That's very shortsighted and sounds very elitist. Do you also steal from brick & mortars that don't have business models or store layouts that are agreeable to you?
Why not? The site owner is saying, "Here, I made this cool thing. You can use it in exchange for $THING." Do you think it's fair to use it and then refuse to give him $THING? How is that any better than your employer deciding not to pay you the agreed-upon wage for the work you do?
> The site owner is saying, "Here, I made this cool thing. You can use it in exchange for $THING."
Name one popular website that explicitly states you can browse their website ONLY if you look at ads.
The notion that your users will look at ads isn't an obligation; it's an expectation. In contrast, wages are a contractually-bound obligation. It's not morally wrong to refuse to live up to someone's expectations.
If you owned a website, would you refuse to serve anyone browsing with Lynx? They sure aren't going to be looking at any ads.
But it's kind of a dick move to take something from somebody knowing full well that they expect something in return and then deliberately refuse to reciprocate.
Sure, if you're using Lynx, you really don't have an option. That's fair enough. But in many other cases, it seems disrespectful to me to use somebody's site and tell them, "No, you can't have anything in return for giving me this even though you clearly wanted to." You have the option of doing your part, but you decline to do so. That isn't how I like to treat people I appreciate.
You're right, it is kind of dickish and it is inconsiderate on the user's part. I think we can agree on that. But I don't think it's fair to have such high expectations of your users. This is the internet, where everyone is an asshole and half the incoming traffic to your site will be wordpress logins. All we can do is hope the user is nice and will click on an ad.
Your web server is simply providing data (a bunch of HTML) to anyone who sends an HTTP request for your web page. That's all your server is doing.
It's not telling the client (the browser) "here's a bunch of HTML, but you can only use it if you show ads". There is no contract or agreement to display ads, implied or otherwise.
In the end, all you can do is simply ask the user to display ads. If you want to enforce that the user views ads, the web probably isn't the right medium for your product.
> Your web server is simply providing data (a bunch of HTML) to anyone who sends an HTTP request for your web page. That's all your server is doing.
Exactly, and that costs money. Electricity costs money, servers cost money, webdev costs money. That data that is being sent to you wasn't magically discovered and offered up for free.
Exactly, and that costs money. Electricity costs money, servers cost money, webdev costs money. That data that is being sent to you wasn't magically discovered and offered up for free.
I dunno, jrock.us is free. I subsidize those costs for the readers.
As soon as your point of view requires me to understand an abstract imaginary analogy-based framework, agree with you about the framework's inherent legitimacy, and submit to your interpretation of my obligations under that framework, you've long since lost my attention.
It's like let's play pretend, or story time, and you're telling the story. I stop thinking about the rules as soon as I leave the card table.
