Ad-blockers branded 'modern-day protection racket' by culture secretary John Whittingdale

Culture secretary John Whittingdale
Glenn Copus
Hatty Collier3 March 2016
WEST END FINAL

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The culture secretary has slammed ad-blocking companies as a “modern-day protection racket” which could kill off newspaper websites hit by the technology.

John Whittingdale said that the fast-growing use of ad-blocking software, which hides online adverts, could drive newspaper and music industry websites out of existence by depriving them of income.

“Quite simply, if people don’t pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist. And that’s as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse,” he said.

“Some of the ad-blocking companies are drawing up their own rules of acceptable advertising or offering to white list providers in return for payment.”

In his speech at the Oxford Media Convention, Whittingdale vowed to set up discussions between major publishers, social media groups and ad-blocking companies to try to tackle the problem.

Use of ad-blockers in the UK grew by around 82 per cent last year with the top three ad-blocked on the App Store downloaded nearly 175,000 times within a week of going on sale.

Whittingdale added: “Ten years ago the music and film industries faced a threat to their very existence from online copyright infringement by illegal file-sharing or pirate sites.”

He added that ad-blockers could post a similar threat.

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