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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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I did answer your question. I said the delivery for television is when it is broadcast through the air or cables. Which it is, regardless of if your television is on. Just like how radio waves are in the air whether your radio is on or not. Even if the radio never plays the sound, the data is still being broadcast (aka delivered).
The mail comparison quickly falls apart, since you do not benefit from spam mail. You do not get a service in exchange for getting the spam mail, so what could you steal by not getting spam mail? If you put up a sticker that prevents the delivery (kinda like an ad blocker), then you did not get that ad delivered. But again, you are not using advertising mail as a means to pay for a service you are using, so it cannot be stealing.
YouTube is not free. Period. It costs money. Google has to get money from users to run it. It can either do that from ads, subscriptions, or donations (which we know isn't going to happen). If every user blocks ads, no ads are being delivered, and they would not be able to run the service. In our world, ads are tracked by delivery and not by eyes seen. End users can choose to look away, ignore, walk away, turn off their monitor, or whatever else. The ad was still delivered. Ads delivered means a small percentage will learn about their business through those ads, which makes it profitable for businesses to keep paying for them. Therefore, to block ads, you are not paying for the service. To not pay for a service that you are expected to pay for is stealing.
I agree, that the snail mail comparison limps. I just included it, since you brought it up initially. Lets drop it for now.
You are arguing that simply broadcasting an analog signal fulfils delivery, even if no device is receiving it. This deviates from your initial technical limitations argument, but lets assume this is true. If broadcasting a signal without caring whether it is received or if it is, by how many devices, fulfils delivery. Then a streaming service simply needs to make their advertisement available (eg. ads.mestream.com or as clickable content on mestream.com). The ads are available for everyone and no one cares whether or how many devices access them. Most streaming services go further than that and programmatically force people to watch those ads by playing them before the main-content or by similar means.
But we know that TV stations operate differently from how you described. If no one would care if and by how many devices the signal is received, there would not be any pricing difference. But since the tech allows to know rather accurate how many devices receive a signal, a spot at 8pm is much more expensive than 3am. So we know TV stations and advertisers using TV do care about how many devices receive that signal. I would go even further and say they actually care about how many people see the advertisement. But since the technical limitation does not allow this insight, number of devices is the closest value to monitor.
I am repeating myself, but YouTube not wanting to provide services to people who neither pay a subscription or watch ads is within their rights. Whether it is a viable business strategy will show. But for you to call using an ad-block theft, that just doesn't make sense. Unless you also call it theft, to turn off your TV during commercials. If it becomes a technically and legally viable to analyse how many people are watching those ads, it would become theft to close your eyes.
Edit: changed the URLs, so they do not point to an existing service.