WHOA: Could Germany Ban Ad Blockers?

German megapublisher Axel Springer is asking a German court to ban an ad-blocker.

They claim HTML/ CSS of their sites are protected computer programs.

And influencing they are displayed (e.g by removing ads) violates copyright.

I'm in puzzled wonderment at this claim.

Preventing ad-blocking would be a huge blow to German cybersecurity and privacy.

There are critical security & privacy reasons to influence how a websites code gets displayed.

Like stripping out dangerous code & malvertising.

Hacking risks from the online advertising are documented.

Any attempt to force Germans to run all of the code on a website without consideration for their privacy and security rights and needs will end very, very poorly.

Defining HTML/CSS as a protected computer program will quickly lead to absurdities touching every corner of the internet.

Just think of the potential infringements:

-Screen readers for the blind

-'Dark mode' bowser extensions

-Displaying snippets of code in a university class

-Inspecting & modifying code in your own browser

-Website translators

Or blocking unwanted trackers.

This is why most governments do it on their systems.

I'm not a lawyer, but if Axel Springer wins the consequences are just nuts:

Basic stuff like bookmarking & saving a local copy of a website might be legally risky.

The Wayback Machine & internet archives and libraries might be violators.

This might even extend to search engines displaying excerpts of sites.

Code sharing sites like GitHub could become a liability minefield...

The list goes on and on.

Finally, only one country has banned ad-blockers. China.

This is not good company for Germany.