Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Web Publishers Sue Gator

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-desserts dept.

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.

2 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. It's hard to make money on the internet by Ali+Jenab · · Score: 0, Troll
    Anyone involved in the dot-com industry in the late 1990s, as I was, knows that money does not grow on trees anymore and that consumer dollars are difficult to procure online. As somebody who runs several websites that were "victimized" by Gator's software, I must still applaud their creativity in designing a way to get their advertising messages out to a relevant audience. Their idea was simple, yet very clever, and interestingly enough, they are making a profit (quite unlike their "victims" - the Washington Post and every other newspaper website are taking heavy losses - giving content away for free doesn't pay as well as it used to).

    The one issue, then, that I have with Gator is that fact that it surreptitiously spies on its users and reports their browsing habits back to a central repository. Similar to slashdot, they profile their users without adequate disclosure and should be admonished for that. (IMHO, "adequate disclosure" does not mean that they reveal the fact that they are monitoring you on page 14 of the 78-page license agreement that nobody reads.) Aside from this transgression, what Gator does is perfectly legitimate and is no different than the digital editing that many television stations are now doing to block competitors' ads from live video feeds. May the strongest competitor win: it's pure capitalism. Enjoy it.

    /ali

  2. God dammit by pagansage · · Score: 0, Troll

    I thought this an article about Sue Gator, my favorite web publisher. Thanks again for letting me down slashdot...