Slashdot Mirror
Don't Eat the Yellow Links
We learned about TopText (which was called HOTText until the end of last week) because a number of Slashdot readers submitted a San Francisco Chronicle story about it.
Cyklopz wrote, "...this is quite insidious. I found a link from BankOne's site to Wells Fargo! It crops up all over search engine results as well. Sheesh!"
Microsoft has removed (at least temporarily) a similar, but less blatantly commercial feature called Smart Tags from their upcoming release of MSIE 6.0 because it upset so many people.
KaZaA has an opt-out dialog for TopText when it is installed, but Benny Evangelista, who wrote the Chronicle story, says that neither he nor other people he spoke to who had downloaded KaZaA spotted it until they knew it was there and went looking for it.
KaZaA claims over 5.4 million Web users have downloaded their software so far, and boasts on their Web site that "...KaZaA is one of the most active media communities on the net, usually there are over 600 000 users online simultaneously. 90% of users are recommending KaZaA, which is the 4th most downloaded program on C|Net Download.com."
I both emailed and called TopText's vendor, San Francisco-based eZula, to ask if there was any way we could keep their TopText links from showing up on OSDN Web sites, including Slashdot. Since we often use links as integral parts of our stories, we would just as soon select our own, right? Plus there is a little matter of keeping ads apart from editorial material, which is one of those silly ethics things only journalists who care about their personal integrity may notice, but that upset us to the point of irrationality when we spot them.
Assaf Henkin of eZula told me the only way to keep TopText links from marring our sites was to email all domain names we wanted blocked to:
Henkin said it would take "a couple of days" for removal requests to be honored. But at least now you know what to do.
For more information about about how TopText works, go to eZula's contact page and (you must have Flash installed for this to work) click on the "Media Kit" link. Or, for an unanimated but more complete description of eZula's services, check this .pdf file. Note that, although KaZaA is the only eZula "partner" we know about at this time, their media kit boasts of "partnerships with tier one ISPs" and claims their software "...currently delivers your Keyword message to nearly 4 million Internet users, wherever they are on the Web, and this number is growing rapidly as eZula expands its partner base."
Will Web users notice the proliferation of these little yellow advertising links? Will they be able to tell them from the "real" links story authors or Web site owners put in? Will anyone care? Should anyone care? Or have we all gotten so used to ads sneaking into everything from movies (via product placement) to upcoming show "announcements" during the happy talk segments of local TV news that such things don't matter any more?
If you're plagued with Spyware, they'll often deposit a file called kernel32.dll. Just delete this and the offending program and you'll be good to go, hopefully. Can't hurt, at least.
Uh.
OSDN isn't doing anything to anyone's rights here. They aren't threatening legal action against toptext; they aren't stopping you from using it. You are correct in that slashdot has no right to demand that Slashdot be exempt from TopText,
But slashdot isn't demanding. They are asking politely. What's so bad about that?
If it displeases you that TopText is going to allow sites to opt out of being linkified, meaning you lose the usefulness (*giggle*) of toptext's links while reading OSDN sites, you should perhaps consider using an alternative to TopText, or creating your own. However you should not blame OSDN for taking advantage of Toptext's opt-out feature. Again, TopText has every right to add those links to slashdot's page on willing customer's computers against slashdot's will, but you really have no reason to be pissed at slashdot for inquiring to TopText as to whether slashdot can be removed.
Basically: Calm down. Slashdot and TopText are going to contractually enter into a mutually satisfying consensual agreement concerning TopText's program's treatment of slashdot's page, while the consumer is fully enabled to (if they so choose) stop using TopText, stop using Slashdot's services, or even to (with some difficulty, true) hack TopText's software with a disassembler and remove the part of TopText's software that checks to see if sites such as slashdot are participating in the TopText opt-out program. No one's rights are stopped. Everyone is empowered. Ayn Rand would be proud.
For the record, this TopText thing still creeps the crap out of me, tho, and i am going to stay way the fuck away from both it and that scary Bonsai Buddy thing.
-super ugly ultraman. U.N. OUT OF MY UTERUS!!
This practice is ethically shady at best.
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TopText is NOT clearly 'you' modifying content for your own use. Not unless it's YOU that is specifying all those links to things.
My take on it is this: if you want to hack your copy of Mozilla so that every instance of the word 'Kodak' points to a Microsoft page slamming Kodak's horrible refusal to offer customers choice (tm), I think you're a loony and go right ahead. That way, every time you see the word 'Kodak', you will think, "There's that word that I wrote a link to", and no problem there.
If you let a _third_ _party_ come up with the link for you, I object. Write your own link! I'll happily let _you_ fill in the context of a web page and decide what relates to what, even if you're insane, but what gives you the right to turn this over to some third party? They're not you! If you want to read their ads, how about you go to THEIR PAGE and do it? Why on earth do you feel that your opinion matters on what THEY do to my content? You're free to edit what you like yourself, or have Mozilla omit all instances of the word 'the', because this is all your personal interaction with the content. You are the user, it is what you are reading, you can do what the hell you want. Your freedom does not necessarily extend to being entitled to sublicense that off, to shrug and say "Here, I'm reading this page. I know you didn't pay this guy, but put some ads in that I might think are relevant. Surprise me!"
If you want to read their ads that damn badly, how about you go to their page to do so? What gives THEM property rights over my little web homestead?
It's even worse if you're clueless and have no idea I didn't actively choose every one of those links. I'm assuming you are firmly aware I didn't choose those links and I _still_ consider it totally out of line and not their bailiwick. If you're an idiot and think I made the pretty yellow lines myself, the situation is incomparably worse. But of course nobody is ever a luser, or ever encounters a new feature unexpectedly on a strange website and concludes it's the site author's doing :P
If this is considered some sort of eminent domain and I'm supposed to NOT have any right to be certain a third party is not modifying my copyrighted material to change its meaning and implications, then they can DAMNED well pay me a royalty set by some impartial arbitrator that is in line with normal advertising rates. It is obscene to behave as if the payment to me should be zero.
TopText do not have RIGHTS to my material, whatever it is. This is a far cry from 'users downloading files and editing in advertising links with a text editor on their own initiative'. It's a third-party hijacking of content. It is indefensible.
Supposing you did have to opt in and set a meta tag to make these become active on your pages and cause the ads to happen dynamically on your content. Would you or would you not inquire, "So, how much are you going to pay me for this?"
do they do this to .edu's as well? most edus are prevented from having any commercial application...
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
With MY web page, if you have software that changes its contents, the user may or may not have any idea what it SHOULD look like. They only see your over-linked version that will lead them to things they aren't looking for. If I have a link to some local DC band's official home page, and I'm explicitly saying "This link will go to the that band's home page", then having that link go ANYWHERE else is making me out to be a liar, regardless of whether or not the user approved the software that changed that link. That software puts my reputation as a reliable source of information at SEVERE risk, and I should have the right to defend my reputation from such slander.
