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Only Thieves Block Pop-Ups
aurelian writes "It's official: using browsing the web while blocking pop-up ads and other such exciting website enhancements is theft. Anti-leech.com are offering to protect your site from browsers blocking pop-ups (or 'theft tools' as they call them) - just try stealing from them with your favourite pop-up free browser. (I picked this up on the phoenix discussion forum...)"
If a site doesn't want me then they can %^&* off. There's no shortage of sites that haven't resorted to pop ups.
A long while back, in a little debate here on Slashdot, someone called me a thief for blocking pop-ups ads. If I recall, I think I stumped them by asking if Lynx users were thieves since their browser didn't support pop-ups.
Anyway, I didn't sign any contract to view pop-ups, and there is no guarantee I will support any soft of technology when I browse the web, so they take a chance in using it knowing it may not work. Same with Flash, other javascript, or even images.
changing the channel when a commercial break starts is a major fellony too!
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
...we'll all slashdot the site, and we won't have to worry about idiots like them anymore.
bandwidth theft?.. they're stealing OUR bandwidth by polluting our pakets with junk
Telling me not to block pop-ups because the website needs the pop-up income is bad motivation.
No website is worth wading through hundreds of pop-ups.
If their only source of income is pop-ups, they aren't long for the web anyway.
Pop-up income is a bad way to "earn" money, and everyone knows it. (except classmates.com)
Oh my. We're going to have to improve pop-up stoppers to defeat this technology.
Well, I'd better free up 45-50 minutes for coding sometime in the next week.
You could have some fun with the denied screen. The PHP script reads in input to display.... and it's not parsed!
What can I do on the internet that isn't illegal these days?
Soon there will be warning messages when connecting to the internet: "You have connected to the internet. This is in violation of blah blah blah. Disconnect now"
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Aside from the semi-FP issue (I bet I'll be post # 104 or so by the time I finished writing :-), I don't really see how this differs from M$ browsers (and Netscape 4.x) refusing to render my site correctly. So there.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
What are they going to do if browsers just *hide* the popup windows/banners, still loading the ads in the background?
I've seen this utilized around the emu scene (i.e. Arcade At Home) a lot.
First Post?
I've never worked out how much bandwidth popup ads have sucked out of me over the years, but until recently, I had to pay for 'x' amount of MB's over my monthly limit (crap monopolistic ISP).
The people that block popup ads are the same people who would *NEVER* click on a popup ad and purchase something, so I'm sorry, but I can't really see what their problem is. Surely we are saving THEM bandwidth?
-- 7 string electric violin + live loop samplers
Click here to bypass thier test.
Kinda funny, This browser had failed the test and been blocked from using the site. Found a direct link past the tester and was able to load up thier page.
Just goes to show you, everything is just a measure that is able to be bypassed.
Do you Gentoo!?
Why be shy. Blocking ads should should be considered terrorism. We need an amendment to the patriot bill.
showing pictures of naked, shaved pussy.
So, I'd imagine the next version of their software has safeguards for the /. effect :)
dennis
this isn't a troll post, but isn't it obvious? the stuff you browse on the web isn't exactly completely free of charge. there're bandwidth costs to be paid, servers to be bought and maintained, and some of the information you read doesn't just appear there; someone had to do research and type it out.
the websites let you browse their sites for free, and all they're asking in return is for you to do you part and look at those ads. some may interest you, most do not. in the cast of the latter, just close the pop-up window and go on. is it that big of an inconvenience? is it too much to ask for? i think not.
in effect, you're "paying" to see the websites' content by seeing those ads. if you disable pop-ups then yes, you are in effect stealing the right to see the content on those websites.
Since we've also recently been told that going to the loo when the ads are on is theft, this latest mob can go screw themselves. If a site doesn't let me view it through Proximitron (will test when I'm on my own PC) then there are plenty of other things I can be doing with my time.
I'm using Netscape7 in Linux, and I do not block popups, however their site blocked my access!?
If I really even cared, I guess I would be pissed.
This is a clear example of "Just because you can do somthing (block users who block you) doesn't mean you should"
This will fail miseriably
All the advertisements on Slashdot got sucked into the black hole that is my hosts file... I think you better bust me
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
You must block ads, or avoid those sites entirely.
.. wait for it .. CHARGE MONEY.
/. subscription.
If companies and individuals go out of business because of blocking ads, that will lead to fewer, higher-quality companies like google that can come up with ways to make ads *work*, or sites that actually
I would rather pay money to visit a handful of web sites, then to put up with this bullshit pop-up ad crap all over the place. In fact these days I don't even bother visiting more than about 5-6 web sites, since I'll just drown in ads anyway. And I paid for a
Don't take over my computer with your ads and javascript nonesense, and I won't hack into yours. Deal?
Remember folks: Advertising is not a god-given right. It just happens to work for TV and magazines. If they don't want me ad blocking, they should take down their sites.
Is it theft to get up from a TV commercial? To skip the big ad section in your magazine? No. Ads are priced by the eyeballs after the fact, you don't try and force the eyeballs to match your expectations.
If I want to block popups i'll do so by disabling active java in IE and don't care what anyone says.
Why don't we just replace the outdated WWW with X clients, and make eveyone run X servers? That way, web sites can draw whatever they want on your display. It would really eliminate all this slow javscript and HTML which requires a huge browser to interpret and render. Isn't mark-up just a kludge (tell a browser how to render pages), when you can simply render the pages directly? X is a much cleaner solution, IMHO.
They are only driving away potential users.
They need to understand that people just really hate popups. They aren't needed - use a banner ad if you must.
Popups cause people to freak because they feel that they are losing control of their browser. Imagine if TV ads started messing around with your contrast and volume controls.
These same websites probably distribute software loaded with spyware.
The online article is here
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The test URL refrenced is here.
:)
BTW the site works with no blockage in lynx
and what a way to scare away your visitors. :-)
weired plugins, too many popups or obligatory cookies and i'm gone.
google will help me to find an other site
what, by the way, about indexing software. wget isn't doing javascript. I wonder if 'protected' sites will be indexed correctly.
Privacy is terrorism.
By their logic, if I get up to go pee when a comercial comes on then I'm steeling. If I simply manually click and close every freaking popup, then I'm stealing (gee I didn't look at them).
Jibe!
..gamespy is a good example of a website that's become more and more obessed with loading advertisements in the site. Before the site opens, you have to sit through a commercial even. It's so bloody annoying, I wonder if pop-up blockers can stop these kind of flashy, 'on top of webpage' commercials..
What does that do!?? I deactivated javascript and entered, nothing special happened.. and i didn't get any popups, etc... ;-)
Some people have a lot of time to waste.
I can call the fact that you're reading this comment a theft. It doesn't make it any more official than some totally random company calling me running ad-blocking software a theft. /. front page?
Can we PLEASE just post the news, without any sensationalist crap, on
When men used to be men
"warning, disconnecting from the internet is a violation of the megaCorp. Bill of Citizen Rights and Restrictions (art. 3bis). Please step away from your computer and wait for the Peace officers to arrive..."*insert eerie music*
ofcourse, I could be completely wrong too :)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
This guy's argument is that bypassing pop-ups and such means bypassing his only way to make money on what I'm sure are pretty pathetic web sites anyway.
