Web ad blocking may not be (entirely) legal
Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.
Context & Ripple Effects
CNET's framing puts web ad blocking inside a familiar legal arc: advertising-supported companies challenged ad-skipping technology in court twice before — the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979, then ReplayTV in 2001. The claim being raised is simply that blocking ads on the web 'may not be entirely legal,' which keeps the question open rather than settled.
The story drew at least one industry pickup beyond CNET, appearing the same week on Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, suggesting marketers were the audience watching this most closely.
First-order effects
- Developers of browser-based ad-blocking tools face renewed litigation risk, since the same playbook that targeted the VCR and ReplayTV is now being aimed at their products.
Second-order effects
- Advertising-supported publishers gain a courtroom alternative to technical fixes, shifting the contest over ad-skipping from browsers and filters toward copyright-adjacent legal claims.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each new ad-skipping medium — broadcast recording in 1979, DVR skipping in 2001, web filtering in 2007 — triggers a round of lawsuits before courts or markets settle whether consumers may skip ads at all.
The trend: Ad-supported media companies keep turning to the courts against ad-skipping technologies, from the VCR in 1979 and ReplayTV in 2001 to web ad blockers in 2007.