Germany's Supreme Court Confirms That Adblocking Is Legal, In Sixth Consecutive Defeat For Publishers

Legal Issues

from the never-gonna-give-you-up dept

Adblocking is something that many people feel strongly about, as the large number of comments on previous posts dealing with the topic indicates. Publishers, too, have strong feelings here, including the belief that they have a right to make people view the ads they carry on their sites. (Techdirt, of course, has a rather different position.) In Germany, publishers have sued the makers of AdBlock Plus no less than five times — and lost every case. It will not surprise Techdirt readers to learn that those persistent defeats did not stop the German media publishing giant Axel Springer from trying yet again, at Germany’s Supreme Court. It has just lost. As Adblock Plus explains in a justifiably triumphant blog post:

This ruling confirms — just as the regional courts in Munich and Hamburg stated previously — that people have the right in Germany to block ads. This case had already been tried in the Cologne Regional Court, then in the Regional Court of Appeals, also in Cologne — with similar results. It also confirms that Adblock Plus can use a whitelist to allow certain acceptable ads through.

Reuters notes that Springer’s case was just the first of five against Adblock Plus to reach the Supreme Court in Germany, although the others are presumably moot in the light of this definitive decision. However, that does not mean Springer is giving up. There remains one final option:

Springer said it would appeal to the [German] Constitutional Court on the grounds that adblockers violated press freedom by disrupting online media and their financial viability.

Yes, that’s right: if you are using an adblocker, you are a bad person, who hates press freedom….

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Filed Under: adblocking, germany, legal
Companies: adblock plus, axel springer

First And Only Snippet Tax Deal In Spain Is With Big Supporter Of Snippet Tax In Germany

Copyright

from the maybe-just-a-coincidence dept

Two years ago, Techdirt wrote about an industry study of Spain’s “Google tax”, which requires a Web site to pay for sending traffic to publishers when it quotes snippets of their texts. Just as everyone who actually understands the Internet predicted, Spain’s new law had a disastrous effect on the publishing industry there, especially on smaller companies. Despite that unequivocal evidence, the law is still in place, and it’s a further sign of how pointless it is that only now has the Spanish Center for Reprographic Rights (Cedro) finally managed to sign up its first deal with a news aggregator, called Upday (original in Spanish). Cedro is claiming that this “pioneering” move possesses a “strategic importance” because it recognizes the rights of those whose publications appear elsewhere as snippets.

The fact that it has taken so long to find anyone willing to accept that point is bad enough, but it gets worse. Upday operates across Europe, and was launched in Spain at the beginning of March this year. It turns out to be a partnership between Axel Springer and Samsung. As Techdirt readers may recall, the giant publishing group Axel Springer is one of the biggest supporters of the Google tax in Germany. Initially, it tried to take a hard line against the US search company. But Axel Springer was soon forced to back down humiliatingly and offer Google a free license to post snippets from its publications. A two-week experiment without search engine leads caused Web traffic to Axel Springer’s sites to plunge.

So, far from being a “pioneering” move that validates the whole snippet tax approach in Spain, Upday’s deal with Cedro is simply a key German supporter of this daft idea trying to give the impression that the moribund Spanish Google tax is still twitching somewhat. It’s pretty clear why Axel Springer and Cedro would be keen to do that now, after years of nothing happening in Spain. The European Union is currently revising the main EU Copyright Directive. Article 11 of the proposed text is an EU-wide version of the snippet tax, despite the fact that the idea has failed miserably everywhere that it has been tried. The agreement between Upday and Cedro will presumably be used as “evidence” that the Google tax is “working” in Spain. The fact that it is a “circular” deal between German and Spanish supporters of the idea proves the exact contrary.

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Filed Under: germany, google tax, link tax, snippet tax, spain
Companies: axel springer, google

Turkish President Erdogan Now Demands Injunction Against German Media Boss For Saying He Laughed At Anti-Erdogan Poem

Free Speech

from the give-it-a-rest,-erdogan dept

Every time you think that the thin-skinned, insecure freakouts of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can’t get any more crazy, they do. If you don’t recall, Erdogan has a notrious thin skin, and a long history of censorship of views he doesn’t like. But since becoming President, this has gone into overdrive, with him filing over 1800 cases against people in Turkey for insulting him — including the famous case in which someone passed around an internet meme comparing Erdogan to Gollum.

That kind of nuttiness jumped international boundaries recently, when Erdogan’s lawyers discovered a long-forgotten German law that made it illegal to insult the head of a foreign country, and demanded that the law be used against a satirical German comedian, Jan Bohmermann, who purposefully read an insulting poem about Erdogan, in order to mock his thin skin. Some might find suing over that poem to be… well… a bit on the nose in making the point the poem was intended to make. But, to Erdogan, it appears that suing over insults is just something he can’t stop doing. More recently, Erdogan discovered that Switzerland has a similar law and went after people there too (while also getting a Dutch reporter arrested).

Apparently, the fact that the most commonly mocked aspect of Erdogan these days is his inability to handle people mocking him hasn’t made Erdogan realize that the more he freaks out, the more people are going to mock him. His latest move is especially crazy. It appears that the CEO of German mega-publishers Axel Springer, Mathias Dopfner, wrote an “open letter” in support of Bohmermann, which stated that he “laughed out loud” at Bohmermann’s poem, and suggested that the case against Bohmermann is a problem for free speech. This is obviously a reasonable opinion held by many.

