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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

I'm a fan of "Code as protest", but it seems like the more practical solution would be to simply have a separately maintained domain list that could be easily integrated into the adblockers that already used EasyList.

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Believe e that's how it was originally maintained, off GitHub, was just a http link to a text file that gets imported(still the same but off GitHub now).

Just make the Ad blocking extension retrieve an extra file outside of github automatically(default on, but leave it configurable like the other filter lists in options) or I am sure there are custom lists based on easylist or other lists available already on the net that include/can include

But props to the creator of this, great ingenuity.

The author mentioned in the readme that having it in the Chrome Store makes it easy to quantify the damage it's doing to these sites.

Couldn't you achieve the same thing by tracking http requests to a regular list? I'm not sure why I would use this extension because I already have the excellent ublock which I can add any list I want to. I think more people would benefit if this was published as a list instead of a totally new extension.

Agreed. If it were a list I'd gladly tick it over. But I am hesitant to add a new extension.

I understand the hesitation. A user has submitted a text-based version:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/master/Ba...

I'm not sure how that would be done but I'm open to pull requests!

You just publish a set of rules like https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt

And the file could be published on IPFS so hosting it is not relevant. Hash would ensure that you're getting the right file - from any IPFS node. There is even an HTTP bridge for IPFS content.

There are many HTTP bridges, I run one: https://www.eternum.io/

Latest easylist:

https://www.eternum.io/ipfs/QmdDtvs1QaQQG6NMpc2cpncA4zVZqgUK...

If you decide to use IPFS for distribution of your list, I'd be happy to donate some Eternum credits so you can pin it.

That may be great as a parallel project, but the point of this one is to take head on legally any challenges. At least that's my reading of his explanation.

He's blazing a trail that others who may be more risk averse or have more to lose can then follow. Actually blocking these domains is kind of a side benefit, especially since the most likely people to download the extension are those who could just as easily achieve the end result themselves in other ways.

Unfortunately there is no legal concept of waiver in this situation: the other side can pick and choose weak targets at will and avoid someone who will fight back. Just one more critical flaw in the DMCA system. Contrast this with trademark law where one must universally enforce the mark or risk losing it entirely.

If you can distribute the hash to all users, you can probably distribute the blocklist as well. The size isn't the problem.

Does this work for you? https://raw.githubusercontent.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/master/Ba...

That should work, you might want to add a link to "abp:subscribe?location=h||ps://raw.githubusercontent.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/master/BarbBlock.txt&title=BarbBlock" in your readme to allow people to easily install the list by clicking that link.

Edit: replaced https with h||ps to prevent it from showing up as a link (which are apparently cut off if they're too long).

Thanks, will do (https://github.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/issues/15)

Thanks for this! Added it to my own uBlock list.

I didn't work for me with Adblock Plus in Firefox.

Thanks for the report, I'll look into it (https://github.com/paulgb/BarbBlock/issues/16)

FYI: The uBlock origin link (to subscribe to the list) does not work (seem to just be a copy of the ABP link).

The raw version of the blocklist in this repo can be used that way.

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