The fatal flaw in his argument though, is people using pop-up stoppers aren't EVER going to intentionally click on a pop-up, even if thye're forced to see it. So, he's not really losing money. These are people who proactively know they don't want to see nor click on pop-ups.
Anyway, as others have said, it will take developers roughly 10 minutes to come up with a work-around for this guy's tools. Such as allowing the pop-up window and killing it a second or two after it pops up. Duh, how tough is that?
Safest thing for them to do it to take the site down now before they do get /.'d -- OR.... if they pay for their bandwidth based on usage /. away!
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
Just wondering... I haven't seen those nasty pop-unders for a while. Where did they go?
It finally happened. The word stealing has lost all meaning. Stealing used to mean physical theft, as in you stole my calculator. You stole my book. You stole my videogame. You stole my song. You stole my TV show. You stole my internet site. You stole my cable. You stole my bandwidth. Stealing = made me mad
Theft? That is insulting and offensive.
I guess you can consider these other things theft also:
Using the Lynx web browser
Any TV using Tivo or ReplayTV
Going to the bathroom during commercial breaks.
Coming to the movies a bit late for the commercials.
When sites put banners and say, please click on these links because it helps us fund the site, I usually do. Why? Because it shows respect, it's honest, and it doesn't treat me like a "leech" that needs to have measures taken against me.
If you're writing a browser, just change the behavior of the popup-blocker from actually stopping popups, to having the window open without displaying it, IE it doesn't show up on the taskbar and can't be seen. It's the same effect as not opening, really.
Of course, this probably wont work with an add-on popup blocker to IE. It's to bad M$ doesn't have the guts to put a popup blocker in IE.
I've found a simple way to prevent popups is to put frequently-visited sites (salon, the onion) that do have popup's in the restricted sites list.
Also these people are crazy. The kinds of people who would actually put this software on their pages probably aren't making pages worth visiting anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think it would be more effective if the message it gave was this.
Anyone have an site I can get their warez from?
Kazza Lite provides a nice hosts file (under the 'supertrick' link) that will block many anoying pop-ups and other nasties. It's for windows but I cut 'n pasted it on to my firewall. And that's what I think of the morality of plocking pop-ups.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
It seems to me that popping up unsolicited browser windows is both theft of bandwidth and theft of system resources. I've actualy been DoS'd by multitudes of pop ups each spawning it's own pop up children. Although I don't see what their test sight was supposed to do, I didn't get any pop ups and my pop up blocker didn't do anything out of the ordinary..
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I'm a hard-core ad-filterer, been doing it for many, many years. But, I'd rather see this kind of technology come out than for more draconian DMCA type laws to be passed that effectively mandate that we sit with our eyes taped open when browsing the web.
At least this way we have a fighting chance in an "arms race" of pop-up-blockers and anti-pop-up-blockers and anti-anti-pop-up-blockers. When the law gets involved it all comes down to who has the bigger guns, and that's hardly ever the little guy like me and you.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What a broken site! I don't even use a popup blocker on this machine and it is saying I do.
I accuse them of being liars.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I do agree that advertising is crutual to the development of the internet. A few years back it looked like everything would be based on micropayment but we got over that.
Also I think that blocking off adverts when you brouse someones website is a little like stealing. I dont do it and I think its wrong to.
But Popups are designed to be annoying. I delibretly stop using brands which use popups.
People who use popup ads should realise that they are overpricing their product. I cant put up with them so yes I do steal the websites content. I am happy to view adverts for good content but when they overprice themselves I resort to stealing. I also cant affoard some software and I also will steal that too. I justify this as I wouldnt have bought it anyway.
The problem here isnt with the whole human behaviour but its with the people who think they can change they way people behave for a few measely bucks.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Except for using the phrase theft, which could be considered libel, I see no problem with this.
So I won't see the site.. not my loss but ultimately theirs as I can't/won't recommend it to anyone else. And sites might not show up in Google either using this kind of technology.
The idea of the Internet is that ultimately someone will build a better site.. anyone can publish something. If there's no useful site on a topic, some freak will stand up and make one that is better and more user-friendly. I know I have done so and I bet many others with me.
Or some browser developer might find a way to show the content after all. Not that I actually see people pay for this stuff to put it on their sites.
I took the test and I was denied access... and I'm using vanilla Win XP. They couldn't even recognize one of the most usual setups.
These guys suck, and so does their piece of crap software.
Despite what it may feel like, pop-up ads account for less than 5% of the total advertisements on todays websites. Further, AOL (see this NYT article posted on ./ several weeks ago) has confirmed that pop-ups are a huge source of dissatisfaction from web users - thus making them in-effective.
Rather than use "anti-leech" technology, wouldn't advertisers be better served by simply employing technology that would be more palatable to their readers?
There's still one big fundemental problem with their "software";
The user has to be dumb enough to execute it before they can figure out if they are using ad-blockers.
This technology relies on html, php, java, and some server-side programming if I'm right(which I'm probably not). Not too tough to bypass with a little knowledge of html, or a filter designed to block it (proxomitron anyone?).
Until they can figure out a way to force the user to run code on their system they don't want to run, which isn't going to happen to the people who don't want it run, then they are essentially screwed. As we all know, this is going to be next to impossible.
Infact, I'm quite sure that I, an amatuer HTML coder, can quite easily script out their code using proxomitron. And even then, if they don't want to provide an experience at the level I want it to be at. If I don't want pop-ups, then I don't want popups. Why keep a consumer from accessing your page when they don't want to see the popup, when they are going to see all the banners and other ad's you've put up. Another thing you also need to realize is that by asking a person to turn off their ad-blocking software, you're also asking them to turn of their protection to certain things. I use proxomitron for a good deal of security, and to keep me protected against exploites to come (which it, interestingly, does). I wonder if this blocks anti-virus programs that activly scan html as well...or if you can use it to selectivly target systems...it just opens a whole new realm of malicious intent.
Another thought occured to me...what about blocking the major ad sites at your router? I have a decent router with a ad-blocking firewall and I can still use it to block the ad's from the major companies(and cookies).
Nonetheless, we're going to see more elaborate schemes. Eventually I'll bet you'll get some kind of webring that can only be accessed if you have X software installed, and you pay $$ a monthy to use that software. I wonder how many more buisness models are going to hit the smoking pile of rubble before they realize that it's impossible to wage war with their customers.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Needless to say the attitude of many companies these days is all wrong. Making you view popup ads. Trying to blame product shortcomings on the consumer etc. Well, I am cancelling my Digital cable, and I will not visit sites with obnoxious popup strategies.
If you want to do well in business, don't piss on your cutomers or potential customers.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I guess that there are multiple sides to any story, though in the end I find the efforts of sites like anti-leech both amusing and somewhat dangerous. On the one hand, I do understand that serving a website can be expensive, and that as the recession continues many people are becomming more and more desperate to avoid going under. However, anti-leech is bad for at least two major reasons, one economic, and one societal.
;).
