German publisher Axel Springer, owner of brands including Bild and Die Welt, has been given another opportunity to have ad blocking outlawed on copyright grounds. After a series of defeats in its years-long legal action against the makers of Adblock Plus, the publisher appealed to the Federal Court of Justice. Germany’s top court has now overturned a 2023 ruling by the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg, referring the case back for reconsideration of the core issues.
Protecting web pages under the software/writing protection law is wrong. The software is the web-browser, the page is a medium, like paper is. There is rights protection for the text, there are patents for the ideas, but there is nothing protecting the paper, nor there is for the web page.