From ExtremeTech: Germany’s Federal Supreme Court has reopened a copyright case that could have major consequences for ad blockers and other browser extensions. Spurred by media company Axel Springer against Eyeo, the maker of Adblock Plus, the lawsuit argues that ad blockers interfere with how websites are executed inside browsers and, in the process, violate copyright law.
Springer claims website code, like HTML and CSS, and parts like the DOM and rendering tree, are protected computer programs. Changing this code with an ad blocker might therefore be considered illegal copying or modification.
A lower court in Hamburg previously rejected this reasoning, but the Supreme Court has overturned parts of that judgment and sent the case back for re-examination. The court said it cannot be ruled out that certain browser-generated bytecode or in-memory structures qualify as protected programs, and if that is the case, modifying them could infringe Springer’s rights, BleepingComputer reports.
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