1. Alienating your customers rarely makes for a solid business plan: As the RIAA and countless other harsh regimes(both in business and government) have learned, the more you clamp down, the more people squirm to escape your grasp. Companies forget that one of the whole points of the WWW is choice- and that includes the choice to go to another website if this one is treating me badly. I don't think I need to point out that long term business is built on repeat customers, but then again maybe I do. Repeat customers are ideal, because they are likely to spend more, and have a far lower cost of acquisition. You generally get repeat customers by building loyalty, a positive feeling towards the company. Loyalty does not generally follow from pissing people off.
2. Even more so then with programming, many people start learning their HTML by looking out how another site has done it. I now do a lot of website development, but I got my start when I was younger in part through liberal copying/tinkering with already built stuff until I figured it out well enough to do myself. This makes me concerned about their 'anti-view-source' offerings. While I suspect much of their stuff can be circumvented, the very people who might benefit most from looking at code are new to the web and thus might not know how to get around stuff. If such things became widespread, it could have a somewhat chilling effect on the learning that goes on for the general, casual designer, who might never have the chance to get bit by the bug and learn more(/me looks over at large pile of Mt. Dew bottles, not totally sure this would be bad
Any how, I hope that the concept embodied by antileech gets thoroughly trounced. Heh, and I haven't even touched on the whole rediculousness of the 'theft' thing, but I'm sure that will get pretty well gone over by others.
By using the Anti-Image service, you can protect all your images and make it impossible for people to download them from your site. You will also stop other webmaster trying to leech them directly of your server.
Try out their example.
Okay, obfuscating the URL of the GIF with some screwy PHP probably isn't the best way to "secure" your images. To bypass their method, just view the source to find the scripted redirect that points to the actual image
You'll probably have to copy and paste those URL's because they seem to block off-site deep linking.
The future isn't what it used to be.
This was quite a shocker for me...
Just follow the day, and reach fo
Now there is something that will alert me when a website is no longer worth visiting. Thank you, Anti-Leech Dot Com! I am sure your IPO will net you hundreds of dollars.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Your browser *DOES NOT* support JavaScript.
THIS IS IN VIOLATION OF THIS SITE'S TERMS OF USE!
Do not press start, do not attempt to shutdown!
Your ILLEGAL behavior has been logged and sent to
the proper authorities!
I had this idea a while ago but never got around implementing it. Take a list of ads, and make a Perl script to load banners invisibly, of course faking the referer.
I see it as less "evil" than blocking ads, because if I just block them the site doesn't get anything from the advertiser, but the advertiser doesn't really lose anything. This way the advertiser should have it pretty hard to figure out which ads are seen and which are not, and the site should be paid at least a bit.
General questions: general@anti-leech.com
Advertising: advertising@anti-leech.com
Support: support@anti-leech.com
Lets email the shit out of them.
I am not morally or legally bound to view the advertisements of others.
If pop-up blocking in browsers is "theft", is it then also theft when your Tivo skips the commercials??
This is incredibly silly, and I wouldn't frequent a web site, or give business to a corporation that would ban be based on my browser or browser settings.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Whatever happened to the micropayment model?
There doesn't seem to be any way to get it into some companies' heads that I DO NOT WANT TO BE ADVERTISED TO...and I can't even pay to get them off my back, which I would gladly do. Think about it:
1. Magazines.
2. TV - even when PAYING (~$50 these days) for cable, I still see commercials. Why is that?
3. Tivo - even though I pay for the service, they still "sponsor" this and that. WTF?
4. Web browsing - few sites offer a "members-only" AD-FREE portion of the site.
5. Phones - now companies are suing to get the "rights" to sell my info? What about MY rights? That's my info you have there, Mr. Head of Company.
6. Then there's the hospitals...who give your info out to folks when, say, your family has a baby.
7. DVDs!!!
8. Movies at the theater!!!
9. It just goes on and on...
I'm not confused about the need to advertise in the free market, but not one of these offer me discounts to advertise to me(phone companies, for example), or else they don't give me the option to pay a bit more to not get spammed.
If the window is loaded, but not shown, then everyone wins except the advertiser. As far as you're concerened, you saw no pop-up. As far as the web site is concerned, they get paid. As far as someone like doubleclick is concerned (or any other advertising-helper company), they pushed the impression and get paid by the actual advertiser. The advertiser loses, doubly, though. They have to pay for an impression that was never "impressed" upon the user.
As far as I'm concerned, this is fine. I don't like companies that would want pop-ups. This is like blocking spam as far as I'm concerned. I don't feel bad that the spammer paid for the bandwidth and I didn't read their spam. And in the same way, they're forcing ME to PAY for the bandwidth for getting their advertisement. It's not a big deal now, but what do I do when my I have a transfer limit on my broadband and actually start PAYING for downloading their ad.
I must say, that might be a *good* thing about this whole data transfer cap. People are going to get damn pissed when they start getting billed for receiving spam.
...just install the handy anti-popup-blocker code, and people will stay away from your website in droves. Gee, sign me up.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
That link is to an article about some man that had sex with a goat.
You know this is silly. I bet that advertisers are pretty happy with this. People who block ads (I bet) are much more likely *not* to buy products related to those ads (if they saw them, of course). So advertisers are getting better views for their money. In reality, however, maybe the website providers should go after the advertisers, not the blockers.
That said, providers have a right to block access to people not requesting their pop-ups. I also have a right to avoid their page....
-Sean
The next step will be outlawing NOT viewing websites. Everybody will have a supervisor when surfing the net who requires you to visit sites funded by pop-up windows. Even better...
Tomorrow from www.anti-leech.com:
"The closing of pop-up windows and pop-unders is a serious theft of revenew. Our proprietary technology will allow you to protect your income by blocking your site from anybody that closes an ad window!"
And how about foolishly allowing people to alter the URL and change the message? How stupid is that?
Oakbox
Not just answers, the correct questions.
I have no popup stoppers installed, and yet I am never bothered by popups.
:-).
The reason? I surf with pretty much everything disabled ('cept HTML rendering of course
If I come across a site that requires cookies, JavaScript, etc, I enable it for that domain only, and disable it again after I leave.
Works for me, and no need to install extra software.
...and switching TV chanell during commercials is theft also?
http://smartin-designs.com/
This guy is maintaining an
# hosts
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net ad.ca.doubleclick.net
doubleclick.net a.tribalfusion.com doubleclick.com ssads.osdn.com
ads.x10.com us.a1.yimg.com ar.atwola.com ads3.zdnet.com ads2.zdnet.com
ads1.zdnet.com ads.zdnet.com www.burstnet.com adfarm.mediaplex.com
altfarm.mediaplex.com s0b.bluestreak.com images2.slashdot.org
images.slashdot.org a.r.tv.com popup.msn.com sportsmed.starwave.com
advertising.com servedby.advertising.com ad.trafficmp.com fmads.osdn.com
media.fastclick.net popuptraffic.com www.popuptraffic.com log.go.com
games.espn.go.com sportsmed.starwave.com ehg-espn.hitbox.com
amch.questionmarket.com ads.forbes.com ads.enliven.com adj9.thruport.com
oas-central.realmedia.com ad.trafficmp.com click.atdmt.com
view.atdmt.com a1356.g.akamai.net
There is interesting background material on the Swedish company Intercosmos Media Group, Inc which owns the domain anti-leech.com:
Google cache of Yahoo news on "Intercosmos Media Group sues Verisign"
"Intercosmos Media Group, Inc., which has registered nearly 1.3 million domain names and is one of the fastest growing registrars of Internet domain names, today announced that it filed suit against Internet giant and competitor VeriSign, Inc. The suit alleges unfair trade practices and violations of the computer fraud and abuse act were engaged in over recent months by publicly held VeriSign.
