Ads (Photo : Reuters)
After four months of trial, a regional court in Hamburg, Germany finally released a ruling declaring that ad blockers are legal.
German ad publishers took Adblock Plus to court arguing that what the application does, which is blocking ads, is illegal. The plaintiffs are Zeit Online and Handelsblatt. The defendant is Eyeo, which is the company that operates Adblock Plus.
After the four-month long legal proceedings, the Hamburg judge finally ruled against the plaintiff's supporting the claim of Adblock Plus. The ruling said that Adblock Plus help its users in blocking annoying ads as well as protect their privacy.
A statement from Adblock Plus said, "Now that the legalities are out of the way, we want to reach out to other publishers and advertisers and content creators and encourage them to work with Adblock Plus rather than against us."
Adblock Plus is used by millions of users in order to block ads in many web browsers. It can be downloaded for free and works as an add-on to the user's browser. The application earns money by allowing "white list" adverts to get through its filters.
In order for ads to pass Adblock Plus' filter, it must meet certain criteria. This includes the exclusion of animations, sounds and ads must not be pop ups. Adblock Plus is free and has been downloaded more than 400 million times, according to BBC.
Despite the legality of Adblock Plus' operation, many critics calling the firm "racketeers." This issue surfaced when an unnamed media company told Financial Times that Adblock Plus is soliciting money in order to add the company's ads into the "white list."
Adblock Plus retorted this claim by issuing a statement saying that 90 percent of all the ads in the "white list" are not paying.
