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You Will Read Our Ads, And Like It
sheister writes "over at myciti.com they are asking members to agree to a new set of terms before using the service, including "'..we may display advertisements and promotions of all kinds on our web site(s) and you agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising;' Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?"
Easy. They look at their logs and say, "Well now, it looks like the user from 12.34.56.78 loaded our front page, but none of our popup ads! And it appears a user from that IP is logged on as 'johnsmith'. Looks like it's time to fire off a legal threat to Mr. John Smith!"
Not that they'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning any kind of legal action for something so silly, but it's totally possible for them to correlate their log data to determine which users are blocking ads. A workaround would be to use something like the BannerBlinds plugin for Mozilla, which still loads the ads, but then removes them from the page layout when displaying the page.
Your ads do run under lynx, don't they?
I checked both the terms & conditions linked at the bottom of the page, and the privacy policty just above it. I didn't see any reference to advertisements of any sort.
So, where is this new policy?
I will definitely want to buy stuff from their sponsors after reading that.
Now here is the issue: Who pays for the content on the net?
I know in my case I pay my access fee for X amount of bandwidth potential, and I pay by the GB for my colo'd servers at ColoGuys ( - shameless plug for John and Co). In fact, I charge ( or rather my company charges) for access to our servers. As part of my personal connection I have personal and organizational websites set up. Now I choose to make those freely available to anyone at any time. Why? because I want people to come by and take a look see. However, if I make my money off of a site ( as I do with my colo'd servers), I have the right to restrict access. In this case they are wiling to provide content in exchange for marketing. They can do this, I think it is a poor choice and will drive people away, but it is their choice. Think what would happen to slashdot if al advertising were taken away. Would it become subscription only? If not who picks up the tab? I say just don't use the service if you dont want to abide by the terms.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
have i seen it? no.
would I use their service? probably not.
__________________________________
Take a moment and IMAGINE a world
with no unsolicited ads. can you? It is a
fun excercise -- I think it would be
a much nicer world.
All your bandwidth are belong to us! Ha ha ha!
The bank can now tell me what software I can and cannot run on my computer? How I run my computer is MY business, and if I choose to block ads, that is my right, since it is MY computer, MY bandwidth and MY choice. I don't give two shakes if they want to make more money off me. Maybe if they would split 50/50 with me anything they make from it, I might consider it, but otherwise, push off jack.
"Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?" My browser and ISP both have ordered me not to answer this question.
...until: By agreeing to these terms you agree to buy the products advertized on this site.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Unfortunatly if part of the reason you are blocking ads is bandwidth conservation then banner blinds doesn't do you nearly as much good as not loading them in the first place. This is one of those things like not loading images at all, or only loading images from the originating web server etc. Of course those have thier own issues. For example many sites use dedicated servers for image serving like images.slashdot.org. Then again, if you are trying to conserve bandwidth you probably could care less if the pages standard graphics load either.
Yet another reason to cancel their stinking card once I get it paid off. Their telemarketers are bad enough.
Part of the reason I want to block ads is that I'm on the campus network and restricted to the total amount of bandwidth I'm allowed in a month. If I go over I get cut off. So anything that cuts unwanted bandwidth is good. Anything that forces me to give up precious bandwidth is a really bad thing.
In otherwords if they force too many ads down my connection I loose my connection and they loose a customer. When will they realize forced advertising is a bad idea? (I know, probably never.)
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
On first reading this submission, I assumed myciti was a content provider of some kind. And I figured, if I wanted their content that badly, I'd just pay for it. More likely, it wasn't something I needed more than I need my peace -- and buzzy banner ads manage to disrupt my peace far far more often than they encourage me to buy anything. After all, I've already given up reading washingtonpost.com at home, as I'm not even able to register with them using Mozilla.
But myciti.com isn't a content provider; it's a banking/investment service. Presumably, if I take the trouble to browse there, it's because I think I might want to see what services they offer.
But apprently they assume their services are so worthless that before I'd purchase those services, I'd have to be overcome by their advertising. Or they think their marketting position is so precarious, they must have a captive audience.
