than blast "free" content subsidized with advertising.