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You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Also, some of my site is in a different (and shared) domain for technical reasons (lack of php support on the main site) -- can they respect my request for not tampering with my subpage ("/~acroyear/") on the shared domain, or will they only respect the domain owners (a major ISP with better things to do than argue with software like this)?
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
E.g., the various CGI scripts out there that 'translate' pages, either to legit languages (babelfish), or to silly languages (using the old jive or swedish chef filters), but the URL is always tainted in that respect to show that this is not the real page.
If there isn't some indicator/reminder, then its changing my code and my content and may potentially slander my work (see my other replies to this story under "heck no").
Web content is copyrighted automatically, like all creations. Some things like the translators I consider fair use and don't get mad at. Some things like image blockers are fair use. Other things that change the links to advertisements are not. Someone else is making advertising money over MY content, and their advertising may or may not slander me and I have no way of knowing what it is unless I buy their service. That is something I can not allow.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I don't want someone else looking at my page to see anything other than what I put in there. There's reasons I pay for my web hosting instead of just using a geocities-like service.
--
You know, you gotta get up real early if you want to get outta bed... (Groucho Marx)
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
My viewer might show your content the way you expected, or it might translate it into a different language, read it aloud, hyperlink everything into a dictionary, or create a lexicographic analysis from it. You have no control over how markup is rendered, please relieve yourself of this concept.
The truth of the matter right there. HTML is rendered DIFFERENTLY already depending on browser and configuration. Maybe I don't have java of *shudder* ActiveX in use, Hell I don't even have the flash player installed so what I see of your page is VERY different then you intended I am sure.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Don't give me any shit about using FrontPage. I always demand HTTP 2.0 compliance
HTML is at version 4.01, HTTP is at 1.1. What is this HTTP 2.0 compliance you're talking about?
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
"Begs the question" means avoiding answering a point in an argument by simply stating that your point is correct instead of supporting the point.
...
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
So let me get this straight: in order to see web pages without random crap attached, I have to install and use one of the most often abused random crap plugins around? Oh, the irony!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
There once was a program called "Third Voice". Third voice was a browser plugin that basically turned the entire internet into a discussion page. You could place little post-it-note-like thingies onto any website you liked, and any Third Voice user later viewing that URL would see your post it note sitting where you placed it. It did this by storing the post it notes in a central database; third voice would send its home server the url being viewed, and the home server would send back any notes that third voice users had left about this url.
That's a bit funky, but i think it's a nifty idea.
People went berzerk. A bunch of people went and sued third voice, claiming 3rdvoice was violating their copyrights, defacing their websites, a billion other things. This despite the fact that the added 3rdvoice content was clearly marked. Armed with misinformation and the thousand stinging nettles of draining litigation, they attacked third voice, upset anyone could "alter the content of" their web page.
This scares the crap out of me; it serverely bothers me that practically nobody seemed to see 3rdvoice commenting on webpages as 3rdvoice exersizing their constitutional rights to free speech. (OK, maybe i am overreacting. But apathy for free speech issues scares me. Bite me.) I see only two important things here:
- I have a right to install software on my computer that alters the content i access and view in any way i want, as long as i have permission to view that content in some form.
- Third Voice has a right to maintain a database where people can comment on various URLs for purposes of commentary or critisism. The fact they display the comments on top of the webpages being commented on makes no difference*, as long as the customers are either clearly aware of what is original content and what is 3rdvoice content or have consented to having the content altered for them. (Yes, of course, the fact KaZaA customers were not fully aware of what it meant that TopText was being installed, or informed during the installation process what the yellow links would mean in future makes everything different, and makes the inclusion of TopText with the KaZaA program, whether legal or no, definitely immoral on the part of KaZaA.)
Third voice no longer exists. I have not been able to find any hard data on what the conclusions of the lawsuits filed against thirdvoice were. Either way, it is not important; Wired says that 3rdvoice went down for the sole reason that the web advertising market is shit, and legal harrassment was not involved. Sad; it was a nifty idea. Maybe someday we will see a GPLed equivilent?-mcc
Keep in mind that the same people that would keep you from listening to Boards of Canada may be back next year to complain about a book, or even a television program.
* (Offtopic side-rant: at the least, they have more right to do this than bess has to maintain a database of "objectionable" websites and distribute software which blocks those websites-- the crucial difference being that Third Voice presents their content as opinion, which it is, while Bess presents its content as pure, cold fact despite the fact it may be innacurate. The only objection with Bess would be a) that they misrepresent their product and content to consumers and b) that some school districts and libraries have been forced to install it, against the wishes of the users of those schools and libraries.)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This is why I emphesized the word "Who". It all comes down to on whose behalf the software is acting as an agent.
If the software is a representative of the company that wrote it, then distribution to other parties is exactly what is happening (Kazaa or Microsoft is modifying the information and distributing it to the user). It's copyright violation.
OTOH, if the software is a representative of the user who is running it, then no distribution is happening, and of course it's all Fair Use and not copyright violation.
What I'm seeing is that some people are a bit wishywashy on deciding which person the software represents. I'm a software-is-the-user and people-are-responsible-for-their-computers kind of guy. (Which is why I advocate that Kazaa and Microsoft have the right to distribute this kind of crappy software. It's also why I feel that people who connect known insecure systems to the internet, should be held responsible for the havoc those systems inevitably cause.)
But then people like Robin Gross of EFF (!!!) say that they think it's a copyright violation. Which is really funny since EFF is defending 2600 in the DeCSS case. In the DeCSS case, I'm sure that EFF feels that users of DeCSS are the ones who may or may not use it to violate copyright, and the author and distributors of the tool are certainly not doing anything wrong. In other words, when we're talking about DeCSS, the program is acting as an agent of the user, but when we're talking about SmartTags, the program is acting as an agent of its author. This is wrong.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Ok, waitaminute. Who is altering the content and redistributing it? Is it the company that made the software, or is it the computer itself, acting as an agent for the user that views it?
If I install JunkBuster or some other ad filter on my machine, it also alters the stuff I look at. Is Junkbuster (the company) guilty of copyright infringement, or am I exercising my fair use rights?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It doesn't necessarily matter even if you win - litigation is a costly business, and if the case drags on long enough, you may not have the money to cover the mounting costs.
Not only that, but your reputation may suffer, regardless of whether you win or not. For people whose ability to earn money rests on their reputation, this could be just as damaging as losing the case.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Assaf Henkin of eZula told me the only way to keep TopText links from marring our sites was to email all domain names we wanted blocked to support@ezula.com
/usr/bin/perl
Oh, okay. *clickity-clack*
#!
$name = 'a';
while (1) {
system "echo Remove $name.com | mail support@ezula.com";
system "echo Remove $name.net | mail support@ezula.com";
system "echo Remove $name.org | mail support@ezula.com";
$name++;
}
There. That should take care of most of the Internet. People who use 0-9 or - in their domain names will have to take care of themselves, i guess.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
TopText (which was called HOTText until the end of last week)
Actually, it looks like it's called Internet Text now.
