this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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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?
I don't remember whether Linus said blocking ads is a crime. It isn't a crime, and that's really important.
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.
Agreed.
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.