German supreme court rejects ad-block challenge

Germany's supreme court has rejected a legal case that sought to stop people using the popular Adblock Plus program that removes ads from websites.

The claim was begun three years back by German distributing monster Axel Springer.

It affirmed that the route Adblock Plus halted individuals seeing adverts on its locales added up to out of line rivalry.
Axel Springer said it would proceed with its legitimate test by taking the issue to Germany's Constitutional Court.

Free Speech

Adblock Plus is widely used to stop intrusive pop-up adverts and limit tracking by websites of where people go online. Adblock Plus creator Eyeo, which is based in Cologne, claims the PC version of its software has been downloaded more than 400 million times.

The German publishing firm first complained about Adblock Plus in 2015, alleging that it broke competition laws by letting firms pay to be on a "white list" to stop their ads being blocked. It took the case to the Supreme Court after losing the first round of legal action in 2015.

Other German media firms that also launched related legal action said the simple blocking of adverts was a violation of local laws designed to promote competition.

The Supreme Court disagreed with Springer's allegations and said no laws were being broken because it was up to individual users whether they used the software.


It also overturned a lower court ruling that forced Eyeo to white list some adverts for free.
Eyeo respected the decision and said in an announcement that it was "energized that Germany's most elevated court maintained the privilege each web national has to piece undesirable promoting on the web".

After the decision, Claas-Hendrick Soehring, Springer's head of media law, said the decision was "an assault on the core of the free media".

Source: BBC
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