Oops, while i was writing that, they changed its name to ContextPro.
I've heard of Internet Time, but this is ridiculous...
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
American Copyright Law,
Title 17, Section 106A(2) [The copyright owner] shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation;
Their software clearly distorts/mutilates/modifies content without permission from the copyright holder. IANAL, but I doubt any such modification could be considered fair use (secion 101 defines a "derivative work" as a modification that, as a whole, represents an original work of authorship - inserting ads does not constitute this).
They are the ones that haven't a leg to stand on.
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Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use38 Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors
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Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
As far as I'm concerned, KaZa is the trojan. TopText is the payload of the trojan... it is a virus.
A trojan is a program that serves a particular desired purpose while secretly delivering a program of malicious intent (or, as you stated, a progam that does undesirable things to your computer). Therefore, TopText is a virus, not a trogan.
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Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
I was reading his sig and was like... did something happen while I was away? Did HTTP get upgraded or something? :)
I'm of the opinion that if you can't read it in lynx, it probably isn't worth reading.
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Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
No...this is happening on your computer, using software licensed by you. If this happened on your ISPs computers, for instance, then the ISP would be violating copyright. But it doesn't, it happens on YOUR machine, using software that YOU installed.
If you don't pay attention while installing software, that's your problem, but the install program, FWIU, DOES tell you that it's going to install the TopText program, and you ARE given the opportunity to turn it off.
It's not their problem if you're stupid enough to install software on Windows by blindly clicking "Next >" a bunch of times.
My journal has hot
Of course you are excercising your fair use rights. Just as you may amalgomate several movies on a videotape or create a videotape with your collection of favorite clips or whatever, so long as you aren't distributing that, you can add links to web pages, albeit automatically. Remember, they aren't modifying the content on the web and redistributing it here. The content is being modified on your computer, more or less by you, although the program is doing it for you. However, IANAL, so don't blame me if you get used. :)
My journal has hot
A trojan is program code embedded inside another program that does undesirable things to your computer.
TopText is program code embedded inside another program that does undesirable things to your computer.
Therefore TopText is a trojan.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
What about a copy stored in ram?
Sounds like some of the biggies (Yahoo, eBay, *ack*MSN) could possibly sue over this.
It's gotta be some sort of infringment somewhere. Maybe infringement of 1st amendment? It's a reach, I know.
damn. I just spilled h20 on my mouse
pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I was recently alerted to the fact that your company has been changing the content of my web site without my permission.
I hereby ask you to discontinue the modification of the content coming from my web site immediately.
I understand that these changes are taking place on the client side, but I see no legal or moral difference between this and if you had illegally gained access to my servers - the end result is the same, and should be considered so by the authorities.
I am currently in contact with my lawyers to discuss the possibility of taking legal action against you for defacing my web site and/or copyright infringement, or other crimes yet to be specified.
The domains in question are:
[my domains...]
I expect you to remove my domains from your list within 24 hours.
thank you,
Adrien Cater
address, etc.
bla bla bla...
Point and Grunt
Point and Grunt
scare the shit out of them!
Does anydoby have the phone numbers of Adobe's Legal team handy? I'd like to see the FBI get invloved :-)
Point and Grunt
Point and Grunt
When you are installing kazaa, it defaults to a custom install with about 5 wierd programs beign selected. I managed to deselect them last night when I was stoned as fuck, but they aren't really described very well in the installation.
The way to avoid things like toptext is to always do custom installs, and always check through what you are installing.
Unfortunately, this is becoming a hazard of running free-as-in-beer commercial software in Windows.
After you install software like this, check to see what it added to your system. Look in the Startup group, look in the win.ini file, look in the appropriate place in the registry (sorry, I don't remember the exact key right now, someone will supply it in a reply maybe), and just check after your next reboot if there are any processes running that you don't remember from the last time you checked. (ctrl-alt-del in win9x, or task manager in nt/2k)
This is unfortunately simply becoming something you expect with windows freeware. It isn't free, you just pay for it in something other than direct cash payments.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Go in the directory where ezula is (c:/program files/ezula) and run the uninstall program. Duh.
The easiest thing to do is go into c:/program files/ezula and double click the uninstall program.
See Nintendo v. Galoob for details. The Game Genie is hardware that alters Nintendo's copyrighted content. Tough.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
"Bullshit. ... Slashbots claim ... It's my content too! Baa baa baa!"
And can you present a compelling argument why one does not have this right? Other than several ad hominem attacks?
You need to realize that copyright is not created for authors, but for the public. The statement "It's my content too" is quite compelling, legally. More compelling would be "authors have a monopoly that is limited in time and extent". Visual artists have a stronger monopoly (see US Code title 17, section 106a), and might well have legal grounds to attack this - not that, IMO, they would have ethical grounds to.
Please post comments which contain some actual content and are worth reading - otherwise, why do you expect anyone to take your beliefs seriously?
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Not the Odds song. Would somebody who's cool and bandwidth-laden like to take a few extensive Google searches and submit them to the opt-out link?
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Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Whew! I was 90% sure that's what it was going to say. Since I'm on a work computer I was a little worried, but what's life without a few risks?
Does anyone have a screenshot, or better, a snippet of HTML with the yellow highlight tag (I'm assuming it is a tag) inserted?
If the BG color of a page is set to that exact shade of yellow, via the BODY tag or css, would this defeat the TopText highlight?
Users, or potential users, find my site via search engines, looking maybe for "notepad", maybe "address book", maybe "password manager". All my software is freeware (I make exactly zero money through coding), and some of it is open source'd. Do I want a for-profit company to pollute my pages with links to commercial notepads, addressbooks or password managers? Hell no!
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
SuperID
Free Database Hosting for Developers
SuperID
- Data is collected continuously in real time from network edge
- View Reports online according to different parameters - Category, Keyword, Site, Revenue
According to their privacy policy, they promise to not collect any info except on links they add, but the ability exists.Thanks to Savenow, I became suspicious and discovered a piece of software called Adaware (Windoze only) that searches for spyware and deletes it. I really recommend it as it found other spyware too. It is available at http://www.lavasoft.de.
Harlan Ellison has a cool story about this. He always had provisions in his contracts to ensure there would be no advertising in any of his books. Sometime in the 60's or 70's, some publisher got the right to reprint one of Ellison's books and they stuck one of those cigarette advertising pages into the middle of it.
:)
/. that want to take up the cause? :) NetSol should give you a place to start. Not that I'm condoning violence, you understand. You are responsible for your own actions.
If you're unfamiliar with this, go to a used book store, browse through some sci-fi paperbacks published in the late 60's or sometime in the 70's (I forget exactly when) and flip through them. If they have this advertising, it will stick out. It'll be heavier stock paper in the middle of the book, part of the binding just like all the other pages. You can't take it out without messing up the book. Cigarette ads, mostly. Lame, very lame.
