Blocking ads is legal. Adblock Plus wins case against international media holding Axel Springer

Owners of many sites don’t have warm feelings for ad blockers. Adblock Plus is particularly annoying for creators of all sorts of online resources living through advertising, as this blocker is very common. The creators of Adblock Plus have repeatedly complained in court, but each time the project managed to defend its interests in court.

The lawsuit by Axel Springer, a German media holding, against Adblock Plus was rejected by a Cologne court, VentureBeat writes . At the same time, the publishing house appealed to the court with a demand to ban almost any advertising blocking tools. Plus, Axel Springer executives strongly opposed the Adblock Plus manifest regarding acceptable advertising.

The holding demanded to ban any ad blocking tools that used whitelists. Interestingly, representatives of the Adblock Plus team compared themselves to Superman or Batman, saying that the project serves the good, protecting the rights of users.

Interestingly, the court in this case became decisive, as the publishers ’struggle with ad blockers entered the international level. Previously, lawsuits were filed only by local enterprises. The current process has become a precedent, since the court recognized the right of any user to block ads using various software tools.