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Yahoo Geographically Targeting Users
minna writes: "[The] SF Examiner reports that Yahoo! is now working on separating its content based on the location of its user. In a recent court case in France in which it was sentenced to block access to auctions of Nazi memorabilia for French Internet users, Yahoo! claimed this was impossible. Now in order to gain the rights to netcast the next Olympics, Yahoo says that while it's not 100% successful, it can essentially be done. There are already any number of services, for example infosplit.com that specialize on locating Internet users."
When I'm at school, advertisers from many companies including Yahoo! see that I'm on a .edu domain, and send me ads for things like textbooks and music. Seeing that I'm 19, when I use Yahoo! chat rooms I'm constantly pitched ads for Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears web sites and merchandise. (Fortunately, they can be moved off-screen for want of Junkbuster.) Seeing that I'm from New York (and I've said so in my Yahoo! profile), I often see ads for local businesses or web sites.
Targeted advertising isn't all bad, as long as it's targeted correctly. I, for one, am NOT interested in boy-bands or crappy fucked textbook companies.
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Hide posts based on geographics locations?
I feel kind of guilty somedays talking about my big old luxury car, my big old house, my home computer network and my big breasted honey knowing there are UKians who can barely afford a 1.0 liter Festiva, living in a poorly heated 500 sf flat, and having to share a scrawny, emaciated girlfriend.
Maybe we can hide those posts so the UKians don't realize what a socialist purgatory they live in.
besides the anonymous users, mobile users, and unresolveable IPs. But VisualRoute has been out for awhile, and has been able to trace a map across the world to find out where the IP is located. Works pretty well too.
Are the Olympics becoming the center of all things evil?
Long the playground of the megamedia establishment, the Olympics represent the theft and repackaging of what should be in the public domain that is occuring in all aspects of society. During the past Olympics, internet coverage was not allowed in any real fashion for fear that it would cut into the "profits" of the old media fat cats, for the next Olympics we are now told that only by dividing the internet along national borders can a new media company enter the good graces of the IOC. Yes my friends, the Olympics are a way for all peoples of the world to come together in peaceful celebration of what is best in humanity. Unfortunately, what humans seem to be best at is greed, graft, and division.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Can't our fellow (from US) freedom lovers in France access ebay.com??
3426 items found for "nazi". Showing items 1 to 50.
German nazi pilot observer badge
German nazi assault badge nice
German Nazi Button Hole Ribbons Hitler Youth
So the French courts want $13 grand for each Yahoo! violation - that's like fining WalMart for selling cigarettes when you can go to any one of dozens of quickie marts and get the same damn thing. This is the very heart of injustice.
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There was a great article in the latest Forbes about Yahoo!'s seemingly incomprehensible ability to turn a profit based solely on web advertising. What it boild down to is that Yahoo! can charge 10x - 20x what other portals can charge, because they can target their ads with great precision. Most of this ability comes from the 75 million users of Yahoo!'s various services that have volunteered information such as age, location, and interests. This will simply allow Yahoo to target those who haven't volunteered info, or bock cookies etc.
The article is well worth a read anyway, they talk about such interesting concepts as predicting trends such as movie success (based on who's searching for info about it, the actors, etc.) apparently they've been quite accurate so far...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Can we access Nazi pages on ebay from Europe? Yes!
/. S/N ratio, this case was brought about by a French law student's organisation, not the government. The LICRA is just one of hundreds of similar orgs where law students are expected to volunteer their time bringing cases to court before they start work in a cabinet. Other groups attack environmental abusers, hunting, illegal construction, or other bleeding heart issues that only students could care about. Consider these groups to be the FSF of the law world, the students do this for free to earn a reputation for themselves before job hunting. The higher profile the case, the more known their names, and the more likely they are to get a job with the Transmeta of the French law industry.
When someone accesses a web page containing nazi memorabilia, or any page with containing a keyword from a list of questionable terms, we get a warning that the item may not be legal for sale in some countries. But only if the originating IP address is from a RIPE assigned range.
That warning is sufficient to comply with French and German law. By providing a warning to a user, eBay has complied with the law. If a user were to continue with the sale or purchase of a banned item, it is now the user, not eBay, who has broken the law. If a European user were to go out of their way to use a U.S. based proxy, then they have taken a step to circumvent the law, thus indicating they are knowingly breaking the law. eBay and Yahoo do not have to catch 100% of all cases, they merely must make an effort to inform. That is all the French court ruled.
Yahoo swore in court it was impossible to determine with any kind of accuracy at all how to determine the physical location of a person based on IP address. But they change their web banners based on IP address. Their local office sells banner space to French companies with the guarantee that the ads will be served to people in France, and not to an uninterested audience in another country. It was this fact alone that caused the French court to rule against them. Yahoo proudly markets their ability to determine user location based on IP addresses, they know every IP block allocated to French ISPs and businesses and universities, and they filter on that. But they lied to the court, and the court wasn't fooled and ruled against them.
And as others have pointed out, but were mostly lost in the
The LICRA has made a name for itself in tearing down the ultra-far-right Nazi worshiping Front National, but since the FN almost doesn't exist today after a bunch of scandals, they have turned their interest towards the internet. Yahoo is the project of a group graduating next year, and they are as well versed at PR as they are at law.
I hereby invoke Godwin's law, and declare this whole thread terminated
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on