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.
I can put up with the lack of Alt tags and my apparent inablity to get plugins to work (flash, javascript, quicktime et al) by far overshadows the annoying pop ups and PLZ DOWNLOAD THIS GATOR THING K THX BYE! windows that deluge you when trolling through Geocities (or wherever, I just notice an abundance of them on Geocities). Man, it does feel nice. Liberating even. If we just got alt tags (because jerks like me like to put witty ephitets behind my images) in Opera, I'd say that it is my favoritest web browser.
In short GATOR = BAD; OPERA = KEEN!
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
No, its more like if the Tivo replaced commericals for Brand X with commercials for Brand Y.
Look, I absolutely detest Gator, but I have to defend them on this issue.
What I choose to run in my browser is my own business, just like Microsoft's technology that modified web pages to insert links. 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.
Now, people are going to argue that people aren't making an informed choice. And maybe that's true, but it's not strictly Gator's fault. Gator does inform them -- in a slimy way -- but it does inform them.
It's exactly the same as if I had a magazine delivered to my house, and hired someone to cut out all the ads and replace them with other ads. 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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This strikes me as a dangerous way to think. It implies a contract of sort between you and a web site operator. They supply content and you (as far as they're concerned) have to look at their ads.
It is difficult for some people to take responsibility for their actions. Since some people make the wrong choice, the clear solution is to make a law to take that choice away!
But seriously, as long as they aren't being deceptive about what they're doing, it should remain legal.
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
Except that the essense of vandalism is that you are defacing the property of others. In this case this is not happening. You are not touching anything belonging to the remote web server. You are defacing a copy of their website, a copy which you have loaded into the memory of your personal computer.
Gator is simply an interpreter, that interprets the intellectual property of other people in a certain way before display. A stupid way, abiet, but legally that is the only real way you can look at it.
Not to mention that spyware is rather like a virus, slowing down your speed with obnoxious popup ads
Except that isn't illegal.
What possible legal construct or definition fo terms could you come up with that would make gator illegal but babelfish legal?
Here's a comment i like from a previous time that this topic came up on slashdot.
The Washington Post article didn't say anything about replacing ads and the slashdot link wasn't loading for me. From the sounds of it all gator is doing is when you do visit a specific site it launches a popup window displaying its own advertising. While this is highly unethical I'm not sure it would be illegal, I don't see any website that you visit having legal domain over your web browser and gator isn't altering the page itself, all gator is doing is poping up its own window or own link which you "agreed" to view when you clicked on the EULA. If gator actually closed the websites pop-up windows completely than they might have a case (though it could fall again to the EULA as having said the user wanted those windows to close). While I don't like seeing gator doing things like this I would worry about the implications of a victory on the grounds of defacing the sight or something like that. In a strictly legal sense Mozilla might actually be in danger as it allows you to stop the pop-up windows from opening at all (in many ways closer to altering the display of the website than adding more pop-ups).
I stole this Sig
Ads on web sites are part of a commercial for-profit venture. Gator's replacing those ads are an attempt to directly interfere with the revenue stream of the site, which I believe is illegal.
Also, there may be some copyright issues. Every page on the Washington Post is copyrighted by them, and the ads are copyrighted by the various advertisers. It is illegal for someone to take a copyrighted work, modify it and resell it. That is essentially what Gator is doing. They are, in essence, modifying a copyrighted page for the express purpose of reselling the ad space.
Personally, I hope they body-slam Gator, and it sends a chill through the spyware community. More likely, though, spyware companies will feel emboldened by whatever decsion comes down, feeling that the court is establishing rules for their legitimate operation.
One of my clients brought me her laptop because "it was running slowly" - (piii 500, 128 MB ram, win98se). I booted it and it was really dragging. So i installed lavasoft's ad aware program, and scanned her HD and she had 360+ spyware programs & elements installed in her system!. What I hate most about the spyware programs is that they eat resources, and mask the process from the operating system. if you use the task manager, most of the procs aren't even listed, but for instance, in her laptop, on boot 85% of the system resources were being used. As soon as she launched her web browser, or any other program, she was using 100%.
Also, when doing research, some of the lower quality sites have it set up so that gator autoinstalls when you hit the page, it doesn't even ask for a confirmation. I suppose the site gets $.05 or whatever from the gator corp per install, but what a lousy way to run a business.
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Now, I'm no fan of Gator, but I think if they lose this case it will be bad for all of us.
It's not a huge leap from going from "software that adds popups to a certain page without actually modifying the page is illegal" to "software that modifies the page is illegal", meaning any proxy software that blocks ads, for example, is suddenly outlawed... So would any software that doesn't run the JavaScript (i.e. Mozilla with popups disabled), etc. etc.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I'm looking at this as these companies are representing individuals, even though they obviously aren't, and no money would be given to individuals, but at least Gator wouldn't exist or wouldn't be so annoying.