Anyway, Harlan relates the story that he was really pissed off about this, and asked the publisher to stop doing this, multiple times. (And Harlan can rant and rave with the best of them. Crotchety is an understatement.) Publisher won't budge. So, to move the story along, Harlan has a lot of fans. One of his fans came up to him one day (or mailed him the story, or something) and told him what he'd done.
As the publisher was leaving work one day, the fan fell in step next to him. Started talking. "Your name is . You live at . Your wife's name is . Your childrens' names are . They go to school at . If you don't stop putting advertising in Harlan's books, bad things will happen." Takes a right at the next corner and is never seen again. Further printing of Harlan's books (with this publisher, at least) have no advertising.
Harlan relates this as a true story. Couldn't condone it, but applauded it.
Any fans of
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Alex Johns
Of course, the funny part is that BMG and the other music companies are always whining about "losing money" due to MP3 trading over P2P networks... and yet they pay for the privilege of advertising their bands in P2P apps?
Singularity. Kettle. Black.
The problem is that the recording industry relies on immoral and unconstitutional laws to forcibly remove your rights. TopText isn't remotely similar; your fair use rights are not threatened by Slashdot requesting to opt out.
Slashdot is interfering with that relationship, and it's none of their business if I decide to use their page with their technology.
So take a Slashdot page, stick it on your local web server, and view it in its TopText-enhanced glory. Better yet, use a proxy to automatically do this. Unlike the recording industry, Slashdot will not sue you or have you arrested.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
You do not. You have copyright on your works, which prevents me from distributing copies without your permission. But it does not prevent me from locally modifying your content for personal use, either manually or via an agent such as TopText or Junkbuster.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
>Does it overwrite links in paid advertising?
hmm.. anyone tried the google adwords yet? after all.. it's a plaint text link.. easiest to doctor.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Okay, who's the wise guy that told Rob about "ethics" and "integrity", eh? When did he learn about this? Has he put his new found knowledge of these fancy terms to actual use on, Slashdot, or does he just get in a huff when he sees other people violating them?
So much has changed here -- serves me right for skimming recently... :)
I love it -- the editor of a site with the profesisonalism of a high school 'zine writer complaining [even if validly] about some a company's lack of professionalism.
Pot, meet kettle. You two will get on grandly... :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Them's my links and my lame DoubleClick ads (which have netted me at least $180 over 18 months). I'll sue you bastards for every penny my shyster can get!
Hey...
Does it overwrite links in paid advertising?
If so I bet the advertising companies will be even more annoyed - and will be able to show financial damage if it ever comes to a lawsuit.
I wonder if we can get THEM to sue 'em?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
- Start|Settings|Control Panel
- Add/Remove Programs
- Select "KaZaA".
- Remove
Alternatively, if you're in a "take off and nuke them from orbit" kind of a mood.--
I have no fin
no wing no stinger
no claw no camouflage
I have no more to say...
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
The problem from my point of view is that they are not paying me as a content owner to insert their advertising on my sites, nor are they providing me as a user with a benefit for having their software (such as free access to otherwise-paid sites). As such, they are simply taking from me either way - there is no quid pro quo. This is not theft in the classic sense, because I am not left without something I had before, but it is intrusive, abusive and rude.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
From the SFC article:
It preys on people who are into using computers but don't know what they're doing. As much as I think these things and MicroSoftSmartOverUseOfCapitaliZationTags are evil, it does sound like a group of people waiting to be taken advantage of. I have trouble working up a lot of sympathy for an argument that analogizes well to "Those cops who give you fines for going through red lights are preying on us people who are into using cars, but not so automotively savvy that we know what we're doing."
As for its legality... as underhanded as it may be, it's probably legal. A piece of software you chose to install (though perhaps not realizing at the time that that was what you were doing) on your computer is adding a new function (though not one you necessarily want) to the way you browse the web. Functionally, it's pretty similar to JunkBuster.
[TMB]
the "I am Sparticus" approach - sprinkle your site with tasty yellow backgrounded goatse.cx links ....
A p2p filesharing company finally found a way to make money, i never thought it would happen.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
Then you first have to know about them. We now know about microsoft attempting this, and the little idiot company that spawned this /. thread. How many more are there in the wild?
Well, try telling that to the MPAA. We're just using their own tools against them to at least make some some sort of stand in regards to their profiting off the stupidity of the general populous.
I can have my JSP server refuse connections from IE if Microsoft decides to pull that Smartlinks shit (I don't currently, so you IE users are currently welcome to come look at my winged penis and stuff. Though my domain name does seem to give IE some problems...) Does this application add anything to the HTTP request header that I can use to filter out users of this software? I don't mind software of this nature as long as I can detect it with my web server and refuse to serve people who are using it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You won't have to worry about it if you're an Adelphia customer... if they find you using KaZaa, they'll cut you off anyway and you won't have to worry about pop-up ads.
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
I am not sure this is a correct interpretation of what happens. Technically it is the TopText costumers who are "rendering" your web pages. They are just using a wierd browser, which happens to add clickable yellow spots here and there on the page. Legally I doubt anything is wrong with this. Considering how the browser apparently is sneaked onto the system together with something else, I find it wrong morally.
Does this modified MSIE still just identify itself as MSIE or does it admit that it is not really just MSIE? If it identifies itself as a TopText-modified-MSIE, then it is simply a matter of redirecting visitors using this browser to a warning page. If it doesn't, web site owners have to decide if they prefer ads on their site (most likely pointing to the competitor) or if the dare to ask their visitors to stop using MSIE because some editions of it do not live up to the editorial line of the site.
Jacob
PS: A long term option could be to insist that browsers somehow include a list of installed plug-ins in HTTP requests.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation.
I see. You defend your misunderstanding of petitio principii (begging the question) by means of an argumentum ad populum (an appeal to popular opinion).
JunkBuster is NOT clearly 'you' modifying content for your own use. Not unless it's YOU that is specifying all those ads to remove.
My take on it is this: if you want to hack your copy of Mozilla so that every ad for 'Kodak' doesn't show up, I think you're a loony and go right ahead. That way, every time you don't see an ad for 'Kodak' where an ad is supposed to be, you will think, "There's that ad that I removed", and no problem there.
If you let a _third_ _party_ come up with what to remove, I object. Write your own remove algorithm! I'll happily let _you_ remove the revenue of a web page and decide how I should support the content, even if you're insane, but what gives you the right to turn this over to some third party? They're not you! If you don't want to read the ads they remove, how about you go SITES WITH NO ADS? Why on earth do you feel that your opinion matters on what THEY do to my content? You're free to edit what you like yourself, or have Mozilla omit all instances of the word 'the', because this is all your personal interaction with the content. You are the user, it is what you are reading, you can do what the hell you want. Your freedom does not necessarily extend to being entitled to sublicense that off, to shrug and say "Here, I'm reading this page. I know you didn't pay this site, but take some ads out that I might think are irrelevant. Surprise me!"
If you don't want to read their ads that damn badly, how about you go to sites with no ads? What gives THEM property rights over my little web homestead?