"At first, Intercosmos management thought perhaps the tactics were the marketing ploy of a novice team or employee at VeriSign," Sigmund Solares, CEO and co-owner of Intercosmos, said. "Our company waited to see if actions would be taken to correct the matter by higher-ups at VeriSign. Instead, the deceitful marketing efforts only mounted to an egregious level."
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
"Close your browser window, uninstall your pop up blocker and come back here to visit us."
How about I go to another site and forget about yours.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
What a wonderful product Anti-Leech.com has. I went to their example page, and it checked if I had any pop-up blockers. The sample pop-up came up, and didn't close. Then it brought me to a page that said "Access Denied... You are stealing by blocking pop-ups..blablabla" The funny part of this is, I was using Internet Explorer 6 with no pop-up blocker.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
When you view a website you use bandwidth and therefore cost the site money. TV shows have already paid everything and it is a flat fee, so you turning your TV off or on makes no difference.
I don't see what's wrong with this. I'd rather have them attempt a technological solution than buy some congressmen and have them make popup blocking illegal.
Aside from the pop-ups, one should note that Phoenix doesn't really blocks ads when you choose to "Block all images from this server ...", it dowloads them but then it hides them from you.
So the site owner gets a hit with his referrer and the users gets to see a clean page. I've doing this since I switched to moz. One uses bandwidth to dw the ad, though, but at least you end with a page without annoying animated gifs.
...I mean, seriously. If a website cares more for the (dubious amount of) money that it makes off of serving popup ads to me than it does with providing me useful content to make me come to their site in the first place, then I'm going to have to keep track of which sites are that hostile to users, and make sure that others know as well.
I would point out to all the trolls who can't wait to call me a thief for doing so that I do not block banner ads (though I do not have Flash installed); only the ads that interfere with my surfing habits are the ones that have to go.
I don't care what the marketing weasels at these companies think, their ads are not so fucking important that they have the God-given right to shove it into my face and make me chase some stupid window around to get rid of it. I won't buy something from someone who runs up and screams "DRINK PEPSI!" into my face; I don't see pop-ups as being much different.
Jay (=
This guy doesn't really know what he's talking about and it's clearly more than he deserves to even mention his site on Slashdot. For one thing, he's got all this useless "code" for keeping people from seeing image links or right-clicking on the page to, say, view the page source. Of course, all I had to do in IE was go to View/Page Source instead of right click, and the page source comes right up, along with the address of all the images... Am I missing something? Do I just not understand something?
For a more amusing and accurate description of their opinion on ad-blocking browsers, check out this informative access denied page.
Blocked by Anti-Leech.com
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
I don't even care that the media giants say not watching ads is stealing, let alone some lame website.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Imagine your ISP charged you $1 per gig for everything downloaded off you, and someone came along and transferred your entire hard drive. You would be out $100. That is stealing and that is what is happening to websites.
We at Anti-Leech believe that a big problem with the Internet today is that there are very few ways to protect your content and hard work online. Anyone can go to your site and copy the layout, files, images, source code and use it on their own page or link content right of your server, stealing not just your content but your bandwidth too. To prevent all this we have engineered several ways to protect your site. Because your hard work should earn YOU all the credit!
These people are crazy.
Registrant:
WakeNet AB
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
Domain Name: ANTI-LEECH.COM
Administrative Contact:
Wennberg, Johan johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
888 888 888 888
Technical Contact:
Wennberg, Johan johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
888 888 888 888
Registration Service Provider:
Intercosmos Media Group Inc. dba directNIC.com, support@directnic.com
504 679 5173
http://www.directnic.com
Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
Record last updated on 19-Mar-2002.
Record expires on 22-May-2003.
Record Created on 22-May-1999.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.ZONEEDIT.COM 207.228.252.101
NS2.ZONEEDIT.COM 65.125.228.66
All I get is an error message. It appears that I can't get in with or without ad blocking proxies :-).
I don't know, maybe I'm not getting something.
Ads are a service. They are supposed to promote a product or a service, regardless of the fact, that advertising itself is a service/product.
A bit obvious, but I don't have to buy all that's being advertised and I am in no way considered a thief (and if you think so, turn the other cheek and empty your pockets).
In fact I don't have to buy anything advertised and I am certainly not obliged to view ads in other media.
Instead, advertising is supposed to give me options. Freedom to choose. It is a service, which I can decline if I so wish.
What these people are saying is, that I can have all the freedom I want in buying products, but I am not free not to watch their ads.
Well it seems nonsensical to me. I don't seem to remember signing anything (or agreeing to), which would expect this of me. And even if this was a case, why am I still at large considering how many ads on all sorts of media I ignore?
There is a very easy solution to this little problem.
./ the scum of the face off the planet (or the 'net, if you so wish). They can sue? HA. Tell them their techniques worked. Thousands of people were so interested, they felt like visiting their site. And I bet these people will hate ever having anything to do with advertising....
/. Where the truth
Pop-ups are no different from spam, and should be made illegal. x.x I don't recall agreeing to allowing any websites the freedom of filling my screen with crap. Shouldn't they ask permission first, or at least give some kind of a warning?
If someone chooses to run this software for their website, that's fine with me. I can go to a different site. End result: they lose the ad revenue they were going to get from my visit anyway. On top of that, I might like the other site I go to better. I'll then recommend to my friends (who don't use ad blockers) the site that doesn't block ad blockers, hurting the ad blocker-blocking site even more. Where is the line drawn between choosing what you want to view and "thievery"? If I use ad blockers, I am a thief, at least according to this company. How about if I change channels or get up to get a snack when the commercials come on TV? What are the network execs going to do about it? Strap me down into my couch? Suppose I'm driving on the highway past a billboard. If I don't look at it, I'm a thief, right?
live(free) || die;
The above method still throws up empty popups. To get them to go away, you need to go one step further:
Alias to localhost, run a local webserver with 404 that closes itself. So all these aliases give 404 errors and simply dissappear.
Yes, occasioanlly I will lose a browser window with an embedded ad in it, but it's a small price to pay.
If I was smart I'd just run mozilla.
Oops.
best web host ever
What I REALLY don't get is why the text it displays is set as an 'argument' -- you can make it say different things by changing the argument specified in the URL: All my base are belong to them?
________________________________________________
suwain_2
http://www.anti-leech.com/at_block.php?message=We+ suck!
If some sorry-ass site forces you to see his nasty pop-ups, take your business elsewhere. Maybe we needs some code in Mozilla to filter all these sites to begin with. Don't forget: All information will eventually be available in a respectable way. (As long as demand is high enough.)
StarTrek.org Free Webmail
this disabled there system for me.
Unlike TV, the show/network has already paid a flat fee so you not watching makes no difference. But when you visit a website you cost them money directly. Why should they not be compensated for the bandwidth you use?
Aren't there browsers that can block Javascript on a site-by-site basis? That would be nice...
