The problem is that an ISP is altering legitimate content that it's supposed to serve to their customer by contract, that they took this decision unilaterally without suggesting a change in the contract, that the feature is opt-out, that this unilateral decision will reduce by ~10% the global revenue that companies can make from advertising to French internet users in 2013.
This is not a matter of being pro or anti adblocking, but rather about realizing how far the consequences of a default value can reach.
Advertising has done nothing to make Internet access cheaper, that was due to upscaling infra from small mom and dad ISP's to telephone companies.
Advertising is responsible for all the treason of the 2000-2010 websites that took all the privacy of people in exchange for pity digital beads and mirrors, the cost is an ongoing avertisement harrasment into people's private sphere.
Also due to laziness, complacent and risk adverse handling of the receivers of that advertising money, it made the advertising companies too powerful, while these sell nothing but broken promisses and bullshit, so no value for whatever price.
All the stuff that advertising bought and brought to the people is mediocre and bland.
I personally hope that advertising will face the same "pull the carpet from beneith them" treatment as all the other big media industries like RIAA and MPAA.
I tried to be careful with my wording so as to come out as neutral as I can on the subject. My intent was to turn this into a design discussion about the importance of carefully choosing default settings - I failed obviously :P
My personal opinion on advertising is very critical, very much like yours. It litterally cripples content quality for pebbles.
As a side note, I currently make about 100$/month with advertising on my mobile apps (~10-15k active users). I really want to switch to a paid product but I'm having trouble picking a correct price for it since I'm not completely satisfied with it myself. There are some mental barriers that I need to break first. Ads were an easy way out, I totally see myself in your pamphlet: a lazy and complacent developer, so afraid to see his pricing expectations shattered that he preferred to ship a free app with a bland and mediocre ad banner. Again, for pebbles.
I did not mean to attack you, and I do understand the difficulties from the side of people that try to offer their thing online, everybody has the right to try and get some finance to be able to do their hobbies.
So many times I heard the argument that advertising was the thing that made the internet cheaper and accessible to all, this is simply not true, upscaling made it cheaper and better software made it more accessible.
As I am online for quite a while (over 15 years), I have seen so much crap appearing due to the advertising industry.
The quality of what is available online has only got worse, I personally think that the more expensive internet of 15 years ago was worth every penny while the cheap access nowadays is too expensive for the crap that is being offered.
I am glad that paid services are coming back online and will hopefully normalise this webworld again to pre 2000-2010 norms.
Unlike the advertisement world, I think not everything should be free, quality can have a price tag and rightfully so.
I wish you all wisdom and luck and hope you can convert your business.
b.t.w. I do not think that an ISP should decide to block adverts, however I do think the public should be able to choose, I use the HOSTS file to black out all adverts, which is quite efficient and does not need external code (like in the router or in a firefox add-on).
The modem is rented out by the ISP and it is their property -- this is not a clause in the contract that you signed. If it offends you then install your own modem.
Sure let's filter also porn by default, and anything that could be offending, or that might look like copyright infringement.
I think there are legitimate questions: at which point would it become not acceptable for you? who decides what is blocked? should it be enabled by default?
Also if the ISP is in the business of "editorializing" what the user sees, maybe it becomes actually responsible for the content (no safe harbor). That also seems like a dangerous game for them.
It's much more fundamental, it's are you pro or anti- the web as it currently exists?
It's that simple, without adverts the world wide web would be locked down into silo's that make the Facebook of today look like a charity.
Want to read that article, get ready for the "do you subscribe to one of our partner services? if not click here to pay only $20 a month for unlimited PaidContentOnDemand" messages
This is not a matter of being pro or anti adblocking, but rather about realizing how far the consequences of a default value can reach.