i don’t block ads directly. i use my windows hosts file to keep my computer from navigating to domains that i find particularly intrusive or keep the page from loading so my ie7pro userscripts don’t get a chance to execute. take a look at just a part of my hosts file:

127.0.0.1 googleads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 premium-antivirus-defence.com
127.0.0.1 defp.opt.fimserve.com
127.0.0.1 demr.opt.fimserve.com
127.0.0.1 ad-yt-bfp.doubleclick.net

i really don’t see anything wrong with not allowing my browser to navigate to specific sites. it’s nothing personal to you and i am sorry if you happen to rely on revenue from any of the sites i have listed above. you want to deliver content to me? fine, i’ll consume what you’re offering me. but i came to your site, not pagead2.googlesyndication.com. at the end of the day, i decide how i receive your content. i decide what web addresses my computer sends http requests to. i decide how many instances of my browser will run on my computer at a given time. stop complaining about ad blockers stealing and rely on a sturdy business model that does not involve ad revenue.

also, there is no “barter” between you and myself. there is no according-to-hoyle standard that binds me to any agreement wherein i am required to glance over your ads in exchange for your content. where do you people come up with this stuff?

so here’s some advice: want to feed your family? get a real job that offers a steady paycheck that you know will be there every payday.

It’s my right to put an adblocker in my browser.

I’m not sure that anyone has hit on a really important part of this discussion. Part of the reason bandwith is SO expensive, quite possibly THE reason it is so expensive, is the amount of unnecessary crap that’s floating around (spam mails, flash ads, jpg ads, etc). When I started using the internet, before google was around and excite.com was *the* search engine, ads and spam mail were non-existent. Yes, there was a time when there was NO spam mail, no anti-virus software, no spyware, no malware.

The way I look at it, I’m using less bandwith by blocking ads. I have never used ad blocking software, EVER. I came to your site, and I’m afraid that your newsletter popup, and the text underline ads were the straw that broke the camel’s back and I installed adblocker on firefox. Nothing personal, just happens to be my breaking point.

I may reconsider blocking your ads if I use your site more frequently, but like I said this is the first time I’ve been here and I don’t know if there will be a next time.

Good luck with your ad revenue.

Also, in print media, the ads are RELEVANT. In WWII Magazine (print version), the ads are for tours of battlefields, history books and videos, memorabilia, etc. But on your page, I saw an ad for a car. A CAR. On a *PC* page.

Finally, am I stealing if I am blind and so my browser doesn’t download images? Am I stealing if I’m at school and cross-site scripting (no external ad scripts) is blocked? Why should I have to have my browser download ads? You should (and I really, really hope that someone who calls their website ‘PC Mech’ knows) that an external stylesheet, or an external script, or a .swf, or an image, or anything from another site are NOT in the page source code. They are external files. All ads from another source are therefore seperate downloads. My browser doesn’t have to download them. AdBlock tells Firefox not to download the ad. Since when were webmasters allowed to force something to happen on MY computer? You do what you want on the server. I may do WHATEVER I want with it once my brwser saves it to my computer to display it. Face it. You have NO RIGHT to control MY computer. I can download EXACTLY what I want. I’m just excersising my right of complete control over Firefox to tell it not to download anything from, say, kontera.com. You may not, can not, and should not force me to. If you do, then you’re stealing my computer just as much as botnet operators would. Why should my browser have to listen to your links to other content (such as images)? When did I give you my computer?

Also, you do not have the right to profitability. You have the complete rigght to support yourself and a family, but you may not steal my time to get money. Solicit donations. Products – good idea. I’m fine if YOU pick the ads. But some of your ads so far have been irrelevant (car ad) and obnoxious (those ads on text that pop up when you hover over the text, courtesy of kontera.com). Also, there are too many video ads. If you tone down on those, the ads may be fine. Now, though, they are just annoying.

When you go into someone’s house, you abide by their rules. If they make a custom of taking shoes off and leaving them at the door, you do the same.

