I do see your point – that if a reader knowingly prefers no ads and suppresses them, or would rather look at alternate ads as provided by a different ad vendor, they should have the right to do so. And perhaps at the level of law, that makes sense (i.e. the provider of content would use contract terms of use rather than law as the “policeman”).

On piracy, I do see a difference between those who warez stuff for free and those who milk warez as a revenue stream – and I do have a problem with the latter. It’s the same problem with revenue directors who derive revenue from the value they add (“I think I’ll look at eZulu’s ads and links today”) but from the value they leech onto.

The latter’s the principle I was stating here.

I do think that if the law is going to protect the rights of software vendors, record labels and movie studios, then that same protection should be extended to online content creators.

Whether that should be the case for *any* of the above (I think most would say yes, but would then debate about how far these rights should be protected, for how long, and against what) is another matter.