Erdogan’s response? Apparently, it’s to use the same law that was used against Bohmermann, to demand an injunction against Dopfner for publishing the letter, in order to get it taken down. Thankfully, this request was quickly rejected by a German court, saying that the open letter was “a contribution to building public opinion in a controversial debate.”

Erdogan and his lawyer, Ralf Hocker, seem to only want to double down on this. In one article he says (prior to the injunction being denied) that if it were denied, he would appeal the decision to a higher court. And Hocker has some weird ideas about free speech and human dignity:

?Mr Erdogan is a human being and human dignity is inviolable,? Hocker said, adding that this was placed above the freedom of press, art and opinion in the German constitution.

Uh, no. Dignity is very much violable. If you do something that trashes your own dignity. Like suing comedians for making a joke about you. Or suing nearly 2,000 other people for making jokes about you. The loss of dignity is not from the poem or the insults. It’s from Erdogan’s own actions.

In the NY Times link above, Hocker, makes some even more ridiculous statements:

Ralf Hocker, a lawyer representing Mr. Erdogan in Germany, said he had a mandate to seek an injunction against anyone who publicly insults the Turkish president, to try to stop what he described as an ?avalanche? of scornful abuse.

?Everyone thinks they are allowed to insult Mr. Erdogan in any way that they want because they do not find him very sympathetic,? Mr. H?cker said. ?But this is not about sympathy, it is about human dignity, namely to protect it.?

Of course, seeking an injunction against people mocking Erdogan for trying to silence all this criticism isn’t going to stop the avalanche. It’s just going to make it bigger. And, no, the reason people think they are allowed to insult Mr. Erdogan is because they believe in freedom of expression and that Erdogan has done things worthy of scorn. Stop doing those things — like suing people over meaningless jokes — and the scorn goes away. And, again, suing over “protecting human dignity” seems like an odd way to improve your dignity.

Filed Under: censorship, germany, injunction, insults, jan bohmermann, mathias dopfner, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey
Companies: axel springer

German Publisher Axel Springer Just Can't Stop Suing Ad Blockers, And Attacking Its Own Readers

Business Models

from the why-would-you-do-that?!? dept

As you hopefully already know, we take a bit of a different view of ad blockers around here on Techdirt, recognizing that many people have very good reasons for using them, and we have no problem if you make use of them. In fact, we give you the option of turning off the ads on Techdirt separately, whether or not you use an ad blocker. And we try to make sure that the ads on Techdirt are not horrible, annoying or dangerous (and sometimes, hopefully, they’re even useful). Most publications, however, continue to take a very antagonistic view towards their very own communities and readers, and have attacked ad blockers, sometimes blocking users from reading content if they have an ad blocker. Perhaps no publication has fought harder against ad blockers than German publishing giant Axel Springer, the same company that frequently blames Google for its own failure to adapt.

Axel Springer has been suing the makers of various ad blockers. So far, those cases have failed miserably, making Axel Springer look like a whiny, out-of-touch publication that refuses to get with the times. But, instead, it just keeps on suing. From TechCrunch:

German media giant Axel Springer, which operates top European newspapers like Bild and Die Welt, and who recently bought a controlling stake in Business Insider for $343 million, has a history of fighting back against ad-blocking software that threatens its publications? business models. Now, it?s taking that fight to mobile ad blockers, too. According to the makers of the iOS content blocker dubbed ?Blockr,? which is one of several new iOS 9 applications that allow users to block ads and other content that slows down web browsing, Axel Springer?s WELTN24 subsidiary took them to court in an attempt to stop the development and distribution of the Blockr software.

Specifically, explains the law firm representing Blockr, Axel Springer wanted to prohibit Blockr?s developers from being able to ?offer, advertise, maintain and distribute the service? which can be used today to block ads on http://www.welt.de, including the website?s mobile version.

Isn’t that nice. Rather than recognize that people don’t like your ads, you try to sue the companies serving an actual consumer need so that you can continue to piss off your readers. It’s the dinosaur strategy — rather than innovate, you sue to try to stave off the inevitable decline.

Filed Under: ad blocking, ads, blockr, business models, germany, revenue streams, weltn24
Companies: axel springer, google

Germany's Top Publisher Admits Its Web Traffic Plummeted Without Google; Wants Politicians To 'Take Action'

Copyright

from the careful-what-you-wish-for dept

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the decision by German publishers to grant Google a “free license” to post snippets — a humiliating climbdown from their earlier position that Google should pay for the privilege of sending them traffic. Now Germany’s leading publisher, Springer, has admitted in a Reuters article that stopping Google from using snippets for a while was catastrophic for its titles:

The Reuters article provides some interesting figures quantifying the power of Google in Germany:

In the same piece, a Google spokesperson provided some other numbers:

Doepfner said his company’s climbdown was

As we wrote recently, there’s a risk he may well get his wish, especially in the light of these newly-released figures demonstrating Google’s huge power in driving traffic to sites. Given the complete failure of attempts to “curb” Google’s powers in Germany, It’s hard to see how that will turn out well Europe-wide.

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Filed Under: copyright, germany, snippets
Companies: axel springer, google