Is ad blocking illegal, immoral or fattening? What do YOU think?
Ad blocking software is now available that will let users surf the web without ads. I have used it myself when an overloaded ad server prevents a site from loading.
This morning www.rawstory.com was WAY too slow in loading so I popped up a menu and enabled the adblocker. I left it on and when I visited dailykos, I was invited to subscribe... as if something automagically detected that I'd left adblocking on (wow!).
I turned it off and got a regular dailykos page. Now, having weaseled on subscribing, I have to say it's an interesting topic for discussion. Some surfers say they pay for bandwidth loading ads so it's ok to block ads. Some site owners dependent on ad revenues say it's thievery to view pages without also seeing the ads.
I think that letting overloaded adservers stall out my browsing is unacceptable -- but normally I leave the adblocker off and often find that part of a site's value is the ads.
There are some who are serious in declaring that legislation should address this issue and make it illegal to block ads (!).
I think more freedom is better, and pressuring advertisers to be better about how they load their servers and to offer interesting and relevant ads is a good thing.
PS I went to Borders looking for Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal" but they didn't have it in yet. I did pick up Wesley Clark's "A Time to Lead" and John Dean's "Broken Government". I probably would not have bought Clark's book were it not for the ad I saw here -- as well as the other.