When you go to a different country, you give leeway for their culture. If you don’t, you might even break the law.

When you go to a website, especially one that is serving the purpose of bringing in revenue for a family, and one that offers LOADS of content that could otherwise be very expensive, we need to ask ourselves “Do we have the right to not abide by the rules of the site?”

This isn’t meant to be scathing, just realize what you are walking into.

To Stolisnaya,

You can’t ask DR to do something else. This website is his baby. Just read his short bio down and to the right of this block. He “eats and breathes the internet and technology”. You think you can come to a man’s website where he does the business he loves and tell him to change his life? Get real!

Mr. Risley and others believe that this site can give something valuable to people. Considering the content, the price of a premier membership is mere pennies. The cost to you having to look at an ad for a split second is nothing. The only reason it is so obtrusive is because you make it out to be. The site administrators aren’t out to piss you off with ads. They are out to offer you something you might need/want, and a FREE newsletter isn’t something you can complain about.

Basically, you are entering the PCMech office when you come on here. If you don’t do business by the rules of that office, well, it’s your conscience. There comes a time when you need to take some responsibility and stop heaping it on others. When you come on tis site that offers a service, you’d do better than to take advantage of it.

Here’s to system wide ad blocking.

Long Live Ad Muncher!

Ok, I wasn’t intending to start a jihad, here – in reference to some of the “Posted Comments” appearing on my e-mail notifications which don’t actually seem to be part of this thread.

To make it clear; yes, this IS a very good site. In my opinion, it IS probably worth paying some money to come here; the advice given, that I’ve read so far, is extremely proficient. In fact; now that I KNOW about Mr Risley’s views on the matter, I feel less inclined to actually block the ads (I haven’t done so, on any of my re-visits).

As Stolisnaya says above; the key issue here, for me at least, is the concept of “Stealing”. The owners/operators of this site making money from it, is not in itself a problem. Having unobtrusive banner and thumbnail ads is not, in itself, a problem.

But this attitude – as I said, extolled by the Google AdSense quote – that in some way a site owner has the right to “assume” some sort of contract between themselves and whoever views their pages, and then take the attitude that people are “stealing” if they don’t implicitly agree to the unspoken, unwritten and unpublished terms of this “contract”.

If I invited you around to my house for dinner, would you then feel obliged to honour some “agreement” I decided that you were implicitly accepting when you walked through the door?

Another example, then – let’s say that the owner of a site had chosen to make money by displaying links to porn sites – using pornographic thumbnails and banners.

Are parents, using “Parental Controls” to screen out this sort of thing, also “stealing” from the site owner? Or does the parent have the right to make their own moral call in this instance?

And if the second answer… why do those of us who fundamentally object to advertising on the internet not get the same right to make that choice…?

Once again, this is a great site. Best of luck with it. )

Best wishes,

–
Khrys.

I will always use ad-blocking, simply because I’m not interested in ANYTHING that an advertising site offers.

Many companies set their firewalls to block advertising sites, simply to preserve bandwidth.

If that means you no longer can make a living then so be it. Do something else. Surely the site won’t be missed, there are bazillions of sites as good or better, then there are blogs and forums with much more valuable information.

BTW many sites STEAL from advertising sites, simply because they force the reader to click on an advert. The user doesn’t even read it, they just click it to close, yet the site gets paid for it. Now who’s stealing?

Ok, so you’re right – I AM mixing up the two terms, public domain and publically accessible, my apologies. Your correction is valid, of course, but changes nothing about my point; you have chosen to make this site “publically accessible”, it shows up on many search engines, there’s there is no warning or way of knowing that this site contains ads until you get here. Hence I, as a browser, have no way of making an informed choice about whether to view/download ads or not.

The fact is, I DO NOT wish to view, download or otherwise encourage internet advertising in any way, shape, or form, at this or any other time. EVER. That, surely, is MY right?

