So as someone who has been in broadcasting for 24 1/2 years, my whole life is advertising. TV Advertising has paid for my house, well being, medical care, dental, basically all my quality of life. So I completely understand the importance of it. I also understand with an operation like this wanting to defend the ads for non premium subscribers. For $30 a year? the ability to "download from the DB" into the various pieces of scanning software alone is worth that. If I wasn't a DB admin, I'd easily pay for it. The DB here is worth the cost. The majority of states here have accurate listings and quite comprehensive too. It's a lot of good information for $30 a year!
My issue comes with the companies that host the ads. "AdChoices" (Google) formerly "Doubleclick" that have been allowed to so rampantly run wild with tracking cookies and other shady practices. No one has ever come down on them for those practices, which is why the ad blockers exist. If web site managers/hosts would go after the companies they pay to generate ad revenue for the shady stuff, and ultimately stop the shady stuff, less people would use the blockers. It's those reasons alone I've refused to go after advertising on the two websites I run, as I just don't like that practice from Google or others. And it's so well known how many sites have been compromised by what AdChoices has allowed in the past. As stated elsewhere here, those sites are often blocked by network IT admins. And until they are stopped from tracking (which I doubt) or a better company comes forward that everyone uses, I will continue to use my adblock on other sites.
But at the end of the day, this is a voluntary site. You're not required to come here. Lindsay is well within his right to want to increase ad revenue, and the solution seems simple (and inexpensive). You could be hitting a full fledged pay-wall to visit, and he'd be well within his right for that as well.