Is AdBlocker legal? Can&#39;t we get a legal action about AdBlocker as web masters? AdBlock is one of the most popular ad blockers worldwide with more than 60 million users on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge as well as Android. We have calculate that one of our site loss almost $10,000 each year because of AdBlocker. Simply what they do is, they remove the advertisement which are on our website when a user who use Adblocker visits. So as a third party, they change the website content just before display it to the user. Is it legal? Can't we get a legal action about AdBlocker as web masters?
Can't we get a legal action about AdBlocker as web masters? No. I assume that by "web master" you mean a server admin who contracts with entities which are seeking to advertise their goods and services. An advertiser pays the server to transmit (or send(), in terms of a socket API) certain content to whoever submits a GET or POST request ("the client"). The scope of the contract ends there, and the end consumer or client is not a party to that contract. Any point beyond the server admin's routers, it is perfectly lawful for end users to run some program on the client side where the purpose of that program is to (1) parse any packets received in the client socket, (2) filter out some of it, (3) and forward the rest to a browser. Bringing legal action against AdBlocker would be somewhat akin to suing producers of TV remote controls under the allegation that the mute button functionality blocks advertisement content.
No it’s not illegal It’s called retailing: https://youtu.be/ywSkKkuGQ2A https://youtu.be/k8OreiHU91Y https://youtu.be/XpR6y1sNArU You are allowed to advertise the products you sell. Even if you don’t make them. You can even use their trademarks to identify them - that’s what trademarks are for.
If a website's TOS has restrictions against unauthorized copying and use of anything in the site, that applies to the TOS, too. Chances are, no one will do a Google search on the exact text of their TOS to find if someone has copied it; but who knows? If they paid a legal service to draft a very specific and original TOS, they may be concerned with others copying it illegally. Beyond that, their TOS is a legal document. Your TOS is a legal document. Your users sign a contract when they click and accept. If you copy and paste a TOS, and don't understand exactly what is in it, and you and your users are bound by that TOS, what kind of legal risks do you open yourself up to? A simple Google search yields https://formswift.com/terms-of-service among others. Or try one of the many services like LegalZoom.
You have the right to request anything you want, but there is a very limited set of things that you can have a legal expectation of them doing. The service provider has no obligation to block a user. You can likewise request a report, and from a pirate site I would expect no response. There is no legal requirement that a pirate site block an offending user after a certain number of offenses. There is no direct way to compel a pirate site to ban a user. Indirectly you might accomplish that end if you take legal action against the site, which causes them to ban a user in order to protect themselves If a DMCA request was not "proper" (the correct legal form) they will not perform a takedown, and may not inform you that they won't. Make sure your takedown request is legally correct and actually delivered to the correct person. If they still ignore your request, they will have lost the "safe harbor" provisions, and you can theoretically sue them. Since the pirate site presumably only hosts a link to elsewhere, their making public such a link is not itself copyright infringement, so you need to be going after the ISPs who manage the actual host sites. The pirate site might still be a contributor to infringement, along MGM v. Grokster lines. A standard defense against infringement would be "We had no idea", and ignoring DMCA takedown notices is clear proof that they did have an idea. That's basically what DMCA takedown is about: saying what it takes to use the "We had no idea" defense.
Modern websites use large amounts of Javascript scripts. These are small programs that are run on your machine. By accessing the website you implicitly give permission for this to occur. (Aside: I'm not aware of any case law on exactly what this implicit authorisation covers. CFAA case law on "authorised access" suggests that this is going to be complicated if it ever becomes an issue). Javascript is supposed to be run within a limited framework which allows the website to control the rendering of the website and track how you use it. So they can track your mouse clicks when the browser window has "focus", but not clicks you make when accessing something else. Like all software, the Javascript programs and the web browser "interpreter" that runs them can contain bugs. Javascript has to work on lots of browsers, so its not surprising when things don't always work properly. Coming on to the CFAA, criminal penalties only apply to intentional access. 5 (c) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss. So if a website runs Javascript on your computer with the intention of crashing it, that is a crime. However if the crash is inadvertent due to ordinary programming errors then it isn't. In this case it is almost certainly innocent. To prove otherwise you would need to study the code they are sending in detail to see if it is doing something strange and unreasonable.