It's even worse if you're clueless and have no idea I didn't actively choose to have no ads. I'm assuming you are firmly aware I didn't choose to have no ads and I _still_ consider it necessary for my site to remain up. If you're an idiot and think I decided to put content up for free with no ads, the situation is incomparably worse. But of course nobody is ever a luser, or ever encounters a lack of ads on a strange website and concludes it's the site author's doing :P
-no broken link
Even in this case, the DMCA doesn't apply. It's only if you subvert the technology for the purposes of violating copyright. If you use a program to, say, watch DVDs that you own on an operating system with no DVD player, then you aren't violating the DMCA because you aren't violating copyright.
-no broken link
This program doesn't alter the contents of the HTML either. It changes the way it is displayed.
-no broken link
Be sure to use a free long distance software like MSN or Net2Phone. Why have it on your bill?
-no broken link
Everytime Morpheus would startup and I moved my cursor over the system tray icon it would have a little text box that would say "Kazaa"
It's insidious, and I still think it's a bad thing.
1) Just because the link is different from others doesn't mean Joe User who is visiting my site for information is going to know some one else added the link.
2)I don't have to say "go take these". I could have the words "a good way to diet" somewhere, and they could be a link. Therefore, I now have a link on my page which makes it look like I think the pills are a good way to diet.
3)I certainly will, but perhaps the damage has already been done?
"fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy"
I really don't get why there's such a community uproar over link-insertion--either this, or IE's Smart Tags.
Why? Ok, here's a hypothetical example:
Let's say I'm a well-recognized nutritionist, and as a service to the world at large, I have a web site dedicated to dieting with your health in mind. Lots of people visit this site because they want to lose weight, but they are concerned about their health. Now, let's also assume Drop-Dead diet pills have bought adspace with some link-insertion company. Suddenly, links to the potentially dangerous Drop-Dead diet pills are appearing all over my site, and even worse, people are buying these and using them like crazy. Why not? My site is dedicated to healthy dieting, I'm a certified nutritionist, and I've got links to Drop-Dead all over my page.
And then of course, say some one dies from this and his/her family comes after me because I "recommended" the pills?
THAT is why it's a bad thing.
"fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy"
Rich
Clearly, people who are downloading and installing the Kazan software are not expecting 'TopTen' to be installed as well. Sure, you don't have to install it, but you will by default.
I wonder how this is really any different from a kind of Trojan Horse style of crack. If they're not doing more to disclose this at install than a non-descript checkbox (e.g., including it in the license) then they should be charged, criminally, with cracking the computers of their users.
Downloading and installing free software should not give the software producer the right to do what they will to your computer. Sneaking it into the install process should be criminal if it isn't already.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Has anyone found anyplace where this is disclosed other than as a default install option? There's no mention in the license, terms of use, faq, installation guide, or anywhere else on their site.
Is having a checked checkbox really all they need to do this? If I add a checkbox to software I'm distributing that says "reformat my hard drive" and then do so if they leave it checked, do I have no liablity?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Wrong. I am under no illusions that these links are from Slashdot. If you want to argue "public confusion", that's a different issue.
Public confusion is exactly the point. You download a program to share files, mindlessly click through the default install, and presto, your web browser is now adding links to pages. I think most people wouldn't even realize the cause and effect here and would very likely think that the links *are* part of the site.
Kazaa does not disclose that this software will be installed anywhere except the install process. If you don't uncheck the box (or even know why you should, after all you want ALL the features of the software your installing, right?) TOPtext is installed. It's an opt-out system that doesn't even disclose what you'd be opting out of.
Also, TOPtext doesn't just highlight plain text. It'll also change existing hyperlinks if somewhat has bought that keyword from them. Instead of linking to what the author intended, it presents optional links, of which the original is only one with advertiser(s) making up the rest.
I would be fine with all of the things it does if they a) told people what they were opting-in for and b) made it opt-in. I agree with you that people should have the right to choose, but we shouldn't be forced to make a choice. That's the fundamental problem with opt-out. They're effectively saying "We've made this choice for you, now choose to undo it, if you don't agree."
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Well this program 'only' puts a yellow underline under certain keywords in the text.
According to the article from the SF Chronicle, it also highlights text that is already a link, leaving the original intent for the link as simply one of hte options presented when the text is clicked. This is simply wrong.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
From the article:
If the highlighted Web site word was also a hyperlink, the TOPtext gives a choice of going to the original destination or the advertiser's site.
Holy hijacked surfers, Batman. It's bad enough that it changes your site in the eyes of the visitors, but screwing with your own navigation is over the top. It's one thing to turn normal text into links, but changing the links on a site is something else entirely.
These people need to be sued.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
But that's a slippery slope. Shouldn't users have the right to install software like this? I mean, I might find it really compelling to have sites intelligently linked together. Naturally, most of us aren't fans of this being used as advertising, but it's the same thing: if that's what the customer wants (installs) they should be able to have it.
And even if you disagree with me on that point, would you argue the same about stylesheets? The CSS 1 spec states that user agent (personal web browser) stylesheets have precidence over page-specified stylesheets. So if I want, I could force my browser to display Slashdot with a pink background, orange text, and whatnot. Clearly that's okay, but Taco probably wouldn't choose those colors himself.
MyopicProwls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
A good action to take, but to some extent its just falling in and accepting their terms. You should not have to "opt out" of a situation where words are being put into your mouth withour them even telling you. I know that arround here sueing is something only "bad people" do, but if there is a web site that has the money, I hope they take these guys to hell and back through the court system. "You can ask us real nice to stop misrepresenting your page to readers after you find out about it on your own" simply does not cut it.
To put this in brick and morter terms, what if a company like (the now defunct) homeruns delivered newspapers to some people with their groceries and started putting "special suplements" in all the papers. And when the papers started asking why they were inserting content and making people think it was part of the Globe or the Herald or whatever, the company said "well, there's a request for us to do this buried in the fiftieth page of our service contract that they didn't opt out of, and it doesn't really SAY the its a globe aproved suplement, and if they were really familiar they would notice it was on a kind of paper you never use, but you know, if you don't like it you could have called us and given us a list of every issue you didn't want this to happen in...." You know, I think they'd get their asses sued.
At the very least, aside from them screwing with intellectual property, one could argue that their advertising is being done using the website's client base and reputation and thus they owe a portion of advertising revenue to the people they've been sticking it on. I could come up with a complicated analogy for that too if it isn't obvious.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Though it seems a bit underhanded on the face of it, I believe systems like this are a good way for business to get done in a free software environment. Napster only worked so well because the program stayed running after you closed the main window. It was somewhat annoying to the 20% of people who noticed it, but it meant that most of the users were sharing files, oblivious to the situation. Its a sort of software-user meritocracy... if you know how to turn off the garbage, you can, if you can't figure the stuff out, you support the community with your ignorance. :)
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
You can opt out of this DURING THE INSTALL, which most people should have done anyhow. The easiest thing to do is to reinstall the product and OPT OUT then.
I don't use IE as my default browser any how.