So sure; if it really means that much to you, I WON’T come back to the site, if the price is having to download ads of any kind. But bear in mind, you give no warning of that and make no attempt to prevent people from accessing the site unless they agree to view the ads. I’m sorry, but there is no “assumed barter” agreement between you and me, just because I’ve stumbled across your website. If you want me to agree to something, you table that agreement in some way and give me a chance to consider it – you can’t just decide that the agreement is valid. If you CAN… then please understand that I’m writing this under the assumption that we’re actually bartering, and that you now own me £100 for the pleasure of wasting your time reading my rants.

As you haven’t paid me this yet, is it now ok for me to go around telling people you’re some sort of thief…?

As for your second point – I’m sorry, I have no idea why you’re arguing with me about the WWW not being a commercial venture. You know very well what it is, you go on – AFTER, I might add, accusing me of making a “bold and false leap of logic” – to describe quite correctly what it is;

“The internet is simply a connection of websites. Each website, individually, is controlled by it’s owner and made available on their own terms, whether commercial or not.”

Ergo, the internet is NOT a commercial venture. It’s simply a connection of websites. Yes, your own site may very well BE a commercial venture. That it your choice and, as you say, your right.

But whilst you do indeed have the right to do whatever you want with your site, you have NO implied or stated right to make money out of “The Internet”. It is NOT a commercial venture. It was not set up for commercial purposes. There is no agreement anywhere that says that anybody has a “right” to make money from it. If you can, all well and good – but please don’t act as if that’s what it’s there for. It’s not. It never was.

A whole bunch of people like yourself have slowly turned up over the years and simply decided that they’re gonna use it in order to make money. Well, good luck to you. But don’t act like the rest of us are doing something wrong by deciding that we DON’T want the internet to turn into just another corporate-controlled medium, awash with pointless advertisements for products we’re never gonna buy. Nobody asked for adverts on the internet. Nobody HAS to view them if they don’t want to.

I guess all I’m really trying to say is, unless you’re making some sort of effort to keep people out who don’t want to view your ads, or giving some sort of warning of your policy, you really shouldn’t be going around calling people thieves just because they use ad blockers.

If you put some sort of agreement clause on your entry page, or perhaps got hold of the software I mentioned earlier which checks for blocked ads and refuses connection to your site if it finds somebody running a blocker… THEN you would be well within your rights to accuse people who took measures to ignore or circumvent your procedures of “stealing”.

Otherwise, you’re making no attempt to stop people coming here and yet ranting at them for making an informed choice about what content to view while they’re here. Which, if you’ll forgive me, sounds a little disingenuous.

For what it’s worth, I think you have a great site. You obviously know your stuff. But if the price of being here is really gonna be downloading ads, I’d really rather keep searching the web until I find someone prepared to offer advice without advertising.

Of course, it’ll take me a while to FIND such a site, because the many that are out there are becoming increasingly buried amidst the hundreds of sites which, like this one, are covered in advertising.

But of course, I’M not about to accuse anyone of “stealing” due to the time I’ll waste picking through irrelevent sites…

Best wishes,

–
Khrys.

First, you seem to confuse the idea of publically ACCESSIBLE content and “public domain”. That is a false comparison. The content on this site is publically ACCESSIBLE, but if it were public domain, anybody could take it and do whatever they want with it. Also, if it were public domain, the public would own this site and would foot the rather substantial bill to pay for it.

Obviously that is not the case. This site is no more public domain than the content of CNN. CNN owns the content they put out just as I own the content I put out.

Secondly, where did you get the idea that the WWW is not a commercial venture? Again, you make a bold and false leap of logic. The internet is simply a connection of websites. Each website, individually, is controlled by it’s owner and made available on their own terms, whether commercial or not. Being that I own this website, I have the right to make money from it if I wish to. For you to say I don’t have that right is complete nonsense.

If you think this site is public domain, you are more than welcome to pay the 4-figures monthly it takes to run the place and make it available to people like yourself.