I have to laugh out loud here... A guy styling himself as a pirate (dread pirate, no less) is lecturing that it's wrong to steal? LOL!

First off, scraping the e-mail without the ads is no more illegal than reading the e-mail without looking at the ads. So far as I know, no law (or portion of the TOS) requires that we actually read the ad.

And you suggestion that we change bad business practices by voting???!? Last time I checked, "president of Yahoo" wasn't an elected position. Politicians cannot stop businesses from having bad business practices. The only way to change bad business practices is to make the company lose money (which shouldn't be hard to do if the practices are really bad, right?)

Now as far as TOS goes, I can use a browser to go check my mail and scrape the message from the browser, and I haven't violated the TOS. I'm using their interface the way it was intended to be used. I'm just not physically at my computer when I do so.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. -- Buddha