Bruce Davis
UNIX Systems Administrator
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
This is a disturbing trend among free-to-download software.
-- Agthorr
Here's a link to their website... shows the technology in action:
http://www.ezula.com/Advertisers/Advertisers2.asp
--Bob
This creates a false sense of attribution. This is what Ford claimed in it's case against 2600.
This also relates to the framing cases.
Fight Spammers!
there's not much chance of them mucking with your image binaries, is there?
(*) yes, I'm being facetious
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Why is it they haven't prosecuted these bastards? Is it perfectly okay to do nasty, illegal, trojan things to computers as long as you're registered as a corporation?
Maybe if enough people file complaints about this trojan piece of shit, we can toss their CEO in jail. "Hey! I didn't do it! I just work for the corporation! And I'm from Russ-- er, check that."
When I say that I have a right to my works, I mean the following:
1) I created a document to be viewed in toto as I created it.
2) I provide particular information, often in a scholarly fashion, which contains links. Each of these links has a specific purpose, namely, to provide further bibliographic or internally-referential information.
3) Modification of this information distorts the meaning of the information I have presented.
Consider the case of a scholarly paper on something other than French Fries, be it cold fusion, a Higgs boson, Ununoctium, or even pulse rockets. In such an article (if it is indeed scholarly), I will provide links to examples and sources. If some company comes along and modifies my treatise to include other links to something other than that which I have referenced, there is a clear and serious detrimental effect to the validity of my document.
I get a lot of hate mail from Belgians as it is, and changes to my links may generate even more hate mail. Yeah, I'll get over it sooner or later, but the point is that my carefully researched (really) content has been altered, not by the end user, but by a third-party, for-profit company. And it seems there is little I can do about it, even though I could've sued the Washington Post for defamation and character assasination for misquoting me in print.
Consider Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series. The Colour of Magic was done in Germany by a particular publisher (see lspace.org), who modified a couple pages ino order to insert a soup advertisement into the text! Imagine reading a Stephen King novel like this: "Karen, almost frozen with fear, locked the door, but simply locking a door isn't good enough. When it comes to home security, you need ADT. ADT provides 24-hour protection at the push of a button. Or at the first sign of trouble. Unfortunately, Karen doesn't have ADT home security. What's she up to now? Well, Karen, staring out the peephole..."
Why do I have no say in this matter? The changes to my site and links are not being done directly by the user. I have no problem with fair use of my site; it's been quoted and misquoted around the world. I do have a problem with theft and hijacking, which my site has also been subject to. (A number of sites have copied -- verbatim -- the page, Twenty-two Things To Do With French Fries Besides Eat Them and I have crawled up their tightly-closed orifices to protect my creative works).
As I said, my comment was only partly meant in jest. I have serious problems with both sides of the question, even when I take both arguments to the extreme. At the extremes, I tend to favour the laissez-faire approach because I don't want RIAA telling me I can't make a killer mix CD with New Model Army, King's X and The Pogues, but somebody screwing with my content really bugs the shit out of me. You just have no idea of the sacrifices involved in keeping the OFFP going.
woof.
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I have a site -- The Official French Fries Pages -- which I've managed to keep alive since 1996,[1] although I really need to upload a few new pages.
Do I say, "Fine. Whatever. You wanna look at my page and links the wrong way, I don't care," and just let anarchy reign supreme? I mean, I'm a "Slashdotter", right? I've been here for a few years (although I couldn't be bothered to register for a while), and I'm certainly an "0ld sk3wl Internet-doofus" (since '86). This is just more crap that I can ignore, and anyway, we all hate frivolous lawsuits and copyright bullshit... unless it hits home.
Or do I look at it like RIAA or MPAA: This is my goddamned IP . Them's my links and my lame DoubleClick ads (which have netted me at least $180 over 18 months). I'll sue you bastards for every penny my shyster can get!
Oh how ugly reality can be.
While the above was meant, at least in part, as sarcasm, I truly am unsure what to do. I could be tempted to join a class action to prevent the modified display of my site, not for the money but for the principle.
Do I not have a right to say what can and cannot be done with my creative works? And doesn't RIAA say the same thing?
"Morals suck, Beavis."
woof.
[1] Don't give me any shit about using FrontPage. I always demand HTTP 2.0 compliance and I got tired of writing six or more versions of each and every page so that any browser could see it. And if another standard came out, I had to rewrite all the pages with a version for those browsers, too. At least I edit the FP "code" and cut the actual size down about 60%. And you can still view the site in lynx!
Alternatively, you could get StartupCPL, a tool that collects and lists the entries in the appropriate registry locations. You're still left with checking autoexec.bat and win.ini, but this has been very convenient for me on many occassions. It has no cost, but the source isn't available.
>you need to stop using the WWW to deliver it and look into a medium that's adequately protected by the DMCA.
You can still use the WWW and your site can be DMCA protected. And, using this method, it will also be fully compatible with the most popular browsers:
Your site starts a javascript popup Agree/Disagree window asking the user to agree to some terms.
Your javascript multiplies their answer by 13. It then adds (or subtracts) that to all the letters in the javascript-embedded HTML-in-a-variable.
Spit the output to the browser window.
Instant DMCA encryption protection, fully popular browser compatible (although not standard HTML). Life is good.
I think I'm going to do that right now...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Further searching on Google show's that yep they're the same. Here's an article about the history of Music City and Morpheus. Also, a very informative OpenP2P article which details the server structure used by Kazaa and morpheus. Also interesting to note that both use FastTrack software to build their networks. According to the FastTrack website, their software is also used in another client, Grokster (annoying pop-up warning).
--
IANAC (I am not a coder):
I wonder if there is any way to alert the web server that the client is running this kind of software. I'd love to pop up a window as a public service message, saying something like "Looks like your computer has been infested with..."
Is there a way to do something like that with JavaScript? Can JavaScript check for the existence of a file on the client's filesystem?
I haven't sent it yet; I'm certainly open to suggestions, but I suggest anyone else bothered by this do something similar. The article claims they will block sites they are asked to. Maybe if enough people ask they will get the picture....
Can someone post a screenshot of a web page being presented with these links?
I would be especially interested in seeing www.goose24.org (a site I'm involved with).
But Yahoo! or any other would be fine. I just want to see what these things look like.
wish
---
You have the right to not look at my writings, but you do not have the right to modify them, and place advertisements in them, especially by embedding links within them, without my expreess permission. To do so is copyright violation.
Absolutely, positively, wrong. Not only can I take your writings, I can rewrite them to say exactly the opposite of what they mean. I rewrite it to make you look like you're admitting to being a child molester. I can make it so you admit to cheating on your wife.
I can do all of that and more -- for my own private use. That is what "fair use" is all about.
Once a document leaves your computer and enters my computer, it becomes my sole perogative how I want to view it.
Then, the viewers in Seattle, see product placements in there you never intended, due to some cool technology that was installed in the projector.
