Still More Advertising Links

An Anonymous Coward writes: "MSNBC.com has the latest on the controversial Smart Tags technology that got punted from Windows XP. This time it's not Microsoft doing the dirty deed, but a couple of 3rd-party companies. And they already have 500,000 users installed. I can see the lawyers salivating already."

Comments

Whoever owns the client...

[jmerelo]

owns the content... it's technically feasible to change the content displayed by the client anyway you want. Maybe that's was really the incentive behind the IE/Netscape war.

Re:They've crossed the line long ago

[localroger]

They can't change the way I want to present my homepage, now the line is crossed a looooong time ago!

Unfortunately, they can. It's the way the Internet works.

Right now I am voluntarily running Proxomitron, a web proxy which strips out ad banners, popups, and assorted misc.trash from the pages I view. And there's not a damn thing webpage designers can do about it except convince me to disable the proxy.

Things like surf+ are like anti-Proxomitrons that introduce spam instead of filtering it out; the only "cure" is to educate consumers and provide information on removing this software if they've installed it. As long as they can be uninstalled, you can't hope for much more. Of course, the kind of integration Microsoft was developing for XP is another kettle of fish altogether.

Double Standards

[YIAAL]

Hey -- if some teenager smuggles an app. onto a corporate computer, he's a nasty hacker who must be punished. When corporations try to smuggle their crap onto my computer, that's smart business. Huh?

Who is in control?

[Hobbex]

I see a concerning tendency in these discussions for people who normally seem to understand that the other people cannot be allowed to dictate how we run our computers, to suddenly label this sort of software as evil.
Just like I will not allow the movie industry to be in control over my computer when I watch a DVD, and the Publishing industry cannot be in control of my computer/palmtop when I read a book, the Internet's website publishers have NO right to demand that I view their sites in any particular manner. Software that replaces adds with others, or software that adds links to websites, has as much a right to exist as any other software. If I choose to run it, then it is my freedom to do so - if you do not like people being able to read your documents while replacing the adds, I would suggest you stop putting your content on the web in the first place - not that you demand that web browsers should suddenly serve you rather than the person browsing.

User agents must serve the user and only the user. Demanding that browsers serve the interests and expectations of website publishers is in no way different from demanding that DVD players serve the interests and expectations of the MPAA, and that MP3 player serve the interests and expectations of the RIAA. The concept that of these "User Hostile" agents is the basis for the future that those who are attacking Freedom on the Internet are planning. If we value freedom and self determination in the information age, we cannot in any case condone and support an attitude that preaches that software is responsible to anybody except the person using it - even when it is the form of sleazy marketing.

That said, there is of course a more sinister angle to what these programs are doing - that is that they sneak their way into peoples computers without people realizing it. That we should not condone - but let us face it, it will be impossible to get away from as long as people are using software written without the intentions of the user in mind. We already have the solution to that problem, it is called Free Software, and there is enough of it to cover every computing need. When was last time you got a piece of spyware off apt-get?

So in closing, do not confuse the issues here:

- Programs installing functionality the user didn't ask for or want = BAD
- Programs doing what they (and presumable the user, given the previous) wants rather than what the website owner/music company/film company/book publisher/etc wants = GOOD

Re:Who is in control?

[cperciva]

If this was indeed an issue of user agents serving users, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, it isn't: I highly doubt that any of the hundreds of thousands of people who installed the software knew that they were agreeing to have advertising thrown at them.

USERS have the right to change how websites are displayed on their computers. Other companies don't.

Storm in a Teacup

[(void*)]

These people don't seem to get what the web it. The whole point of the web is that the web client gets to control where he wants to go, what resources he chooses to download. If I want to write my own browser that creates a link out of every other word, that should be my perogative. If the resulting website looks slanderous/twisted or whatever, it would only look like that to me, nobody else.

This is not to say that the technology is well thought out. Many of the complaints are valid. It is not a good idea to mark commonly used, generic words to be sent to a specific site. It is not a good idea to spread or propagate those links to people who do not want them, or sell to the highest bidder. IMHO, only end-users (or businesses running a company wide intranet) should be able to control exactly which links where. And this is done because only they know what kind of links satisfy their needs

Face it - the idea behind this is as old as the annotated work. This is just the problem of indexing all over again - which words do you want to put in the index, and which ones not to? The engine that enables one to do this should be lauded, but one should realize that the choice of words to highlight is dependent highly upon one's judgement. Those who think that this judgement can be pushed onto a machine just have not thought hard about what it is that they are automating. Employing such potentially useful functionality for advertising, and the criticism of that as "taking away the hits" seems so banal, so idiotically lacking in perspective.

Re:How do they work?

[Bilbo]

It's a user installed plugin for the browser, not unlike Java or RealPlayer. The plugin then detects keywords and renders them as special links to the provider's pages (either directly to a third party page, or to another page with lists of "related" links).

The user installs the plugin, so in a sense, it's their own fault. Problem is that they are promised one thing, but now they're getting something very different from what they expected.

Slippery slopes ahead

[JanneM]

As always, there is a flip side to this. If this is made unlawful, that would probably apply to filtering/adbusting proxies as well; for the content providers there isn't much of a difference between replacing their ads and removing them. And once you're down that slippery slope, you could see blocking graphics, disallowing popups or animated gifs or even having your own typeface as intruding upon the websites' rights. This could conceivably mean that websites could legally demand that users use only a certain browser in only its standard configuration, whether the site would work with other setups or not.

