COLOGNE, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adblock Plus, the #1 most popular browser extension for blocking annoying online advertisements with over 400 million downloads, today announced that it once again successfully defended in court the right for consumers to block online advertising in their browsers.
In a lawsuit brought against Adblock Plus by global publishing house Axel Springer, the regional court in Cologne, Germany today ruled in favor of Adblock Plus and its Acceptable Ads initiative on all counts.
This is the fourth time that German courts have come down on the side of users’ rights and Internet freedom, and it represents another big victory for every Internet user. Axel Springer sued Adblock Plus claiming that journalism is merely a vehicle for delivering ads, and that no product should be allowed to block those ads.
“Like Superman and Batman, we’re finding that protecting consumer rights — in our case against well-funded lawyers — is a lot of hard work,” said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus. “The added insult in this lawsuit was Axel Springer’s attack on our Acceptable Ads, which is a perfectly reasonable effort to allow well-meaning websites and responsible content producers to earn ad revenues. It shows just how unreasonable and anti-innovative some publishers can be. It’s no mystery why so many people install ad blockers.”
Once again, the court upheld every user’s right to block ads. Since the plaintiff in this lawsuit represents a publishing house with properties worldwide, the ruling sets a precedent for legal ad blocking globally, and also validates once more the vision behind Acceptable Ads, which offers a compromise in the online ads ecosystem in order to encourage better ads.
Links:
Adblock Plus is a free browser for mobile users on iOS and Android, and a free browser add-on for Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Maxthon and Opera for desktop users.
- Download Adblock Browser for iOS in the Apple App Store
- Download Adblock Browser for Android in the Google Play Store
- Visit adblockplus.org to download Adblock Plus for every major desktop browser
- For information about how to deploy Adblock Plus across a large networks, visit: https://adblockplus.org/en/deployments
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adblockplus
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/adblockplus
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/adblockplus/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AdblockPlusOfficial
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/adblock-plus/
About Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is an open source project that aims to rid the Internet of annoying and intrusive online advertising. Its free web browser extensions (add-ons) put users in control by letting them block or filter which ads they want to see. Users across the world have downloaded Adblock Plus over 400 million times, and it has remained the most downloaded and the most used extension almost continuously since November 2006. PC Magazine named the extension as one of the best free Google Chrome extensions, and it received About.com readers’ choice award for best privacy/security add-on.
Follow Adblock Plus on Twitter at @AdblockPlus and read our blogs at adblockplus.org/blog/. Media press kit with FAQ, images and company statistics is available at: eyeo.com/en/press.
