Adblock Plus made by Eyeo GmbH has faced the lawsuit brought by Germany’s Spiegel Online head-on and won. The lawsuit is of course an effort to shut down the popular ad-blocking tool and as Eyeo head of communications, Ben Williams puts it succinctly “Every single case wants to do the same thing, they say we shouldn’t offer a service that allows users to block ads.”.
All court cases against Adblock Plus cites the company as participating in unfair business practices and a violation of the unfair competition act. For the end user, Eyeo blocks ads from websites and offers companies the option to white-list their ads for a certain fee as long as it conforms with Eyeo’s criteria. Some companies of course, feel that this is some sort of extortion racket. Although technically a win for Adblock Plus, the ad-blocking company was ordered by the court to nonetheless change the way it offers white-list service to publishers. It is estimated that approximately 15 to 20 percent of German users use Adblock Plus.
According to Williams: “If they they were able to, they’d shutter all the ad-blockers out there, They’d file similar claims, whether it’s against Adblock Plus, uBlock origin, or a hobby developer making an ad-blocker in her basement. That would all essentially be illegal.”
Adblock Plus claims may have some merit since they are the most popular ad-blocking service so once they lose in court, it is likely that all other ad-blocking services will face similar lawsuits.
