I&#x27;m still waiting to see an argument for why a content provider who is making something available to others for free and without obligation has <i>any</i> obligation in return, either legally or ethically, beyond the same basic decency that we all owe to each other. I think a site that is neither actively malicious nor grossly negligent has satisfied that basic decency requirement.<p>Ultimately, it&#x27;s just not realistic to expect every little store and niche blogger to either monitor every third party service they depend on full-time just to protect the users who are giving them little if anything in return or to discontinue using any third party services that are technically capable of distributing malware. The former is demonstrably impossible anyway, and if you take the latter to its logical conclusion you undermine substantial parts of what has made the modern web so successful, far beyond using ads as a revenue stream.<p>Put another way, malware writers themselves may be the scum of the earth, but I don&#x27;t see why someone writing a blog about how to bake cakes and using a well-known and generally reputable ad network to fund the hosting costs is any more ethically responsible for the consequences of a malware incident than, say, a browser developer whose also freely offered product had a vulnerability that could be exploited in the first place. I don&#x27;t see anyone calling for any browser with a track record of serious security vulnerabilities (which is all of them, of course) to be banned to protect users from malware, though.