So are you saying I should be unable to use this projector technology in my own home to view a movie? And that is the fundamental point. There is a difference between two commercial entities with contractual obligations, and my fair-use rights as an individual.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
But this is another company using their own methods to change the content of a site. Not YOU. It would be like a movie producer making a movie, selling it, and select stores modify the tapes and sell them to you.
Nope. That would be the case if my ISP was inserting the links, and I would be extremely upset if that was the case.
But it's not. This is software that I choose to run, and I am using it in the privacy of my own computer. To use your analogy, should it be illegal for me to take movies that I own and insert ads wherever I want them?
Let's say I had machine with a transparent screen that I hold over a book that underlines words and makes links available. Should that be illegal because I am not reading the book the way the author intended it?
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
An interesting test case for this that I can think of off the top of my head: What if I wrote an http proxy that "protected" children from offensive language in HTML documents by replacing them with say "####". Am I violating copyright because I'm altering somebody else's copyrighted HTML? Or am I exercising my right as a parent to censor information moving between the internet and my "impressionable" child? If I'm allowed to do this, am I allowed to install another piece of software that puts yellow underlines on some words or phrases?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
This story is relevant to the following groups:
Exactly. But folks surfing the Web don't actually *see* HTML, they see an interpretation, a rendering.
A web browser takes the HTML and uses it to perform some actions. There may be some general consensus on what the results should be, but there is no guarantee. In fact, it is well known that what a viewer sees can greatly vary from one browser (say, IE) to the next (lynx).
When lynx fails to render a page's background color or fancy font, does anyone complain that the content has been altered?
Unless there is some contractual agreement about how someone's HTML is to be rendered, I'd say the rendering tool (e.g. a browser) has carte blanche to do whatever. Hell, it's doing all the work.
Once you serve up HTML, you've lost control.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
Google have published OS stats for June in their current zeitgeist. They don't look so good for Linux, with only 1%, well behind MacOS' 4%. Keep in mind that these stats do not reflect marketshare, they reflect total installed user base (of course only for people who use Google).
Ok, I really hate it when I site I want to look at gets /.ed, but what the hell, lets flood their mail server and send every domain name we can to that support address listed above.
Nice try. :)
If we implemented the all new CryptoKey plug-in, and required it to view our website, then this yellowlink thing would be illegal if it interfered with our plug-in, per the DMCA. As plain text, I'd say Fair Use reigns. While Fair Use is protected by the fact that there are exceptions for it written into the law, nothing in the law says that a content provider has to make it possible for you to Fairly Use their materials. (It would be nice if more consumers would refuse to buy things that take away Fair Use, but so goes life...)
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with these yellow links, or smart tags. If the users like it and continue to support it by using it or paying for it, then that's their problem. It's no different than if I want to use my own CSS to make pages readable, or if I want to run the page through a translator, or out to the speech synthesizer. Well it is different... because in this case the installation of the program is done somewhat sneakily, and in the case of Smart Tags, well, it's dodgy because it's Microsoft. But the underlying principle is the same.
I do not have a signature
I use @home and I can no longer use many filesharing programs such as bearshare. Thanks to the MPAA threating my isp, I now have to buy inflated priced cd's and help fund the mpaa to censor other isp's to inforce their price goughing cartel.
I will try this new program and hope it will not be censored as well by big corp. Links are not, I don't care at this point.
http://saveie6.com/
If I go out and buy a book, and then slap stickers all over the cover art, or tear out every third page, I can still sell it. Once I buy the books for me to sell, assuming no contracutal obligation to the contrary, I can do whatever I want with them ("first sale" doctrine) and then go out and sell them again. (Assuming I'm not making "derivitive works", but, well, that's a whole different ball of wax.)
I really don't get why there's such a community uproar over link-insertion--either this, or IE's Smart Tags. The whole friggin' interweb was founded on the idea of the hyperlink--that you click on a term, and it takes you to other like terms.
Yes, central control over this by one corporation (like MS) is bad. Certainly, add-driven scumbal LCD advertisers using this like the article states is bad.
But the idea itself is good. As long as users can turn it off (or rather, have to turn it on) or redirect who controls the darn thing, the dot.com mentality web designers can just grow up and learn to deal with it.
In any case, IANAL, and even if I was one you should never take legal advice from stangers on the internet, like me
I think it's time to add one more /. section - news for Windows users. I would like to exclude such stories from my homepage. Why? Because I don't run Windows. I already know that installing closed-source software is like trusting your root password to Mr. CEO of MegaCorp, Inc. That's why I don't.
This is so ironic, because as a slashdot reader that does NOT use (or like) Linux, I have to wade through an amazing amount of Linux-related news that is mis-categorized. They generally like to put Linux articles in every category BUT the Linux category.
So I think you should be able to exclude Windows stories from your personalized slashdot page just as soon as I can exclude Linux stories from mine...
"And like that
Has anyone tried complaining to the advertisers using the service? I'm sure that if BMG, Frost, etc were made aware that their ads through this service were damaging their reputation with existing customers, they might reconsider sponsoring toptext. No sponsors, no toptext.
What you advocate is called "The Tyranny of the Majority". To a certain extent, all of us (people who notice) have an obligation to prevent actions and actors from harming the common weal.
Something like this obligation is what's behind successful systems of government that have representative democracies (USA, UK, Canada, etc). Sure, the vast bulk of the population thinks that minority X is evil, reproduces by laying eggs and prefers to eat boogers. Does that mean that the government has an obligation to sterilize all breeding-age members of minority X? No - just the contrary. The government has an obligation to educate the vast bulk of the population about the errors of their ways, and indeed, to prevent harm to members of minority X.
You also ignore a great evil when you blow off the harm that ubiquitous advertising causes. All advertising is a form of lying, adult US citizens are expected to disbelieve all claims made in ads. What do we learn from this kind of all-enveloping falsehoods? That it's acceptable behavior for sub-human marketeers like the TOPText people to insert their ads on my content without paying me for getting people to look at their falsehoods.
---
see this register's article about smart tags;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19943.html
Also, there is this interesting URL;
http://smarttags.manilasites.com/
This is an interesting story dealing with the legality of smart tags;
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/166676.html
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
IMO, I think i still should be illegal because it is being sold as a commercial product which is not advertised as such to the end user.
If I install JunkBuster or some other ad filter on my machine, it also alters the stuff I look at. Is Junkbuster (the company) guilty of copyright infringement, or am I exercising my fair use rights?
But you are, by your choice, and fully informed, exersizing those rights. I am not so sure that an unintentionally installed piece of software is the same sort of thing. Fair use is pretty nebulous and limited. I would argue that most of it involves personal use, not commercial use and this is the problem. If you are selling software which add ads and you don't tell anyone, then they are not excersizing their fair use. YOu are altering content and redistributing that altered content.
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm wondering, does MuiscCity Morpheus (afik, KaZaA with MusicCity's logos all over it) also install TopText? and if they place their ads on my site, is there any legal action i can take, or is there any way to collect royalties from them? (Hey, if you want ad space on my site, you pay me.)