The theoretical is that the domain slutsofinstagram.com does dilute or harm Instagram's mark because of the use of "Instagram" in the domain and because of the unwanted association of the parody story; that's the theory and "grounds" that Instagram would use in their lawsuit. Instagram would have to prove their theory of dilution or harm to the jury or judge, and convince either that the harm is not theoretical but real and financially damaging in order to win their case. The owners of slutsofinstagram.com would have to defend themselves and argue that they are not damaging Instagram's mark and their parody is a parody and is protected as such. Any actual court outcome is also theoretical. If Instagram won their case, one of the legal remedies could be the court ordering the owner of slutsofinstagram.com to transfer ownership of the domain to Instagram so they could simply park the domain and effectively take down the parody story. Or, the owner of slutsofinstagram.com could prevail because they argued the fact - and the court agreed - that the domain name and creative contents of the site is a parody and is protected speech and doesn't dilute Instagram's mark because any reasonable person could see that the site is a parody and not related to Instagram. In the US, a possible example of a parody not diluting a mark is L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc., 811 F.2d 26 (1st Cir. 1987), where Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but plaintiff-appellee L.L. Bean, Inc., was neither flattered nor amused when High Society magazine published a prurient parody of Bean's famous catalog. The reality is that Instagram can contest the use of slutsofinstagram.com because they can; they have deep pockets and can take the owner of slutsofinstagram.com to court, like any other trademark holder can contest another's trademark. The owner of slutsofinstagram.com would have to defend themselves in court, or settle - possibly for monetary damages or the ownership of the domain or use of slutsofinstagram - and not go to court. It's possible that the SLAPP (Strategic lawsuit against public participation - Wikipedia) California law could help the plaintiff defend themselves against a deep pocket lawsuit designed to kill the parody site - as the suit would be "intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition" - which could happen because Instagram is part of Facebook and is incorporated in California. But basically, in the legal world, one man's litigation bully is another man's trademark protection hero. This concerns the US. As always, your mileage may vary due to jurisdiction and national/international laws and agreements concerning trademarks.
Content posted to the web is usually openly accessible to all (unless protected by a password, paywall, or similar restriction). But that does not mean it is freely copyable by all. Such content is protected by copyright in just the same way as if it had been published in a book of essays by various contributors. Unless the copyright holders (who are likely to be the original authors, but might not be) give permission, or an exception to copyright applies, copying such content would be clear and obvious copyright infringement, and any copyright holder could sue for damages. Permission could be given by publishing the content under a permissive license, such as a CC-BY-SA license, or any of many other available permissive licenses. Or a would-be reuser could find the copyright holders and ask for permission. If the holder cannot be found or identified, or does not respond, then no permission has been granted. In the US the main exception to copyright is fair use. See this answer and other threads with the fair-use tag here for more on fair use. Since the question seems to contemplate using the whole of the posted content, since it might well damage any potential market for that content, and since the use does not seem to be &quot;transformative&quot;, nor used for criticism or comment, a finding of fair use for this situation seems unlikely. But Fair use findings are very much fact-driven, and the exact facts do matter. Thus I cannot be at all sure whether a court would find this toi be fair use or not. In other countries there are a variety of exceptions to copyright, and I have not come close to reviewing them all. But none of the ones I know of seem to apply to the situation described in the question. Many are narrower than the US concept of fair use. I fear that without permission, copying this content would be infringement. However, it would not be infringement to create a site that includes a link to the existing content, and a summary or description of that content, along with new content, including comments on the old, with brief quotes to indicate what is being commented on.
Is blocking certain people while allowing everybody else to view some content discrimination Yes. and violate anti-discrimination laws Probably not, at least in the US. There is no federal law prohibiting "discrimination" in general. There are specific laws regarding discrimination against certain groups in certain contexts. They would probably not apply to an individual determining who is allowed to view their social media posts. That said, there are some specific contexts where this might be illegal. They would generally involve non-personal use of the account. The courts recently ruled that Donald Trump may not block people on his Twitter account, because he's using it in an official presidential capacity rather than just his individual capacity. Also, racial discrimination in housing is illegal, so if you're selling your house and you block all black people from viewing your house photos, that would probably be illegal as well. Also is not being able to consume information available on a public platform a violation against right to freedom. I'm not sure what you think a "right to freedom" would entail. But I don't think you have the right to demand that a person allow you to access their social media accounts.