A new legal battle opens in Germany. The German Federal Court relaunches the debate around the legitimacy of advertising blockers under the leadership of the Axel Springer press group.
Advertising blockers are part of the daily life of many users. These extensions available on most browsers, whether on PC or smartphones, are the nightmare of many press organizations, like the Axel Springer group, for whom these advertising revenues remain essential.
Since 2015, the press group has been behind multiple legal actions against Eyeo, the publisher of the famous Adblock Plus. If he has previously been dismissed, recent developments carried by German justice could this time prove the group, reports 01net.
A story of copyright
Initially, the group pretended to the justice that Adblock Plus brought to him by preventing him from winning the income that visitors could have given to him on his site. An argument that had not hit the bull’s eye to justice. In 2022, it was on the reason for copyright that Springer attacked. The group mentioned that an advertising blocker deeply modified the code of a site. An argument that did not hold for the Hamburg Court of Appeal.
However, the German Federal Court sees the case with another eye. For the legal organization, it is not excluded that the code generated by a browser can be protected by copyright. A sufficient reason to relaunch the legal machine
Internet involvement
If victory is far from being acquired for Axel Springer, some free internet defenders are already heard, like Mozilla, head of the Firefox browser. The Foundation evokes a ” erroneous logic »Entering the freedom, privacy and safety of users. To support his remarks and discredit the pattern mentioned by Springer, Mozilla compares advertising blockers with a quick advance button allowing users to skip advertisements when listening to a podcast.
The Foundation adds that these blockers and other extensions help protect Internet users that can be exposed to threats during their navigations. The latter can go from phishing to the execution of malicious code or intrusive monitoring.
If Germany won, it could walk in the footsteps of China with this ban. For the moment, the case is still underway.
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