When a webpage is served to you, you are under no obligation to not modify that webpage in any way. They gave the bytes to you for free. You can do whatever you want to them once you get them.
If my modification of that content is depriving them of income, then that's a flaw in their business model, not my ethics.
No, the "express purpose" is to deny the creator's intent for how to interpret the markup, which has a side effect of denying content. Saying that the "express purpose" is to deny content isn't a fair characterization.
I see all you can do is stoop to calling names, but I'll give you a proper reply regardless of the fact that you don't deserve one.
No, it's the artists who feel entitled to make money off their work, work that oftentimes is quite worthless or poor. Others are not required to offer content for free and I don't feel entitled to it. If it's there for free, maybe I'll consume it, maybe not. It's only the content creators who think their consumers feel entitled to free content because they're too stupid to come up with better business models to market their content. As a writer, musician, and artist, I offer a lot of my content for free with no ads and have no problem with that. I actually enjoy creating it and don't do it for the ad revenue. If other content creators want to charge for their content or wrap it up in ads, it's up to them to figure out a business model that works for their purpose. Their failing to do so does in no way reflect a failing in anyone's morality except possibly theirs.
tl;dr: If my ad-blocking is hurting these content creators so much, they should figure out a way to deliver ads that can't be blocked and stop calling the consumers names like "entitled" (because that's another reason the consumers don't want to pay for that mediocre two-paragraph piece surrounded by 10 megs of ads). Period.
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