From my point of view advertisers pay to access channels where they believe their messages will have an impact. Presumably they will pay more for higher-impact channels and less for low-impact ones, it would be unreasonable for them to expect their message to have 100% consumer penetration. If people without technical expertise have chosen to package "valuable" content along with a low-impact advertising channel in a way where the ads can be trivially stripped and relying on these ads to be profitable I posit that these entities deserve to go out of business and stripping their ads is no more stealing than buying a gizmo from a company that has unwisely decided to offer their product for less than it cost to produce.
Reading through the glass may be a bit different, because the glass is transparent on purpose to entice you to buy the paper, so they intend for you to do that. That is, it's part of the deal they're making with you.
> Is using a Tivo to prerecord a show then fast-forwarding through the ads stealing?
Yes.
> What about just using the mute button?
Yes.
> What if I watch all the ads but never buy any of the advertised products?
No. Advertising is a risk taken by the advertiser. The contract is that they pay for the content and you consume the message. You're under no obligation to be impacted by that message.
> From my point of view advertisers pay to access channels where they believe their messages will have an impact. Presumably they will pay more for higher-impact channels and less for low-impact ones, it would be unreasonable for them to expect their message to have 100% consumer penetration. If people without technical expertise have chosen to package "valuable" content along with a low-impact advertising channel in a way where the ads can be trivially stripped and relying on these ads to be profitable I posit that these entities deserve to go out of business and stripping their ads is no more stealing than buying a gizmo from a company that has unwisely decided to offer their product for less than it cost to produce.
I think you're right in a certain sense, but also conflating some things. Let me clarify a bit. If a website clearly states "You must watch the ads in order to consume our content", then I believe it is stealing to contravene that. They have stated their terms, and are providing content to you contingent upon your adherence. If you break that agreement, you're stealing. Simple as that. If the agreement is not explicit, that's less clear. If the website does not say that you have to watch the ads to view the content, then i'd say that it's not stealing. Same with television, by the way.
The litmus test for stealing here is breaking an agreement. I believe fundamentally that any content creator has the right to specify the terms by which their content is consumed. If one of those terms is 'watch the ads', then you are morally obligated to watch the ads. If they don't specify, then i'd say you're free to do as you wish.
In addition to the counterarguments you've already received, I'd also like to note that the quote above is simply your personal opinion. Content creators often have specific, limited legal rights to specify how their content is consumed, none of which are absolute and most of which vary wildly between different jurisdictions. The same applies to moral obligations. If a content creator specified that you must kill yourself immediately after consuming their content, no reasonable person would interpret that as a legal or moral obligation. Clearly, there are limitations to the conditions content creators can impose, both legally, morally and as a matter of fact.
I'm not aware of any jurisdiction where content creators have the legal right to force you to watch advertisments (that is to say, avoiding watching ads is against the law). Personally, I feel no moral obligation to watch them either, but this is a matter of opinion and obviously you disagree, which is fine. I just don't see how you have any claim of obligation beyond a personal moral sense here.
Not really. What's limited is not content creators ability to specify consumption, but rather the assumption of the ability of the counter-party to understand and agree to the terms. There are some genuine content restrictions, like first sale doctrine, but those are fairly narrow in scope. EULAs are limited not by the fundamentals of the medium, but by the assumed ability of the customer to meaningfully agree to the terms.
If you want to argue against my position, you should be taking the position that your average web surfer does not have the ability to meaningfully agree to the terms of the contracts with all of the websites they visit, and that thereby those contracts are unenforceable. That is the correct and only correct objection to the moral obligation to view ads.
> If the website does not say that you have to watch the ads to view the content, then i'd say that it's not stealing. Same with television, by the way.
I have never seen a TV program imply that I must watch the ads in exchange for consuming the content. Given this, how do you support your claim? Or are such messages common on television in your locality?
Also I have a follow up question for you: You say using the mute button during the ads qualifies as stealing (for the moment, let's assume the program has come with explicit terms requiring you to watch the ads), would you still consider it stealing if I had left the television muted for the entire show? Am I obliged to unmute the TV when the ads come on? Does the answer change if I have been selectively unmuting parts of the program (for instance if I was just interested in watching the daily doubles on Jeopardy)?
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I consider it stealing if and only if that agreement is made explicit. Most television channels i'm aware of do not do this. So fast forwarding / muting is not stealing. But in principle it could be, if they specifically requested that you not do it.
> Also I have a follow up question for you: You say using the mute button during the ads qualifies as stealing (for the moment, let's assume the program has come with explicit terms requiring you to watch the ads), would you still consider it stealing if I had left the television muted for the entire show? Am I obliged to unmute the TV when the ads come on? Does the answer change if I have been selectively unmuting parts of the program (for instance if I was just interested in watching the daily doubles on Jeopardy)?
This is an interesting question to explore. In some sense, you're consuming a fractional portion of the content (i.e. the visual portion), and you are consuming the same portion of the ads. So, there is some sense of symmetry there, which seems intuitively appealing as a standard to me. If I were adjudicating this personally, i'd say that seems acceptable, unless the terms of the content delivery explicitly forbid decoupling the audio/visual channel in this way.
This sounds fine, but how can you break an agreement you haven't conceded to? I cannot see how the simple fact that an ad was offered alongside other content constitutes any agreement from the receiving party.
No one owns your attention.
That's quite easy to do.
The question is why it should matter that you did so.
Indeed this is the question. If you haven't meaningfully entered an agreement, then I don't believe you're obligated to abide this term. However, that's sort of the question. What constitutes entering an agreement? How explicit do they have to be exactly to make it enforceable? I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems to me that there ought to be some standard by which you can be considered to have agreed to some sort of service-terms.
> Yes.
Seriously?
And luckily there are plenty of content creators that don't think that way.