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Oh, wait...
But masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
Regarding junk like this - are there legal ramifications? If a website's content is copyrighted and this software ALTERS the content before it is presented to the user - are they liable in any way for mucking up the web site content? Doesn't copyright law prevent alteration of copyrighted material?
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Looks like marketers are determined to replace lawyers as the most despised profession in American... It's apparent that there is NO lowball, invasive, offensive tactic beneath them.
Marketers have no qualms about calling you during dinner, calling you on your cell phone, stuffing your e-mail inbox with SPAM, wasting your fax machine paper with ads, etc, etc. This is one reason why I dumped my land-line phone, 90% of the calls I got were marketers. And most marketers will NOT allow you to be polite and get rid of them, they FORCE you to be rude.
On the positive side, my eye-hand coordination has improved drastically since I've been forced to learn how to rapidly close pop-up windows that spawn more pop ups when closed, etc.
I know some will say that such adware is the price you pay for those services (like Kazaa), but I do not think this is an ethical way to support a product. Quit giving away the service and start charging a reasonable fee instead.
The more invasive and offensive marketing becomes, the more rapid the resistance to it will increase...
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
If I buy a book I can highlight (or doodle, or rip out, pages for that matter). It becomes my book.
I can also hire a person to buy some books, make random drawings, and rip out pages before I read it. If I decide that I don't like the alterations, I better be sure that I know how to fire him.
As for the copyright crap, the authors content isn't being altered. The html on the server is exactly the same. The next guy won't be influenced by another reader's alterations. If I don't want a copy of the book I wrote and sold (note I did not say "my book", because I sold the copy) altered or perverted by some guy with a highlighter, I should choose not to sell copies. If I don't want the html downloaded and viewed by some guy altered or perverted, I shouldn't put it up.
This is no different than changing the font size in my browser. Most people who change it don't see anything wrong with that. An artistic web designer might shit a brick when he sees that someone has thrown off the balance of his page by changing the font. If you don't know how to change the font back, don't mess with it.
Yes, this is an unresearched opinion and I do not know if a court has considered a similar case. However, it is the one I came up with when discussing MS's Smart Tags and one I still feel is worth making.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
Eventually this crap will wind up on disney.com o something, thanks to some shareware app... and next thing you know, heeeeeeeeeeere comes goatse.cx links! :P
Not a good thing.
Another effective way of having your site removed (and a more immediate one) would be to call them. Their number, as listed on their web site, is 415-558-7777.
Maybe that would drive them nuts enough to rethink their strategy.
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Darryl Ballantyne
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Darryl Ballantyne
http://www.darrylballantyne.com
The concept in a good one, targeting your ads to a specific audience, but in practice it will fail for one simple reason. In the marketing and ad placement world, the ultimate goal is not to find the right customers, instead, the goal is to find any customers. If this kind of software ever takes off you will find the more cash-heavy companies buying not just words in thier own sphere, but all of the words in the English language.
Instead of having "shoes" going to Nike and "food" going to McDonalds, you'll have "bike" "Mozart" "the" "Sunday" and a whole host of random and indiscriminate words all pointing to www.xxxhotteens.com.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I find this method of advertising to be rather awfull. While it may never happen, I believe we should write our congressmen and senators and ask, nay demand that they create legislation that will create the following basic rules.
Rule 1
The author of a website has the option of opting in only by adding a new meta-tag to their HTML code stating that they allow this form of advertisements to be displayed on their website.
Rule2
The developer or group that owns the website must be compensated for allowing their content to be altered by third parties. This compensation will increase dramtically if this is a corporate or small business web site that then has competitors advertisements littered about the site.
Rule3
Religous and non-profit organizations shall not have their sites compromised by these forms of advertisements. These sites and operators are also disallowed from being added to any of these adds as it would only be fair to all parties involved.
I am sure there are more rules that people can come up with and still allow these marketers make some sort of a nickel. Anyway, if I was running a website commercial or otherwise and found my content being altered even slightly with material that I find objectionable. Such as, a competitor's link or completly unrelated material, I would immediately get a lawyer and prepare a case against this company and any others like it.
Sure, that will only add to the already large docket of court cases. Unfortunately, there just is no other legal or legislative method of dealing with companies like this.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
You should not need to opt-out of anything. Imagine if there were fifty or so of these companies, each one of these website defacement companies have an opt-out feature. None of them E-mail or even make an attempt to contact you. That is wrong. You would not know that your content is even being altered until you browsed your own site with one or more of these special little applications running on your machine.
When you eventually do that you notice that nearly every word is underlined with purple squiggly lines, yellow, brown, green, red and blue lines. The there are the ones that put the squiggly lines over your words so you have another dozen or so of those on your site. Would you want to see that as a creator of the content? Would you want to see that as a consumer looking at that site?
That is what will happen. These marketing companies are out to take away your rights to view what you wish to view and your rights to create what you wish to create. Imagine if some marketer decided that it would perfectly fine to add some advertisements to the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel, or throw a few banners on the Mona Lisa. Would that be okay? How aout if you picked up the newest Steven King novel or a Charles Dickens novel and saw banners that said Brought to you by Monkey-Rear Enterprises. Would that be okay with you?
The only reasonable way to stop this is to have real legislation designed to truly protect the consumer and the creator of said content.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
By the way, begging the question is 'answering' a question without adressing it, ie. Q: What evidence do you have for your claim? A: I know of know evidence against it. 'Begging the question' is one of the most commonly misused pretentious phrases out there.
...and this lie crawls out of its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.'
As previously mentioned, this said program will turn all occurances of a chosen word or phrase into a link to a specified website that has information or sells the product inferred or described by that keyword. Now, there are a few kickers here.
First off, this doesn't really apply to us computer savvy people, but I am sure there are plenty of people who just mindlessly installed this program. Ok, now say I run a web site that reviews DVD players. Now, when I am talking about the pros and cons of a certain dvd player, do I want whenever the word DVD shows up to link to some random company that I have no control over? Say the site says "I recommend this DVD player, as its features are ..." and DVD Player becomes a link to a completely different player that what I am talking about. To the uninformed surfer that would look like I was linking to one thing while talking about another. It just doesn't make sense.
It's like if I go into the library and just randomly insert phrases into the books.
"It was the best of times DRINK SPRITE, it was the worst of times NEW FORD EXPEDITION - 0.9% APR - LIMITED TIME ONLY!"
Oh but its ok, because I may have but a small disclaimer outside the library saying "We reserve to right to insert ads into other peoples' work"
I don't think so folks, it just doesn't make sense.
Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk who carried a gun and ran from the mob. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it. That does not make sense. Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. That does not make sense.
Why should a company be able to randomly insert links and change how people percieve content? It just doesn't make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must ban this program!
(Star Wars fans, I understand that if you read the Star Wars books you will argue that Chewbacca does indeed NOT live on Endor, I am merely using this as an example, quoted partly from South Park )
"An individualist is a man who says: 'I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.'" - Ayn Rand
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill