"everybody who's out there thinking of using VPNs, let me just say to you directly, verifying your age keeps a child safe...So let's just not try and find a way around. Just prove your age."
- UK government.
Just say no to snitchglasses.
I'm in puzzled wonderment at this claim.
Preventing ad-blocking would be a huge blow to German cybersecurity and privacy.
There are critical security & privacy reasons to influence how a websites code gets displayed.
Like stripping out dangerous code & malvertising.
Hacking risks from the online advertising are documented.
Any attempt to force Germans to run all of the code on a website without consideration for their privacy and security rights and needs will end very, very poorly.
Defining HTML/CSS as a protected computer program will quickly lead to absurdities touching every corner of the internet.
Just think of the potential infringements:
-Screen readers for the blind
-'Dark mode' bowser extensions
-Displaying snippets of code in a university class
-Inspecting & modifying code in your own browser
-Website translators
Or blocking unwanted trackers.
This is why most governments do it on their systems.
I'm not a lawyer, but if Axel Springer wins the consequences are just nuts:
Basic stuff like bookmarking & saving a local copy of a website might be legally risky.
The Wayback Machine & internet archives and libraries might be violators.
This might even extend to search engines displaying excerpts of sites.
Code sharing sites like GitHub could become a liability minefield...
The list goes on and on.
Finally, only one country has banned ad-blockers. China.
This is not good company for Germany.
READ MORE: From Mozilla 
While there was strong activist pressure here the key push came from the US government.
But there is zero rest for the weary as the UK has been leaning much harder into Age Verification.
Which is another mechanism for gaining deep visibility into peoples online activity.
Story: 
