Slashdot Mirror
Web Publishers Sue Gator
shofmann writes "The Washington Post is reporting that a number of publishers, including the Washington Post, is suing Gator Corp. over their obnoxious spyware, saying that Gator is "a parasite that free rides on the hard work and investment"
of other people's web sites. The lawsuit alleges that Gator's spyware contributes to trademark infringement, misappropriation of the news, and
represents unfair competition." The publishers seem to be distressed about Gator replacing website ads with its own. Several people submitted this related article about blocking internet advertising - nothing really new here for geeks, but a good URL to send to your less technically-inclined friends.
Now, would this be akin to people skipping ads with their TiVo? If I download software that removes ads for me, am I stealing from the publisher of that website?
Do most companies pay based on "views" of ads, or "click-throughs"?
On constrution site barriers (so people can't get in to the site and hurt themselves), the sign "Post No Bills".
This is almost a form of digital vandalism. Not to mention that spyware is rather like a virus, slowing down your speed with obnoxious popup ads.
I hope the plaintiffs win big on this one.
I am the evil aardvark!
This may have a bigger impact than people realize.
Anyone else worried that the new Fritz chip will require that I sit through advertisements before I'm allowed to see content?
Don't think it's possible? Howzabout DVD players, where you have to sit through the various FBI warnings and movie previews at the start of the disk before the movie starts.
Most users haven't a clue what it is, that is the problem. It's analagous to someone presenting a question to you in giberish, then offering you to choose a or b. How would you expect average users to know anything about it?
Well that kinda sucks for the website owner doesn't it? It's still my machine, and my choice if I want to download the adverts or not. I don't think Gator is a good program, and I certainly wouldn't install it even if I could, but I don't like the implication that the website owner has unlimited control over your computer.
Not really. The people who are reading the article probably won't be blocking, so they're ideal targets.
Since this is happening at the client end, I think this is closest to the second option above, which would make it legal.
--
E_NOSIG
I agree with you in general. This issue has some additional wrinkles, however. The users are clearly not fully aware what Gator does or when it does it. Gator does not mark in any way that it changes content. By switching like this _without_ the user being aware of it, they can reasonable be said to misrepresenting the web site owners.
Put it this way: if you had a program that changed banners, that you installed _knowing_ that's what it did, and it showed you ads for steamy porn on nytimes.com, there would be no problem. You knew after all that the banners came from your program, not from the New York Times. In this case, however, the intent is to do this behind peoples' backs. If it pushed goatse.cx advertisements onto nytimes site, a lot of people would be very angry at nytimes, thinking its they who pushed the stuff on them.
It's not that it changes the 'surfing experience', it's that it does it with intent to deceive that's the problem.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Content providers without a revenue stream vanish. It really is that simple.
Soon there will be little to browse without a subscription.
Perhaps the RIAA and Harry Fox Agency will come up with a solution.
I guess that's what everyone wants...
Maybe content providers will start using dynamic blacklists to avoid the expense of delivering content to those who block ads. Hmmm. Should I patent that idea, or OpenSource it?
"First they came for Gator and Microsoft SmartTags. But I didn't use that crap, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for Junkbuster and Sleezeball and my "use own fonts" menu option..."
This software doesn't modify anyone's web site. It it something that runs on a user's computer and modifies that user's perception of a web site, with that user's consent. That isn't copyright or trademark or any other kind of infringement.
Some people say they didn't know what Gator does, or didn't even know they had installed it, so my point about consent is wrong. Well, that's your problem. You are responsible for your computer, dammit!! If mysterious software is getting onto your computer without your knowledge, then you have a hell of a security problem. Your machine is probably one of those listed in my httpd logs as requesting default.ida and cmd.exe, and you're probably also one of those people who keeps sending me documents to get my advice, while shamelessly gushing that you love me. Quit spreading your fucking viruses (and no, scanners aren't the answer) and lock your box down and take some responsibility, and then stuff like Gator and IE and Outlook will be taken care of incidentally as a natural consequence.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It is your browser and your computer but those ads like them or not are supporting the sites you visit. Blocking them is one thing (I skip magazine ads and TV commercials and fully believe I have the rights to block web ads) but what Gator is doing is not very nice. Right now I am looking at and ad for the new Altus 130 from Penguin Computing. Gator would replace that with one of its avertisers. If enough slashdot readers used Gator (fat chance) over time Penguin and other advertisers would drop Slashdot and we'd either all be forced to subscribe or the site would shut down.
I think that web advertising needs to change. Banner ads and popups are easy to block and replace thus pissing off the advertisers and the site owners. Not many users care if they are replaced and many users want them blocked. Overall, banner ads are annoying (except for Think Geek ads which I often click through to). I would much rather see, in plain text and avertisements like this:
The following article is brought to you by Oracle Corporation. Oracle 9i Release 2 makes Linux Unbreakable. For more information please visit us at www.oracle.com."
A simple ad a couple of lines long with a couple links, no flash, no images, no sound. Have it before the article or after the article on the page. There'd be no reason to block them and to Gator they would be hard to distinguish from the actual article.
