Ad Blocking Software Is Totally Legal, German Court Rules

​A German regional court has ruled that Adblock Plus (Adblock Plus)—a free browser plugin that blocks ads online—is indeed legal.

After a four-month trial, the judge ultimately dismissed the suit filed by two major German media companies against Adblock Plus for "injunctive relief" in an attempt to end the plugin's operations.

"This is a victory for every single Internet user because it confirms each individual's right to block annoying ads, protect their privacy and, by extension, determine his or her own Internet experience," Adblock Plus said in a statement.

(Note: Adblock Plus is a different plugin than Adblock).

The plaintiffs were Zeit Online GmbH and Handelsblatt GmbH, which publish popular news sites such as Zeit.de. The two companies took particular issue with Adblock Plus's white list process. In 2011, Adblock Plus began allowing some "non-annoying" advertisements through its filter (users can opt out of this feature if they prefer absolutely no ads). Most publishers, if their advertisements follow Adbloc​k Plus's guidelines, can get white-listed for free, but some pay a fee, including Google and Micro​soft Bing. This (along with some user donations) is how Adblock Plus pays the bills.

"It's a case by case basis," Ben Williams, Adblock Plus's communications manager told me of how the company decides which publishers to white list. He said 90 percent of publishers don't pay any fee. "There's no line in the sand, so to speak, but it's sort of like taxing the one percent: those at the very top, who are benefitting quite a bit from the whitelisting process, pay for it."

But the German media companies (along with three other publishers who currently have active lawsuits against Adblock Plus), didn't like the idea of a startup (Adblock Plus currently has 37 employees) acting as gatekeepers, determining which ads get through, and who has to pay.

"We are still convinced that Adblock Plus constitutes an inadmissible and anticompetitive offer interfering with the freedom of press," Zeit Online and Handelsblatt said in a joint statement, adding they are considering appealing the ruling.

Adblocking software is still a niche market in many ways, but it's constantly growing. Williams told me Adblock Plus gets about 2 million downloads every week and a report from ​PageFair (a startup that helps publishers find better advertising to work around adblock software) found that adblocking usage overall grew by nearly 70 percent worldwide between June 2013 and June 2014.

"We recognize that adblocking is a reality and it's coming from a place where people believe advertising has just become too crazy," Sean Blanchfield, the founder of PageFair, told me. "We want to use this as an opportunity to reset the clock on advertising and introduce more moderate advertising."

Adblock Plus wanted to do this, too, Williams said. The plugin blocked all ads outright from 2006 when it launched until 2011, but the company noticed that advertisements seemed to be growing more annoying as advertisers attempted to capture the attention of a shrinking audience. Williams said the decision to start the "acceptable ads" program was their solution to end this cycle, though as I mentioned above, it's also how the company makes money.

The shift to less-intrusive, less-annoying advertisements seems to be successful, though. Williams told me less than 10 percent of users opt-out of the whitelisted ads.

"All of this tells us we're on the right track," Williams said. "We don't think we're God's gift to the advertising ecosystem, but this is the best solution we've found."

The three other pending cases against Adblock Plus will go to court later this year.