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Adblock Plus:
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The Hamburg Regional Court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Axel Springer publishing group against the Cologne-based company Eyeo, developer of the well-known ad blocker Adblock Plus.
According to the judges, the program does not violate copyright law.
The legal dispute between Axel Springer and Eyeo has now lasted eight years.
In 2014, the group filed a lawsuit against the software manufacturer before the Cologne Regional Court for the first time.
Although Axel Springer was able to achieve some partial successes, it failed across the board before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH).
The Federal Constitutional Court did not accept an appeal against the BGH judgment.
Significant loss of revenue
The dispute is about a lot of money, advertising is still one of the main sources of income for online media.
According to a count by the digital association BVDW, in Germany more than one in five visits to a website is blocked by browser extensions.
Even though Springer has now successfully blocked adblock users on »Bild.de«, the publisher does not want to accept the loss of income. The publisher's lawyers argue that this is an encroachment on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press. With its lawsuits, Springer not only wants Eyeo to stop blocking advertising on the publisher's offers, but is also demanding compensation for all advertising calls that have been prevented since 2016.
The first lawsuits were largely based on competition law: Eyeo makes the ad blocker available free of charge, but charges companies if they want to smuggle particularly inconspicuous advertising through the filter. For the lawyers of several publishing houses, this business model seemed illegal, since it was only about intervening in the operations of other companies. But the chief justices rejected that argument.
With the new lawsuit, Axel Springer is resorting to a different argument. By interfering with the program code, Adblock Plus infringes copyright. The publishing lawyers have found an interesting precedent. In 2012, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court banned a provider from selling so-called cheating programs for the Playstation Portable, which players used to gain illegal advantages. At that time it was said: By interfering with the main memory, the cheat programs interfered so deeply with the computer games that the authors would first have to approve it.
The Hamburg Regional Court sees a fundamental difference between cheat programs and ad blockers in the judgment now available. Adblock Plus also changes the output of websites in a way that the creators expressly do not want. However, the program does not manipulate the transferred files themselves, but changes the structure of the display that is created in the browser. Ultimately, Adblock Plus does not change the program substance, but only the program flow.
This fine distinction is necessary, as the judges explain: If copyright were interpreted too broadly, completely harmless interventions would also be prohibited - programs from different manufacturers could not work together and users could not, for example, switch off the loading of graphics to save bandwidth.
No level of creation
The judges also rejected another suggestion.
The publisher wanted its pages to be protected as »multimedia works«, i.e. as a kind of total work of art.
However, since such websites are created in industrial processes in which no individual creator determines the appearance, the necessary personal level of creativity is not achieved here.
The litigation does not end there.
A spokesman for Axel Springer has already announced that the publisher intends to appeal.
The case ends up before the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court, which made the decision on the cheating software a decade ago.