Or perhaps they're confident in their services but want to subject me to ads for their third-party affiliates? Is citibank worried they can't profit without selling my eyes to third parties?
Whatever the case, it appears that citibank isn't doing so well. Either their products don't sell without extensive, in-your-face advertising, or the company isn't profitable without selling marketting in addition to investment products.
Either way, it seems a good indication -- one might say an invitation even -- to stay away from citibank.
And that's what I'll be doing, thanks.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Ascii artist &
I'm pretty sure I accepted a click-through license which requires me to prop my eyes open with toothpicks so that I won't blink and miss one of their ads. It sure is considerate of them to make sure I don't miss any Valuable Offers! don't you think?
Try surfing www.1wrestling.com with Norton Internet Security's Ad Blocking feature switched on... you get shunted to a No Access page saying:
"We're sorry, but our site relies on the revenue we get from advertisers to bring you the quality content you see each day. Consequently, we no longer permit access from users who use Ad blocking software."
Is BannerBlinds really required to download the entire ad ? why not just send a GET for it and abort the transfer as soon as it starts ? That's enough to fool most webservers' logs. It's not like they pay attention to what's going down the pipe once the transfer's started.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I say just don't use the service if you dont want to abide by the terms.
:) The fact that they suspect that I would disable certain technologies (not having studied their specific infernal ways of stuffing ads up my nose, I'm only guessing) I would guess these technologies include things such as JavaScript, Java applets, Flash, Shockwave and... simplest of all, images.
In essence I agree... but
Now, this indicates that they assume that I'm using this technology in the first place. What if I'm browsing in Lynx? What if I haven't downloaded this and that plugin?
Does browsing in Lynx violate their terms? Does not spending several hours on my 14k4 modem downloading the latest JRE violate their terms?
If you put something up on the web, expect people to request the data - through any tools they choose. If you specifically don't want them to do that, wrap the data in some way so it's only available to the people you want to see it...
May we live long and die out
I really can't see a lot of value in advertising to people who are determined not to be advertised to.
Are the advertisers insisting on this, or is it something that Citi are doing to increase the number of views they get for each advertiser?
I access the web via a cache along with arround 20,000 other people. Will they be able to get a court order to force my ISP (Exeter university, or Blueyonder), which isn't in the same country, to divulge their logs? Or will they sue the ISP who didnt agree to anything?
Howabout webcaches in botswana, or iran? Will these bow to pressure from the great US of A?
well.. It's easy for them to block people that block ads. It's just to check if they have a hit on the gif banner pictures. If not, then they should ban their ip for e.g. 3minutes.
They can track you, but why would they go to the expense of legal action against one individual? (Beyond blocking access to your online account?) What they're more likely to do if they catch you blocking ads is to use that as an excuse: "Sorry, we see you've broken the terms of our agreement, so we can no longer keep your credit card interest below our maximum rate."
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Strange that in this discussion, which is about being forced to accept advertising, nobody has mentioned Slashdots policy or the thread that got bitchslapped for debating the pro's and con's of disabling the ads here...
Now, what are the odds that this post is modded offtopic?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
If their advertising dollars are worth more than the money in their bank.... well then, they're in the wrong business!
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Does THAT count?
"...agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising"
Technology? What technology? Where is the description of the technology in question? How is an end user supposed to know which technologies are "required or utilized" if the "agreement" does not specifically include them? How is anyone supposed to know if they are in compliance with the "agreement"?
The "not to disable" part is also interesting. That's not the same thing as "enabling" the unmentioned "required or utilized" technologies (cookies and popups?). I don't have to accept cookies or enable popups, especially if I disabled those features before visiting their website. I don't have to install Flash. In fact, I can easily find a web browser that is simply too old to support any of their "technology".
And then we have the last line of defense: ignorance. "Gee whiz Citibank, I had no idea that I was prohibited from disabling W, X, Y, and Z to use your site. I have no idea what those thing are or why they don't work on my computer. Besides, the whole thing was set up by my brother in-law, who uses some other bank."
Now for an example of two wrongs making a right: Let's tell Citibank about Gator. Perhaps the marketing stupidity on both sides will cancel out.