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Mozilla warns Germany could soon declare ad blockers illegal
(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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This is truly dystopian. A ruling in Springer's favor here could imply that modifying anything on a webpage, even without distribution, would constitute a copyright violation (EDIT: only for material in which the copyright holder does not grant permission for the modification; so not libre licensed projects). Screen readers for blind people could be illegal, accessibility extensions for high contrast for those visually impaired could become illegal, even just extensions that change all websites to dark mode like Dark Reader could become illegal. What constitutes modification? Would zooming in on a website become illegal? Would translating a website to a different language become illegal? Where does this end?
This needs to be shot down.
Dystopian, yes
Also Fascist
Something we never want to see in German politics in particular
I don't see a reason to have a preference for a specific geographic region to not be influenced by fascism. Fascism should not be instituted anywhere, in any scenario. Unfortunately, it's on the rise globally, and I'd personally prefer it not be present anywhere at all, not just in an area in which it has had previous influence.
It's like cancer.
It's never good. But when it's already taken hold once, you want to be extra vigilant.
New ubo feature: if page does not grant permission to block ads then entire page is blocked.
When I come across a paywall that is not circumvented by simple script blocking I don't even bother to try anymore and I remove these suggestions from my feed.
Also, wouldn't this ban also potentially kill or at the very least cripple FOSS too? And what about browser forks like LibreWolf or Icecat?
Because I could see this law overriding rights that basically all FOSS licenses grant to modify something as long as that modification, and the source code in general, is still freely available.
AFAIK, this is unlikely to lead to a ban on ad blockers. Worst case is probably that the judgment will imply some way to deliver ads that is illegal to block.
In any case, there are exemptions for certain assistive technologies. Those might not be much affected.