(no subject)

Earlier today I was struck by the thought "I wonder if anyone's tried to argue in court that adblocking should be illegal". The answer is, unsurprisingly, yes; there have been multiple cases against it that as far as I can tell have all failed.

"blockadblock.com" argue that these prior lawsuits were based on the wrong legal theories and the right way to do it is through anti-circumvention laws, which exist both in US and EU law (a few months ago there was a DMCA takedown against the youtube-dl repository on those grounds, though it was put back pretty quickly). I've seen people quote this approcingly but I have no idea how mainstream that argument is.

(At first I thought blockadblock.com sold anti-adblocking solutions, but apparently not. They provide them for free because they really care about maintaining the ad-supported web. I've heard of weirder ideologies. Anyway, that neatly resolves my questions about why they might want adblock declared illegal and disproves some of my wilder theories)

Interestingly, that article is from december 2016, i.e. four years old by now. Has anyone actually tried that theory in court yet? If so, I'd have expected it to receive enough attention to show up in my search so far, but no luck yet. If not, why not? I'd imagine motivation abounds. Maybe it's obvious nonsense to anyone who knows the law, it's not like I'm qualified to evaluate that.