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.

Comments

Ad-aware

[RML]

Yet another reason to use Ad-aware.

Isn't it ironic

[Diamon]

That the article on stopping pop-up ads has a pop-under ad?

Gator sucks, but...

[Reality Master 101]

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.

Re:Gator sucks, but...

[Apreche]

The thing is that there are people who are paying money to put those ads on a website. The difference here between the magazine or television and the web is that the guy who runs the site gets money when people click/lead or whatever the pricing plan may be. If you cut ads out of a magazine, the magazine doesn't care. They made their money because the advertiser paid for the ad to be in there, and it was in there.
On the web the advertiser not only pays for ad placement, which in turn brings them direct profits (e.g: online casino), but the person with the website depends on those ads being shown so he can get paid through cj, or whatever system he uses.
Gator most definitely sucks because not only is it evil spyware on peoples computers. But it takes money away from people who are trying to pay the hosting bill for their very cool web sites.
I mean, even slasdot is getting paid for the ads on the site. And if those ads don't show up because gator replaced them, then gator is indirectly stealing revenue from slashdot. Instead of say google (with its ultra cool google rackmount box thing) paying slashdot, company X pays gator.
Do you now see why suing gator is the way to go?

Re:Gator sucks, but...

[JanneM]

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

Unethical, Yes. Illegal, Not so sure

[quantaman]

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).

spyware woes

[Patrick13]

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.

Illegality

[Rupert]

• It is legal for you to tape Farscape so you can watch it later.
  
• It is legal for you to pay me to come to your house, pop the tape in the VCR, and record Farscape for you.
  
• It is illegal for you to pay me to tape Farscape at my house, and mail you the tape.
  

Since this is happening at the client end, I think this is closest to the second option above, which would make it legal.

Someone with money needed to sue Gator.

[antis0c]

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.

Outright theft.

[peterdaly]

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