German judges explain why Adblock Plus is legal

13 12 2016
Last month, Adblock Plus maker Eyeo GmbH won its sixth legal victory in German courts, with a panel of district court judges deciding that ad-blocking software is legal despite German newsmagazine Der Spiegel’s arguments to the contrary. Now, the reasoning of the Hamburg-based panel of judges has been made public.

According to an unofficial English-translated copy (PDF) of the judgment, Spiegel Online argued it was making a “unified offer” to online consumers. Essentially, that offer is: read the news content for free and view some ads. While Internet users have the freedom “not to access this unified offer,” neither they nor Adblock Plus have the right to “dismantle” it. Eyeo’s behavior thus amounted to unfair competition, and it could even wipe the offer out, Spiegel claimed.

 

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The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/german-judges-explain-why-adblock-plus-is-legal/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

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