I think the problem with this software isn't what they do, but the fact that they are being deployed in a dishonest way. Most people getting them installed will have no idea they are doing that, and they don't give paople an easy way of removing them. The dishonesty stems mainly from the fact that the users are installing an application to do one thing, and these change an unrelated application without this fact being advertised as part of the description of the original application.

/Janne

Why should I have sympathy?

[HuskyDog]

Perhaps I am missing something here? If users don't like these extra links then they can remove the software. If they don't know how then they can either ask or go buy a book.

If it comes built into their OS then they can either put up with it or move to a free OS.

In either case, why should I have any sympathy?

Re:Why should I have sympathy?

[mikethegeek]

" Perhaps I am missing something here? If users don't like these extra links then they can remove the software. If they don't know how then they can either ask or go buy a book. "

I don't like that attitude. Like everyone, I was once a novice computer user (true, it was over 15 years ago, but I digress).

I abhor exploiting newbies as a matter of principle. But there is a self-interest angle...

The more newbies get exploited by marketerware, the HARDER it gets for them to experience their PC and the Internet without exploiter programs bothering them, the MORE likely they are to jump from the PC to simple dedicated machines that will lock them into one company's less obscene marketing.

Without newbies coming into the PC market, what happens to those of us who's income depends on it? We can either help the newbies, and try to do something about this abusive exploitation, or else, laugh at them as they are driven OFF the PC, and as we end up haughty ex-IT professionals now working at places where we have to say "you want fries with that".

Because, other than our computer skills, I'm betting the majority of us have no other job qualifications than that.

Virtual Republication

[ProfessorPuke]

This brings up an emerging legal problem that the politicians haven't quite got their teeth into yet- if the DMCA et al provide the intellectual property industry with protection against unauthorized redistribution, should it be legal to evade that restriction by moving the point of redistribution to the client side?

These three things are illegal to distribute today:

• A Wall Street Journal article with the ads removed, or replaced with your own ads.
• A PNG combining the top 20 new webcomics for that day, suitable for printing.
• A copy of StarWars ep 1 with JarJar edited out.

Yet the author of each piece of modified content could get around that law by only giving out a program that, when run from the end-viewer's computer, uses a legally obtained copy of the unmodified content and then creates a locally modified version with the desired changes. (There are technical obstacles to applying this technique to each of those examples, but they're surmountable).

At no point was copyright law broken- but as a software engineer will tell you, deciding which part of a system should go on the client and on the server is an implementation detail that should be decided by technical performance concerns, not legalisms about which piece of data you can copy where.

To the end-user, the result looks exactly the same either way ("Hey! They just waved to JarJar, and kept right on walking!"), so why should one implementation be less legal than the other?

(This situation is rather like an inverted version of the "GPL ASP loophole")

In meatspace this would be flyposting or vandalism

[new500]

. .

claiming this is just leeching risks appearing like a whiner to the few lusers who are actually pleased at some other (possibly illicit)functionality they received wth their viral browser plug in.

Putting up yet more terms and conditions on my web site doesn't sound like any fun or use. It's no news that reader's initial attention span and patience with a new site is short. So making them read a whole treatise, or - possibly worse because there's not lkely to be a back link to your referring page - diverting visitors to another site so they can read up on the plague, doesn't sound good either.

I presume these things work on a standard browser plug in architecture. You can detect Flash and other plug ins with javascript. Why not Top Text and all this crap, the politiely divert visitors with the offending code to a page that says actually does given them the info on what is going on, and that reminds them that in your eyes and in the eyes of many reasonable content producers, they are keeping very bad company indeed, and may not presently view your work.

I would feel just fine casting Top Text plug in vistors away from my site. For all the talk of legal remedies, involving parasitic behaviour or any more subtle arguments that have been put forth to me this the web equivalent of fly posting? If my web site were physical these people could be arrested for criminal damage.

I'm sure I could think of a few nicer arguments such as destruction of trade dress, contributory misrepresentation, alteration of registered trademarks (which is protected) and who knows what else. To someone who mentioned this elsewheer, this is likely _not_ a direct and clear copyright violation, as - on one point at least - the user is modifying your work only for their on use.

The basis on which the providors of such leechware could be sued for copyright infringment I am not clear. This is a grey area because of the free will aspects, free distribution of the offending leechware (though if this was directly sold you coudl claim copyright breach with intent to pander or profit therefrom which would be serious) and in essense the keyword advertisers are only paying for modifications to the code of a freely distributed "gift". Has anyone thought if these leechware things update themselves automatically? That might at least indicate the producers of this crap were _actively defacing_ website properties, and that they were n control and not the viewer / luser/

So until there's a legal remedy, is there a technological one : can I filter visitors by plug in or whether they have this crap installed?

He he, I guess you could quickly sell your defeater code to a bunch of upset content providors.

Isn't this rather like the guys who claimed they could sell a $50 box that's blank all the ads on tv, hyped it and sold the "defeaters" tosome channel for $x MLN?? I mean, are these people making a packet outta these keywords, does anyone know?

Hmm, maybe I can sue microsoft (no really)

[RomulusNR]

I had an extremely similar idea back in 1995 while I was working for Inso (now EBT) in their electronic references group (now long gone). Basically I envisioned a system where news stories would be automatically populated with links around recognizable terms (proper names, scentific words and terms, historic events, etc). Of course, in my much more socially beneficial idea, those links would point to articles in online (subscription-based) versions of our reference products, like the Cambridge Encyclopedia, the New Heritage Dictionary, and the Information Please Almanac.

Unfortunately none of this became reality (I hear even the project I was working on when I thought of this ended up just being merged with ESPN SportZone). I wonder if I have any copies of my prototype for this.