Is streaming movies/anime/shows/etc wrong if one uses uBlock Origin (or another ad-block)?

[JJammaz]

Relevant factors: as far as I can tell you as a person commit no crime when you watch a free movie/show/etc online, the person who put the thing up might have but not you. By “free” I mean whenever you Google “xyz movie online free” and watch one of those sites, or sites that keep multiple versions of a show on different servers on one place, and so on.

Because this is not illegal (to watch it) people often go to “well you shouldn’t support the sins of others and that’s the sin in it.” All of these sites from what I can tell run off ad revenue, and most of them can’t get past uBlock Origin, so if you watch a thing with it then you aren’t supporting them at all, you’re just getting free technically legal content on the cheap ($0). Is this a sin?

clarification: not talking about torrenting, that is always illegal from what I can see, permanently downloading a copy of something like that violates the law. I’m talking about in-browser streaming that is like watching a YouTube video. This is legal.

Also my other question: is using ad-block on sites wrong in any way? This is also legal (you can block any connections you want with your internet, and ad-block does that a lot or masks content so you can browse cleanly). Just wondering if there was a moral thing with it.

So all-in-all two questions: 1) is watching legal streaming movies/shows a sin when using ad-block? 2) is ad-block in general wrong in any way?

 

[TheLittleLady]

I have a budget for extras. One of my extras is paying for a subscription to a legit streaming service. I also pay the small upcharge to go ad free.

 

[BrowseAbout]

Relevant factors: as far as I can tell you as a person commit no crime when you watch a free movie/show/etc online, the person who put the thing up might have but not you.

Ignorance is only invincible when we cannot obtain a definitive answer even after exhausting all the reasonable means of obtaining this information. Unless you can say with certainty that you could not, even after exhaustive searching, find any reliable sources or Church documents condemning the watching of illegal content, your ignorance is vincible at best.

Because this is not illegal (to watch it)

You are deluding yourself. You begin your post by admitting that you can’t be certain that your actions are legal, then you inject your uncertainty into the next paragraph as a confirmation of legality, you then try to cover your tracks by…

clarification: not talking about torrenting, that is always illegal from what I can see, permanently downloading a copy of something like that violates the law.

… Mentioning a completely different action (and a deliberately obvious example of criminality) in order to distract us from the primary topic at hand (i.e. Red-Herring tactic), so you can continue to…

This is legal.

Delude yourself with even more intensity the second time around to override your moral uncertainty and convince your own self of the morality of your actions.

Just wondering if there was a moral thing with it.

I would strongly advise you thoroughly research the 10 Commandments, particularly the one commanding us not to steal (EWTN has a good article on the 10 Commandments). Keep in mind that breaking any of these in any capacity is a mortal sin unless you either have Invincible Ignorance or compromised faculties, which you very likely don’t, given as you’re intelligent enough to delude yourself.

 

[Pitcairn17]

I don’t understand the above responses. The focus of the OP seems to be the question of using an ad blocker on a LEGAL streaming service, not viewing pirated material.

If using an ad blocker on legally-obtained video content is wrong, then I would think it would be equally wrong to fast-forward through commercials when viewing recorded cable TV content — and I’ve certainly never heard that as a moral problem.

 

[JJammaz]

Ignorance is only invincible when we cannot obtain a definitive answer even after exhausting all the reasonable means of obtaining this information. Unless you can say with certainty that you could not, even after exhaustive searching, find any reliable sources or Church documents condemning the watching of illegal content, your ignorance is vincible at best.

I did not think that the Church would speak on an issue like this, so I only looked at dozens of legal articles. Overall they seem to say that it is not illegal for the user to stream, but is illegal for the website to host. Some differed but they were in the UK and Commonwealth mainly, so I ignored those. In the EU due to a ruling it seems certain the user is exempt from punishment and they are not illegal, seems the same here in all of the US actually, due to debates on “transitory” copying and so on. So if it is not illegal and one does not support their sin (economically) it seems clear to me, I am not trying to delude myself I can pay for the thing I just don’t want to if I don’t have to. I can’t be 100% certain due to not being a lawyer, but I’m still looking to increase certainty. There is also concern about what particular method of streaming is used, whether it creates a copy in the cache, etc. It gets weird.

Either way, I’ll see if there are any Church docs about it, but I don’t think there are. Searching for them just leads to random opinion articles from Catholic theologians that cite no docs, not to a true Vatican source or anything.

 

[BrowseAbout]

I don’t understand the above responses. The focus of the OP seems to be the question of using an ad blocker on a LEGAL streaming service, not viewing pirated material.

Read his post again.

Relevant factors: as far as I can tell you as a person commit no crime when you watch a free movie/show/etc online, the person who put the thing up might have but not you. By “free” I mean whenever you Google “xyz movie online free” and watch one of those sites, or sites that keep multiple versions of a show on different servers on one place, and so on.

He admits in the first paragraph that he is watching content that was illegally obtained by third parties. If he were watching content from a legal streaming service, than he wouldn’t have said

[in regards to committing the act of piracy] the person who put the thing up might have but not you.

Nor would he have gone on to specify exactly how he was watching this content.

By “free” I mean whenever you Google “xyz movie online free” and watch one of those sites, or sites that keep multiple versions of a show on different servers on one place, and so on.

If using an ad blocker on legally-obtained video content is wrong, then I would think it would be equally wrong to fast-forward through commercials when viewing recorded cable TV content — and I’ve certainly never heard that as a moral problem.

The language “legally-obtained” is misleading and is worthless before the court of law. How the Pirate obtained the content is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters in this instance is whether it was distributed legally, and you’re not going to find any Legal streaming services by typing “xyz movie online free” into a Google search.

A single episode of televised anime alone typically costs over one million dollars to produce at a minimum, and animated movies can cost up to–and occasionally beyond 10 million dollars to produce. According to Netflix, live action shows are even more expensive, and can cost anywhere from 4 million to over 9+ million dollars to produce. This isn’t even counting high-production movies, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, alongside years worth the production to complete. No company in the world is going to burn 12 million (1 million min per episode of anime * 12 episodes per industry standard) to 100+ million dollars (high production Hollywood films) on a piece of media just to release it on a random website for free. This isn’t like “fast forwarding recording cable content”, it’s “like” a single person subscribing to a cable service, uploading that content on to their computers, and mass-distributing it on an unaffiliated server without permission, for everyone to illegally watch without paying a dime.

Piracy is a crime and a moral offense whether either of us like the fact or not, and gleefully accepting stolen or illegal distributed material is dubious at best, and mortally sinful at worst.

 

[kapp19]

Several distinctions and questions…

1 - Would you pay for x if it were available as a paid service/product? If you would and you take it freely contrary to the law, you are certainly depriving a just income for that service or product. To stream content illegally that you would be willing to pay for is a kind of stealing.

2 - Does a given ad blocker actually deprive the provider of their ad revenue?

3 - To what extent are such laws really morally binding? To what extent does equity/epikeia really apply in your case? Is it really the intent of the legislator to bind you in the way you are describing, and how is that enforced, if ever?

You are not “deluding yourself.” These are good questions with subtle answers.

 

[BornInMarch]

This is a complex issue.

On one hand ad-blockers prevent websites from drawing advertisement revenue. But on the other hand it can protect you from advertisements that show you things you object to on a moral ground (some mobile game ads are sexualized to the point of bordering on pornographic) or which you suspect will try to infect your computer with a virus.

I lean more in favor of ad-blockers, because consumer rights have been undermined for a long time and this is one of the few ways consumers can regain control.

 

[BrowseAbout]

consumer rights…

What “rights”? The only rights that the consumer has are the right to purchase a product and the right to receive the purchased product. Anything else is strictly a privilege and nothing more.

Unfortunately, we live in an entitled culture where people who coast along under their employer’s wing with a stable income and guaranteed living want to punch up at their superiors (corporately speaking) because they lack the same income and privileges. You try sacrificing your fixed income and starting a Business from scratch (where your only revenue is the scraps left over after obligatorily paying your Employees, Business partners, and 23%+ of the remaining money to the Government), and you’ll see which party truly lacks the “control” and so-called “rights”.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Answers to your questions: No and No.

 

[BornInMarch]

What “rights”? The only rights that the consumer has are the right to purchase a product and the right to receive the purchased product. Anything else is strictly a privilege and nothing more.

This is wrong, in both the legal and moral sense, and if the world worked that way it’d be terrifying.

It’s not a “privilege” to know if I buy a food product it won’t be rotten or poisonous or contain ingredients that violate my religion (as an example, a meal advertised as kosher won’t secretly contain pig’s blood), nor is it a “privilege” to know that if I purchase a manufactured good like a cellphone it’ll work as advertised and won’t spontaneously burst into flames in my pockets or spy on me without my consent.

Why do you think product recalls exist? It’s not because companies deign to do the right thing, it’s because they know if their product’s faultiness hurts someone they’ll be sued and probably lose.