Raises a question in my mind...
Like (I suspect) most here, I block ads (uBlock Origin), and haven't seen one for years. I feel a little guilty about doing this on El Reg and some other sites.
If somebody wrote a modified blocker where one could say : "On theregister.co.uk and the following sites, download ads in the background and follow them, but send everything you get straight to /dev/null", I'd use it to support El Reg and similar sites. I see three issues: technical, ethical, and legal.
Can't really see why there should be a technical problem with this, though the ad-following would have to be a little selective/limited to evade malware. (Also, I dunno if El Reg gets paid if the ad is sent to my machine, or if a link has to be followed before they get anything?)
I suppose the advertisers might suddenly develop a sense of ethics and squawk at this idea. But "ethics" and "advertisers" only appear in the same sentence to be mocked.
Would there be a _legal_ issue in deliberately installing such software on your own machine for your own purposes? I'd think not, but am not a lawyer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