'Same speed C but faster'
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Once a page leaves a server and enters my computer, my fair-use rights take over and I can do ANYTHING I want to that page, except rebroadcast it.
First, do you choose what ads to add in? No?
You aren't doing a thing to the page. It's being done by a third party, specifically Gator, without consent of the originator. Personally, I call that censorship, though YMMV.
Proof: If it were you doing that to the page, where are your payments for the ad space? What, Gator gets them? Clearly, they are the ones modifying the page, if they are selling this ad space to others.
Second, fair use applies only under very specific and limited circumstances... it's not the carte blanche you seem to think it is. In this case, of the four factors to be considered in whether or not something is fair use, this completely fails three of them; Gator's use is solely commercial (1), they use the entire copyrighted work (3), and the market for the work (as defined in copyright terms which tends to talk about money) is eliminated entirely for that viewing (4). Fair use is not a defense in this case.
It's none of the magazine's business if I do that, and it's none of anyone else's business if I choose to use Gator.
It is the magazine's business. They may not want to be a party to this third-party transaction. (You can make a case for choosing on your own not to view ads, but when you add a third-party in like Gator the situation changes dramatically, especially since Gator is directly profiting.)
Frankly, it doesn't matter if Gator informs them. What they're doing is highly unethical, and almost certainly illegal.
By the way, you need to be exceptionally careful about this. If you let Gator do this, then there's really nothing stopping them from modifying the contents of the page, since from a copyright point of view, that's exactly what they're doing. If they can modify for the purpose of commerical profit, then they can do it for any purpose, since that's the highest purpose in our broken copyright laws. Of course, if Gator can do it, anyone can.
Letting Gator doing this, and defending them is handing everybody in the world free reign to modify anything they can technically get access to, just because they can. ("Might makes right?") There's just no difference. I for one do not want to hand this power to anybody. That it will be abused pretty much goes without saying. We must defend the right to integrity.
It should be obvious that on this point, the right to integrity is more importent to us little guys then the Washington Post, which has the resources to defend itself.
I've been around this debate more then a few times; please, before replying (not Reality Master 101 personally, everybody), at least read the fair use link and educate yourself about the current state of the law. You're free to think it's not perfect, and should be some other way (as I do), but please, for the love of Gnu, no lengthy, fact-bereft lectures on personal misconceptions of copyright law...
This family told me that they had purchased their new computer because the old one was having lots of problems. The new computer was supposed to be fast, easy to use, and low maintenance. A spyware program almost ruined their $1500 investment.
ironically, if they had just formatted and reinstalled the OS, the other computer probably would run just fine. it always amazes me how often people don't understand the difference btwn hardware and software.
i have probably convinced @20 not buy a new computer until they have it looked over by a someone that knows how to reinstall the OS, and clean out viruses etc. 9 times out of 10 they have had SirCam, Klez or some other stupid virus in the system.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Isn't this painfully obvious by now? This advertising model is all wrong! That's simply not the way that advertising works. The effectiveness of an ad is not measured by the number of people who immediately react upon it. The whole point of advertising is to create brand awareness. To measure the effectivenss of an online ad by its click-through rate is the same as measuring how many people turn on the next freeway exit to drink a after seeing some billboard.
"Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two."
And if I choose to breach those terms, what law have I broken? It's no more a valid contract than me saying "By reading this you agree to send me $100", even ignoring the quid pro quo facet of that analogy.
I don't agree: Gator modifies the site before the customer gets to view it, and generally without the customer's permission or even knowledge. It's more like someone going to the newsstand and pasting their own customers' ads over the ads in the local newspaper before the customer buys it.
But it does bring up an interesting point:
If what Gator is doing is legal, would it still be legal for them to pay your ISP to replace all the ads that travel down your pipe with their own? Even if they did provide a way to "opt out" and see the original ads? I don't think there's a real difference between such a scheme and what they're doing right now.
Obviously, it would be illegal to break into a company's server, replacing their adds with your own. Likewise, hijacking all outboud connections from a server for the same purpose would not be legal either.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with telling Galeon to not load content from doubleclick.net. I don't even see anything wrong with firewalling ad companies out of my network completely. I think doing so is no different that the way I throw away the classifieds before even opening the newspaper.
I think the real difference lies in selling ad space on someone else's page.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
I think the whole point of the lawsuit is that Gator barely informs the user and does it in a way as to intentional avoid doing so when possible.
If you hire someone to snip ads from a magazine, or automatically close pop-up windows, that's essentially as if you are doing it and as long as it's legal for you to do it, you can hire someone to do it.
Gator on the other hand is very unclear on what it does and doesn't really give people a chance to agree. It's like you going to the store to buy a magazine and when you get it home you find out that the magazine has been edited, without your consent or that of the publisher, to change the ads, rewrite the editorial content, etc.
And then the store claims that you agreed to this because when you bought a cup of coffee there was a contract printed on the bottom of the cups...
If Gator really was something people wanted to install, I don't think the suit would go anywhere. But Gator basically does all this without the consent of anyone.