And no, I didn't install Gator by choice, it got piggyback installed on an application I need for a one time use. I attempted to uninstall it, and for a while I thought I did. Then I noticed I was getting pop-up ads on Slashdot one day. I emailed CmdrTaco and Hemos, the assured me Slashdot wasn't doing popup ads, but this was around the time new subscriptions were being implemented so I wasn't sure, anyhow I investigated my system and found that Gator upon uninstall actually installed a minimal installation in C:\WINNT\System\G, with one exec, G.EXE. When it ran, it had no visible task bar icon, but it would display popups whenever you went to a page. Since almost 100% of the other pages I go to have popups I never noticed, until Slashdot started having them. I do believe that was the intended result, to fool the user that Gator was uninstalled but continue to run as if it were popups from web pages.
So I'm happy, go get 'em guys.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Okay,I'm getting confused here. I think one the one hand, you should be able to control the media once you've "purchased" it so to say. Meaning that once signal (if it's TV) or web page gets to my tv/computer, then I can mess with it all I want. Right? But what about the advertiser? I mean, the advertiser paid the station/site to broadcast my ad. Now there's no guarentee everyone won't just switch the channel, but if the signal gets messed with between the broadcaster and the viewer, then I'm screwed. What did I pay for? I guess the issue is at what point does the signal become "mine" as a viewer (if it ever really does)? I'm not sure if I'm being clear here, but it's a serious question. On the one hand I want to be able to control the media once it's in my home. On the other hand, if I'm an advertiser then I should have some assurance that my money is really buying me what I paid for (I would hope at least).
And in the case of Gator then there's the added issue that they're not only blocking ads, but replacing them. I don't like all the implications and I don't think the issue is very clear cut. There are serious pros and cons on both sides of the fence here.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I don't know whether "gator" specifically does this or not, but I know programs like it do. Amazon.com affiliate sites for quite some time have been complaining about hijack-ware. When someone clicks on a link to amazon from an amazon affiliate site, the link is changed to include the spyware companies amazon id instead of the site linked from.
The Amazon affiliate therfore looses any commision made on the sale. This is 100% unknown the the user of the software. It would be one thing if the user knowingly installed it, but 99% of the time or more they don't even know it is there. Web site ads are no different. It's one thing if the user knowingly installs it. They have that right. If it is installed without their knowledge, it is outright theft from the website that is being visited.
I found this crap installed the other day. I had no idea anything was wrong until I went to Verizon to pay my phone bill. A popup ad came up (Verizon's online bill payment sites doesn't work with mozilla.) I figured, damnit, seems everyone has this crap now...but it was an ad for cingular wireless, a Verzion competitor. I was quite pissed to say the least, and I can't for the life of me get rid of the damn thing. (Yes, I know I need to download adaware or something like that.)
Think about if you were buying merchandise in a store. When you approach the cash register a salesperson from another company completes your sale, and keeps the money. All without the knowledge of the store you are giving your business to, or even you for that matter. Never mind that would be almost impossible to have happen...on the internet it isn't. This is not only wrong, but outright theft of goods and services and should not be legal if it is.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
The article is actually pretty muddled about why the companies are suing Gator: is it because Gator infringes on their copyrights by altering web pages? Because it pops up advertisements? Because it misleads people into thinking the advertisements come from the web page they're visiting rather than a third-party application?
The argument about Gator being misleading I buy. I don't use gator, nor have I ever, but if it's true that they're using deceptive practices to get themselves installed on people's computers and then silently altering other web pages, that's bad. But if that's not the case, well, the law should uphold my right to use the data web servers provide me in whatever way I see fit. I have no contract with anyone that says that if I download a file from their site I will render it in any particular way. As long as I'm aware that Gator is running, arguments that it's violating somebody's copyright are silly. I know it's there, and I can use my data how I want, thank you very much.
-jacob
How about a software that removes the ad, but in the background registers a click through. That way we don't have to see them and the web site gets paid.
Someone can add this to Mozilla with ease since it is open source.
The above is not worth reading.
Now, if Gator took the HTML from the website, parsed out the adverts and replaced it with their own then i can understand that the companies might be a bit pissed because Gator would be passing its own ads off as theirs ...
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups.
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Mine is smaller: http://www.morpheussoftware.net/sab/
Morphing Software
Personally, I am happy that someone finally called Gator on their bullshit. Gator installed itself on my computer (possibly my fault for clicking "Next" without reading what was checked). When I tried to uninstall it, it automatically installed OfferCompanion without giving me an option to refuse. When I uninstalled OfferCompanion, it installed this digital wallet program. This went on for an hour-
Even if Gator was originally installed due to my own personal error, there was no way for me to know what I would have to go through to get rid of it.
Gator is a huge invasion of privacy- it attempts to hijack users' computers. The company does not provide adequate information about how its' programs work. I'll be happy when the company executives are mopping floors at the ChiChis where they used to eat lunch.
How about browsers that don't have active X, flash, and other trash? Will they outlaw my lynx? The step is larger than you think, but no less likely. I can hear the microturds now, "you must display copyright material exactly as intended or you are stealing." DRM becomes more oppresive all the time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.