• @[email protected]English
    9•2 months ago

    I’d argue this as well. I see it in a similar way. Linus is obviously not trying to sit on some high horse and condemn piracy, he’s just calling a spade a spade.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•2 months ago

      No, he’s calling a spade a backhoe. Piracy is one of two things, depending on your definition:

      • sharing/accessing copyrighted material you don’t have the rights for (i.e. seeding or downloading a torrent)
      • circumventing technical restrictions on copyrighted content (e.g. DRM)

      Blocking ads does neither of those things, it merely blocks loading of content that you don’t want to see. It’s basically the modern version of a DVR, where you can choose to cut out portions of a video that you don’t want (e.g. the ads).

      These things are technically piracy:

      • using a YouTube downloader
      • sharing downloaded YouTube videos
      • posting a YouTube video that you don’t own
      • using substantial portions of a YouTube video you don’t own w/o authorization in your own video (i.e. beyond Fair Use)

      Blocking ads isn’t one of those things, neither is skipping over parts of a video you don’t want to see (i.e. the sponsor segment).

      Blocking ads reduces revenue to Google and the video creator. That doesn’t make it piracy, it’s just being a jerk to the platform and the creator.