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
btw I don't have much fate in this site. just look at the HTML 'hider'
http://www.anti-leech.com/ah_test1.html
With mozilla the stuff jou need is right in the java script section plain and easy. (o and the thou shall not look at the source pupup doesn't help either)
Have a look at bug 181035 on Mozilla's Bugzilla. There is some good discussion on how to handle this. A pop-up window can't merely be hidden from view, because invisible windows are considered a security hazard. Maybe the sandbox idea will take off allowing pop-ups to have temporary play room.
However as of now its an open issue at Mozilla with no clear solution in sight. This is going to be an arms race no doubt.
"Unlike most of you, I am not a nut." - Homer J. Simpson
name: seen_al_pop
value:1
expires:end of session
before that it sets a test cookie that is easy to identify
Simply adding the strings "banner" and "popup" to a squid-proxy DENY access control list rendered that page -- and most others -- completely innocuous.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Better Links
I E+ Sucks+because+pop+ups+SUCK
M oz illa+has+options+to+turn+off+pop+ups+YEA!
http://www.anti-leech.com/at_block.php?message=
http://www.anti-leech.com/at_block.php?message=
Christopher McCrory "The guy that keeps the servers running" chrismcc@gmail.com http://www.pricegrabber.com
Ok, so calling ad-blockers "thiefs" is stupid, and the odds of this thing taking off is something around zero. Some points, though:
1. There's nothing wrong with a site requiring you to view ads before viewing it. This isn't the best way to do it, mind you, but it's a reasonable theory.
2. Everyone is better off if websites know what advertising works. Pretending to view ads hurts everyone in the long run.
3. What we really need, at the end of the day, is better statistics on Internet ads. Radio and TV people can factor in bathroom breaks and channel surfing into their ad rates, but we're only beginning to get those stats for the Internet.
4. Somewhere deep inside of me, I suspect that people who refuse to look at (any) ads are the first ones to yell when their favorite sites go to a subscription model. Actions do have consequences, and your ISP fee doesn't subsidize the sites you visit.
If you put something on the internet, you accept that people will view/use/download it. I have many websites, I pay for them myself, and I don't expect anyone else to pay for it. If I did, I wouldn't make those pages publicly accesible. I figure I'm giving back to the internet for what I use with my sites.
now those my friend, are the true reason pop-up killers exsist. The worst part is when they start combining these "marketing techniques", which is almost always the case.
There should be advertisment guidelines (just suggesting, not enforcing) on the internet about how advertisemnt should be on the internet. Perhaps a label you could place on your website:
"This site is not a rotting cesspool of annoying pop-ups"
(note: most of the malices usually occur in IE)
"The majority is always sane, Louis." -- Nessus
http://slashdot.jp
These guys don't appear to be marketing to (or, perhaps, to be) the sharpest tools in the shed, though. They have a "Test your website's security!" link on their page. So I plugged in www.microsoft.com...what I got back was mostly a display of the HTML of the www.microsoft.com page, and some scare text saying "The following HTML code was copied from your site. Enough information to make an exact copy of your web site? With Anti-HTML you can protect all or some parts of your code." I feel like writing to them and explaining how HTML and HTTP work...but I suspect they know just fine; they're just marketing to idiots, of whom there is rarely a shortage.
Hi,
You offer a much-needed service. As a future enhancement, you might consider simply releasing a list of your clients, so i can avoid attemtpting to view their pages altogether. I'd be more than willing to wwork on things on the server side to redirect free-loading http requests from a popup-blocker to a similar site which does not block access via your service.
Please let me know if you would like to collaborate, I'm offering my services for free, and I'll be sure to forward this same offer to any of your clients I come across, to prevent them from having to handle unneccessary traffic. In fact, it would probably be worthwhile for me to start collecting a list of your clients myself and making them available, along with lists of alternate sites with similar content. Please let me know if you'd like to help, as it should make your job a lot easier. If we can redirect all traffic from your client sites, you shouldn't have to worry much at all about blocking free-loaders. Thanks,
Henry Quinn
Brooklyn NY
god is just pretend.
Privoxy is a great tool to block ads. I never have to see ads anymore its great and nearly flawless. Its even open source. :) SF project page: Privoxy
Free Instant Site Inclusion
Nobody is stealing from anyone! They try to prevent you from blocking their pop-up ads. You may refuse, but they can enforce it the best they can. You don't have to click through any EULA or some shit; they're just trying to prevent you from uing their product, and you are free to try to bypass their contermeasures.
Furthermore, I can see why they would do such a thing. At the sime time, I'm going to try and block pop-up ads, and I'm going to hope IE doesn't, so that most websites don't find devices like anti-theft necessary.
Especially when you've paid money to see the movie.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It is my god given right to ignore annoying advertising. I will not go in an old navy because their TV ads annoy me. I will not buy from a telemarketer because their phone call annoys me. And I don't care how cool the pop up ad, or flash animation is, I will not buy from them. I don't care who I am supporting, I will not open/read/purchase from spam.
So, if I block the pop up ad I am saving them money on bandwidth.
That being said, I do not do anything to block banner ads. Sure, they do slow down my browsing experience a bit, but I can live with that.
--T
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
Is your company going broke? Why not force your potential customers to sit through adds?
When they refuse and seek information from other companies who offer their information without sitting through your adds, and go elsewhere call them theives, set up an anti-anti-ad system.
Now for the fun bit, when someone comes up with an anti-anti-anti-ad system, hit them with a DCMA inspired litigation.
Will this make customers more or less friendly to you?
Ponders. Can I charge doubleclick for bandwidth usage?
A sig is placed here
To display how futile
English Haiku is
Basically you have a situation to where people view popups as annoying. If it is annoying then it is not doing its job, so instead of fixing the problem (making them useful and reducing the annoying factor) you have crap like this. I wouldn't be surprised if there are lobbying efforts underway to make it illegal to block popups in at least 10 percent of politicians and other of our wonder elitist socialists.
When it all comes down to it, those that believe in this are basically saying that they have a right to invade your privacy and autonomy. If I walked down the street and saw a billboard or some people carrying a sign that advertised various products then I would just walk on. If they had any substance (meaning no bs, but actually stuff I could use) then I would check up on them. If however, the peddlers begin to actually block my path and shout in my ear while waving signs in my face (blocking my view) then I will consider that an affront and attempt to walk around them. If they responded by not just becoming louder and more obnoxious but did in fact trip, physically block, or otherwise restrict my movement as well as doing things like spraying my face with perfume, stuffing food in my mouth, splashing my clothes with dirt to demo their spot cleaner or other such methods then I will consider that assault. It will get ugly. Whether they learn like all animals that you discipline that I am not one to be assaulted, or rather I have some gadget that creates a kinetic field that blocks their entrance into my set "personal bubble" then I would not be too happy if they then attempted to break through my little technical toy to resume invading my privacy. I would definitely not ever walk or shop in that area again
A better analogy would be if when you went to the library and people jumped out from behind bookshelves and while flashing lights, spraying confetti, screaming, jumping up and down they then throw me down into a nearby chair, slam my book down I just grabbed and perhaps if there were enough of them they would cause me to have a seizure I would kick their ass and then no longer come to that library. There was once a time when obvious crap like this could be met (even in a "gentlemanly fashion") with a good ass kicking. I believe that should be revived.
Do'h
Try again with html
Better Links
IE Sucks
Mozilla Rules
Christopher McCrory "The guy that keeps the servers running" chrismcc@gmail.com http://www.pricegrabber.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As far as I'm concerned, if a site wants to fail hard if my browser doesn't support features that the site requires, that's their problem. There are often multiple sources for whatever service they are providing.
Oh, also, would you really trust a company that has error messages like these?
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
How long before the internet basically turns into interactive television, with annoying, randomly timed advertisements...
Enjoy COKE! The refreshing flavor of Coca Cola is just what you need right NOW!
Just a thought...
in konqueror, i get blocked with or without popup blocking on
in phoenix i got through, after quite a while.
Problem: users will not wait a minute to click a button to continue using a website. the word dumbass comes to mind for the creators of this and any sponsors.
I went to the anti leech.com site and when I clicked on a link I got 2 pop up adds. They even make it annoying for people to surf their own site. These dudes are hard core.
I go to the main page and up pops the 'Oh boy! I wanna run this spyware! Can I?' message that IE is apt to do. (I'm at work.) It's not really surprising, really.
Don't block pop-ups. Block sites that use pop-ups.
:-)
That's the option I was missing in Mozilla.
So they're blocking themselves now?
Fine!
Anyone notice that
http://www.anti-leech.com/index.php
tried to install gator on your computer?
The gall of them to accuse people who block ads or popups of being "thieves" when they offer to install gator on people's machines....
hey, i don't block popups...its just...um...browser incompatibility with a few javascripts.
forget it.
"Amazing, turn away shoplifters with our amazing system. We simply hold up a sign at anyone that we feel looks like a shoplifter. "You are a shoplifter, you may not enter this shop."
Well i visited their site with opera (no ad blocking) and i was blocked.
"If you believe you received this message by mistake you can find more information here."
Sorry i dont listen to people who tell me to go away... I have absolutely no idea what this company is attempting to do or how they're doing it. So can someone explain to me, because i cant be bothered to read through all their marketing hype.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
In just a few short minutes I now have a new filter rule for Privoxy:
s|<script.*src=.*anti-leech.*</noscript>||is gU
Imagine that this company probably spent tens-of-thousands of dollars to develop this software and it we defeated with a simple regexp.
--design your site so it's three tiered. Minimal basic "free" stuff to see if the surfer is further interested. Second level is "more" content for viewing ads and possibly they might want to buy something from the advertisers, if you know your target audience and have actual relevant ads. Third tier is no ads, pure opt in session cookie and login handle/password paid subscription. Each step up you get more features and content. That's about the best you can do, well, that and running the site as begware, some sites actually exist this way, but the site has to be actually pretty nifty to do this..
Glad to hear of successes with other programs as well.
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
damn lame, if I can turn of popups, I'm sure as hell gonna do it! Phoenix have that feature, så I use it.
am I a theif for turning of popups? what am I stealing? not a fucking dime!
//tewmten
Dampbarn
In open-source we believe!
If someone refuses to show me their site because I'm blocking pop ups, that means they've lost my viewership. Once they realize that no one is visiting any more because of their stupid pop ups, maybe they'll rethink how they fund their site.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
What next, having to correctly answer a reading comprehension question about the ads to get to the web site's supposed message?
If these folks were around in 1776 it'd have read like this:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable...
-!!!CURIOUS??? WANNA SEE MORE??? WONDER WHAT "UNALIENABLE" MEANS??? CLICK HERE FOR MORE HOT HOT FREEDOM AND FOUNDING FATHER ON FOUNDING FATHER ACTION!!!"-
-dameron
(really needing that in red, with a blink tag, but nooooo...)
So it's OK to add pop-ups to websites, but not OK to block them? Are the people PAYING for the ads actually keeping track of whether they're blocked?
Am I a thief for associating several ad servers (ads.doubleclick.net, servedby.advertising.com, etc.) with Google's numerical address in my hosts file? (it works. Try it.)
good to see they are using sophisticated technology to stop right clicking
standback asm and brainfuck programmers, take note and learn
<script language=JavaScript>
<!--
//Disable right mouse click Script
//By Maximus (maximus@nsimail.com)
//For full source code, visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com
var message="Menu disabled by Anti-Leech.com";
function clickIE() {if (document.all) {alert(message);return false;}}
function clickNS(e) {if
(document.layers||(document.getElementById&&!do
if (e.which==2||e.which==3) {alert(message);return false;}}}
if (document.layers)
{document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);docume
else{document.onmouseup=
// -->
</script>
I went to that example website using mozilla 1.2b with all the good blocking options turned on, I don't see what's so special about the page.
Oh, and if some site is going to consider me a theif for not viewing their ads, then they just won't get visits from me anymore. Fine with me.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I know Wired isn't running this little Anti-Reality script/proggie/whatever the hell it's supposed to be, but I think they might be doing something similar since they redesigned the layout of their site. I have Tweak-XP, which makes use of an ad blocker. I keep updating my list of blocked sites regularly (pretty much anytime I notice an ad getting through). Some sites (like MSNBC and, to some extent, Wired) have taken to hosting some of their regular graphics on ad servers. The result is that you won't get access to their pictures unless you don't block their ads. Of course, this makes for a rather unusual view for MSNBC, as nearly the entire page has little "Blocked By Tweak-XP" graphics.
The interesting thing that I noticed is that since the layout change, if I surfed to Wired with the server for their ads blocked it would redirect me to their "Less Cool-Looking" page. Same news, just all the swank graphics gone with a message about how my browser doesn't support basic web standards. I'm wondering if Wired isn't running some sort of similar deal to what this story is talking about. You know, if you're blocking their ads then they send you to their much more lame page instead of getting the good one. You still get the news, it just doesn't look as pretty. I realize this could just be a side effect of something else they were doing with the layout change, but it still seems curious.
Any thoughts?
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
I waited, and waited, and waited. No button appeared. I think that Omniweb's slightly flawed Javascript implementation confounds it. Fine by me, most sites that have Javascript I need to use work just fine with it.
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
I just thought of a great new idea for open source to make money. Just write some software distribute the code, inside the code place ads paid by various companies. It's brilliant. Anytime someone want's to add or change the code they have to scroll by the ads. Wooohoooo I'm brilliant!
lol
I rely on Internet Marketing for my business, and the idea that formatting content to suit your own whim is wrong - is absolutely rediculous.
This is like the quote about a month ago saying that ignoring commercials is also theft and violates a consumers obligation to watch advertising.
If they don't want you to watch it, they can just put up a friendly message. "Watch our ads or don't read our content".
Of course nobody would do that, or they'd seem pretty stupid and lose customers left right and center.... If they won't be upfront about their expectations for viewers of thier web site, then I'll go ahead and keep blocking the crap I don't want to see.
Ace
I used to have two house mates many years ago, and when watching something we were really interested in, two of us would hit "mute" when ad came on, and un-mute after it was over, and we'd usually gab about whatever during commercial, occasionally glancing to see if the show was back on. Commercials grate on the nerves.
The other asked us why we do that...we were both speechless for a heartbeat, and then we had to explain how irritating we find commercials - they are louder, they are demeaning to the intelligence, they are lying, etc...he still didn't get it.
