I can't believe you're being serious. OK, let's take it a step further. What about this: in the middle of the book the author says you can't finish reading if you don't stand on your head. Will you do it? Classic reductio ad absurdum.
We are free people. You are free to invent your own terms. You can propose any rules. You can declare that visiting your website without clicking five times on different buttons is unethical. I can visit your website and only raise my eyebrows at your rules, without feeling any moral urge to do what you demand.
> I can't believe you're being serious. OK, let's take it a step further. What about this: in the middle of the book the author says you can't finish reading if you don't stand on your head. Will you do it? Classic reductio ad absurdum.
That is not an ad reductio argument in the least. It's a silly condition, but if the author requires it, then you must do it, or you can simply not read the book. What part of basic social contract theory do you not get?
There is no requirement in social contract that you have to obey anything another person says, just because they said it. On the contrary, social contract has it that whether an exchange is a gift or a business transaction must be defined before the exchange happens.
It's important to make that assumption explicit, because the current situation on the web is that sites do not lay the terms out beforehand, do not demand an informed consent, and then proceed to complain people use the web the way it was intended to use (according to web protocols).
This isn't correct. I believe there are extensive restrictions on what type of terms are considered "reasonable", especially between consumers and corporations.
Arbitrary contract terms aren't automatically viewed as valid and binding by the courts.
You're correct, and this is the path to the primary legitimate argument against the view that you're morally obligated to view ads. None of the things other people are saying in response to me represent correct understandings of the issue. This is its crux: Can users meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit?
> This is its crux: Can users meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit?
Even if you can show that a user has fully read and understood the terms of an agreement, there are MANY legal restrictions on what these agreements can stipulate and require. These restrictions are NOT based only on a user's ability to "...meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit"
Furthermore, nothing at all of what you have said makes any sort of moral argument. There is nothing immoral about breaking a contract as long as you entered it in good faith.
> Can users meaningfully agree to the terms of websites they visit?
Yes, of course. But the issue isn't with that, but with how these terms work. The terms start to apply after the user has read and considered them. If you want to limit access to some content unless the user agrees to your terms, you're free to do so. But you can't give the content, and then retroactively ask user to accept the terms and expect them to agree because they already got the content.
Or else what? The author won't sell me another one? That's his only recourse, just like how the website owner's only recourse is to make the terms explicit by blocking the content if I block your ads, which some sites already do, and which I gladly avoid.
First sale doctrine explicitly limits the restriction that the seller of a copyrightable work can place on the buyer.
It is illegal for you to sell me a book and say "you can't let any of your friends read this copy of this book" because that violates the first sale doctrine.
