German publishers want to sue maker Adblock Plus

A number of major German publishers want to sue Eyeo, the company that develops Adblock Plus. The publishers are also working on software that should prevent content from being displayed if a visitor has enabled the controversial add-on.

Adblock Plus is a popular extension for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari, among others, that blocks most ads on websites. However, the makers make an exception for ‘non-obtrusive’ advertisements. A number of guidelines have been drawn up for this. For example, advertising should not get in the way of the reader and it should preferably consist of a text link. Furthermore, the indication ‘advertisement’ must be placed above an advertisement. Incidentally, this option can be turned off and some forks of Adblock Plus, such as Adblock Edge, have purposely left the option out.

Although websites that think they meet the conditions can place a request on the Adblock Plus forum to be included on the ‘whitelist’, rumors are circulating that Google, among others, has put a large sum of money on the table not to be blocked. be by extension. Although no hard evidence has yet been published, the internet giant is said to have paid $30 million, converted slightly more than 22 million euros, to Eyeo.

Eyeo does not deny that it receives money from some companies for the ‘maintenance’ of the whitelist, but the German company does not want to give details. Despite this, Google appears to be violating Adblock Plus’s own guidelines by showing a significant amount of ads reports the German journalist Konrad Lischka.

Some major German publishers now want to end Adblock Plus advertising blocking by suing the creator. It concerns Axel Springer Media, SevenOne Media, responsible for the satellite channels Sat.1 and ProSieben, and IP Deutschland from RTL, writes Focus. In their view, the business model of Adblock Plus is illegal, because blocking ads leads to distortion of competition. However, a number of lawyers say that the chance that a lawsuit against Eyeo will be successful is not great, because the end user decides whether or not the adblocker is activated.

In addition to possible legal action, the German publishers are also developing software that can detect an activated adblocker and then block or prevent access to the displayed content. However, such measures can often be circumvented.