When it was something we were only "marginally" interested in, we'd sometimes watch 3-4 shows...flipping back and forth, usually triggered by a commercial.
I've always watched TV in this manner. And then, I got Tivo.
I've spent most of my adult life not seeing (many) commercials on TV, and much of my childhood I didn't even HAVE A TV! Call me a criminal.
When people say, "Didja see that commercial where..." I'm that guy with the clueless look on his face...pure, blissful ignorance.
I find popups to be annoying, and over-use of flashing banners on the top, both sides, and at the bottom with 1x1 sq inch reserved for content. But casual use is tolerable, I suppose.
Here's one thing to be thankful for, though: I haven't seen any that use sound. [Diety] help us all if that happens...
1: Load the main add in the main page.
:-P
2: Pop up a new window with requested content.
Works for me
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You know, I'm on their site right now with my popup blocker, and it's working just fine. I wonder if their site *has* popups...
Just because they "thought" I would render the site a certain way using a certain browser doesn't mean ANYTHING to me.
How I choose to access material over the web is my business.
Of course, the same goes both ways.. the site operators are free to do whatever it is they want with their site. If they want to use stuff like this, or force the use of certain browsers, power to them.
I'ts poeple like you who toss around the word "stealing" and accept that just about anything not happening the way the originator intended is theft that let the world get into the state it's in now with the RIAA, MPAA, etctera.
You probably think it's theft to mod an Xbox too... or to buy something sold below cost then not use it for the intended purpose.
If someone doesn't want me to fetch just certain objects from their webserver, they can do something about it instead of WHINE
Anti-Leech legal - terms of use
By using this service, you, the user and webmaster, agree to abide by the following terms:
1. Anti-Leech.com is not responsible for any discomforts or disruptions to your web site caused by the downtime of our services.
2. Anti-Leech.com does not take any responsibility for illegal actions enacted by the user.
3. Anti-Leech.com reserves the right to modify the terms, conditions and notices under which our website is operated. You are responsible for regularly reviewing these terms, conditions and notices.
4. Anti-Leech.com adheres to a Privacy Statement and will not release any confidential information about you without your consent, or as required by law or regulatory authority.
5. You agree that you will not use our Services to conduct any activity or solicit the performance of any activity that is prohibited by law or by regulatory authorities. You further agree that you will not use our Services in any manner which could disable, damage, overburden or impair our Website. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to deny access at any time to users who breach our policies or cause other abuses which we deem disruptive to Anti-Leech.com
Failure to abide by these terms will result in the immediate removal of your account and all information there in.
Now I might actually have to
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm an avid user of Phoenix, which of course blocks pop-ups, and this is great news to me! Websites that use this will now immediately inform me, "We don't want you to give us (or our advertisers) your money." This is a big time-saving feature from having to wade through a webpage for a while to determine whether or not it's crap. Now I know from the outset. Thanks, webmasters!
Perhaps however (in response to the comment below about memory leaks), it would be better to open the popups in an iframe in a minimized and/or hidden window (however this is accomplished by the web browser/OS combination is left up to the implementers).
The document containing the IFRAMES would emulate whole popup windows inside the window to convince each one that they were on top, and then send close events to each of them after a few seconds.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It's worth noting that if you turn off Javascript and go to that page, absolutely nothing happens. Yet another reason not to have it running in your browser by default.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Without Proxomitron, the page comes up with an ignorant little image on it.
With Proximitron, I get the same page, without the ignorant little image.
Am I missing something?
And this came up!
If you cannot tell: I do not like being called a thief for using a service on my computer how I want to.
Knowing how the web works can also be fun.
My machine, my rules.
They can keep their site from me if they wish, but then I don't it at all and will see... their clueful competitors.
Read the whole article here
Now some other loser is trying the same with online content. It will never work, for any type of restriction mechanism (Sony Adds New Copyright... ) there will be three /.'ers cracking it.
Rock on!!
I hate people that dont have a sig
Did you give anyone permission to clutter up your computer with popups? Did you give them permission to basically take control of your computer and create more windows? Absolutely not. You want to show your ads? You have one browser window to work with and no more. If you can't handle that, maybe you should fix your business model. I will never, ever stop using my popup stopper or ad killer.
Now imagine that you could block that data, saving yourself money, and preventing the forced spending of your money(ie, theft).
What these people don't seem to get is that we have no contract with them. They've simply put the site out in the open for anyone to access. If they want to charge for the site, go for it, but accusing people of theft when they've commited no such theft is just childish.
It's the people that have pop-ups on their site who are the leeches. They're stealing our bandwidth, and I
Albuquerque PC
So, by your logic, if sites pre-paid for their bandwith, then blocking pop-ups would not be stealing?
they are stealing MY bandwidth and MY screen space, as well as MY electricity and other things. MY cpu time and ram.... I can go on.... this is ridiculous. WE are stealing from THEM is ludicrous.
anti-leech is so stupid. There is basically no way to prevent someone from copying HTML code, preventing pop-ups and banners, etc. Why even try? Copyright laws are already sufficient to keep people from re-publishing web content (at least, if you catch them). Anyway, I checked out their retarded test page and they can't even keep built-in functionality in Mozilla from "stealing" their bandwith. Retards.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Since when was javascript a subset of HTML? An end user could always criticize a website for trying to shove some strange funky code down their throat that could be potentially harmful when they didn't ask for it.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
For the simple reason that the internet is a public forum. Either a web site should be pay-only in which the viewers must pay money to access the site, or it should be publicly viewable.
Deceptive pop-up ads are not a guaranteed form of revenue. If the web site is depending on money from pop-up's, they should realize this from the start and assume the risk.
I'm on metered internet access - Who is going to compensate *me* for the bandwidth that the ads occupy?
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Hahaha their Anti-HTML is funny... it redirects to a javascript page which loads another javascript page which outputs a urlencoded version of the page... a simple wget, and gives their "protected" code very easily :) ... 25 seconds later i realize i've wasted another 25 seconds of my life... ugh.. :p
---- BEGIN Anti-HTML Example Code ----
<font size=3 face=verdana>
This HTML code is protected by Anti-Leech.com<br><br>
With help of the Anti-Html system you can protect both parts of your page or all source code. We can even protect java scripts.<br><br>
Take a look in the source code of this page for a better view of how good the protection actually is.
</font>
<br><br>
------------- teee heee -----------------
is that you chose a way to make money (pop up ads) that you have no way to force people to view... and now want to call everyone thieves for not buying into your totally broken business model.
We have a word for that: stupid business model.
You are right up there with the cuecat. Was it a crime to buy a cuecat then NOT use it for what the company wanted you to use it for? No... they took a stupid risk that their stupid business model called for, and they failed. Because they were stupid.
Site admins using malware like this will be able to see how many users get turned away by these tactics. There is undoubedtly some threshold, be it 10, 100 or 1,000 users per day, at which they'll rethink things and decide that maybe turning users away isn't the way to maximize ad revenue. It is our moral obligation to help them achieve that threshold.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Your popup ads are 'Theft of my screen real estate'!!
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
I think people (website owners and advertizers) need to sit back and realise that the dot com industry that once was, is no more.
:)).
.
RUNNING A WEBSITE WITH ADDS WILL NOT KEEP YOU AFLOAT!
Once people get that through thier 1998 skull, they can start using the web for what it was originally intended for... sharing information, research, and communication. (ok and a little online gaming as well
These idiots don't seem to want to accept that the market has changed. just look at salon.com
--Finger me
ouch... not hard, yeah.. that's better.
This makes pages un-readable for some visual disabled who use text browsers to get to what they need and read it out on a braille-board or via software that simply reads the text out-load to them.
There is software that can work with standard web software (IE & Popups) and there is some that doesn't...
"Special Interested Groups" ---ATTACK---
I'm using mozilla 1.1 and had the popup protection OFF and it still blocked me ?
Sargeant popup, please tell me which browser I should be using to be allowed to view the page ?
Oh let me guess, one that allows remote exploits and viruses to enter my machine.
They are the theives, stealing our freedom of choice!
Like everything the answer is, it all depends. Some users are getting free or dirty cheap internet access and part of the deal is you will be bombarded by ad's. If you are in that category and block popups you are stealing. BUT again that is the popup ad's coming from the ISP, not ones from any site you happen to surf to.
Now I pay regular rates for my internet access and feel its my right to block popups. IMO opinion its no different than when I channel surf or hit the mute button on my TV when commercials come on. Being that I was a marketing slime at one point I know advertisers aren't expecting everyone to see their ad's. They pray for a large percentage to view the ad, but only hoping to get one or two percent to actually generate sale. Same as bulk mail and Spam, you only expect a couple percent return.
Like everything no one really was that annoyed by popups until advertisers started to abuse them. Once popups started spawning other popups, or browser windows. Then they went to long daisy chains of windows opening that can take minutes to close all, then popup blockers became a necessity. Now you are steal from my time I'm paying for, you are keeping me from my work in many cases. We should sue them.
But with America's first dictator in office George W. Bush nothing will be done. If anything helps big business make another penny he not only won't stop it, he'll bend over backward to help them.
I tried it on microsoft.com and it gave me directories I wouldn't have known about while at the same logging anti-leech in microsoft's web-logs.
Thank you anti-leech. I'll be visiting again :-)
Sometimes when I go to a webpage I get a prompt to install Flash, Date/Time Manager or some Gator related product. Is it illegal for me to decline to use such programs, since Gator in itself, is adware that makes money off my browsing habits?
Just tell Opera to kill pop-ups AND identify itself as IE, and the site is viewable WITHOUT pop-ups. And it's not like this is a new thing with Opera, they were able to get around MSN blocking non-IE browsers as well. Their "technology" was obsolete the minute they launched it.
Here is the Link
if you ask me about this whole deal, it screams fair use; if i go to a burger joint and get a kids' meal requesting no toy, they should give it to me that way. if i forget to request no toy, and throw it out without looking, there should also be no problem.
are blind people all theives? they don't see ads!
what about stereo systems? they come with graphic equalizers, which let people filter music as they see fit. but hark! this means radio broadcasts and cds can be played without so much treble! the thieves!
this whole thing reeks of 'loss of potential sales' -- the same argument as used by the MPAA and RIAA. sure, it's a bit more far-fetched (and therefore more obvious), but this may help our case against the motion picture and recording industries.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
anti-leech is most commonly used on WareZ sites, you know the old ones, where they actually hosted the files and all you had to do is be bombarded by ads to download them? obviously this hurts these people getting something for nothing's cash flow, so its no wonder why they are now offering another service to counteract that... hah
I use POW from AnalogX.com.
As a matter of fact, I just added their site to my block list.
Fuck 'em.
Since it's so darn hacker/advertiser/script kiddie friendly, why not just leave a message saying: "Sorry, this site requires IE".
You pretty much have to disable all functionality to get pop-ups blocked in IE anyways (Without resorting to spy-ware third-party pop-up blockers).
If you hit your escape button (stop) after entering their test page... It cancels the checks... I'm using Pop-Up Stopper...
I was curious enough to try anti-leech.com, with an unexpected yet illuminating result.
Load the page in Mozilla with "Open Unrequested Windows" disabled, and get a short message saying I'm not allowed to view the page b/c I'm using a pop-up blocker.
I disable Mozilla's popup blocker and load the page again. This time I get the anti-leech.com home page, along with the expected pop-up ad. Lo and behold, the popup ad is advertising Cable TV Descramblers.
So let me get this straight. They want me to stop stealing from them by using a popup blocker so they can try to sell me a way to steal from cable companies using a descrambler.
uhmmm, riiiiight. If you're going to be a hypocrit, at least try to be clever about it.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Don't feel guilty not viewing popups. I don't take popup content seriously and never click the banners anyway... These are spam. Just a means of paying for a service that would be dirt cheap, if it wasn't run by a bunch of profiteering gluttons.....
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Hah, now that I've got that out of my system, let me get serious: this is the dumbest idea/company I've ever heard of (Next to MS). Honestly, so many people use pop-up blockers these days (And people seem to have problems accessing the site without pop-up blockers) that they'll be losing so much revenue/potential customers (If it's a site that sells things) that it's worthless. In fact, they're blocking anyone who uses Earthlink, as their major feature is ad blocking (I don't use Earthlink, but I've seen the commercials). And, if all else fails, we'll just disable javascript to view their site. Mind you, most people will just turn away when they see the "Go away until you don't block pop-ups" dialog.
I also love their image/download link/HTML source savers. This is the internet; there's always ways to get things. If the image can't be downloaded, I'll take a screen cap. One of my friends who didn't know about screen caps took a digital picture of her computer screen and blew up the image to use it on her project. There are always ways.
I also love how they try to install the Adware/SpyWare Gator onto your computer.
I hate delayed content even more. Some hoser posted a good point followed by a lame link, so this reply really can't be under their thread.
/. ad system? Google? Are these working? I do not mind either one bit because I get to choose the nature of the experience. Seems to me the most valuable impressions are those where a user CHOSE, not was tricked or forced, to follow through that particular ad. In that small moment, you have the holy grail, you have a potential buyer actually interested in your product seeking more information.
They mentioned the salon system where you are basically forced to look at an ad for a time before getting the content.
The way I see it, broadband of any kind is a premium service. Why pay for it if the crap from the marketing folks reduces the quality of the experience to that of dialup? Think about it for a moment, if you use free Juno or something, what do you get? Ads --too many of them to make it worthwhile, so you upgrade service, but why? For a better experience of course! So, if the actions of the marketing people degrade this, does this not devalue the very service you pay extra for? Duh!
Personally, I like the ads that are intermixed in with the content. Most of the benefit of broadband is preserved, and the ads get eyeballs.
I can somewhat agree that browsing with popup support disabled somehow can be thought of as stealing, but what about malicious pages and such? How are users supposed to secure their machines without the freedom to reasonably define what their machine will and won't do for them?
Battling the customer for their attention is never going to work. It costs more money and generates more bad PR than good impressions, so why do it? You would think these types of all people would know this cold.
This sort of thing just limits the usefulness of the Internet just a little more for nothing but the profit of the losers selling this service.
Salon is going the wrong direction by holding content until the ad is viewed. These folks are just as bad. How are the people who place ads in a reasonable way doing? For that matter, how about the
To everyone considering foolish schemes like this:
How the hell are you going to get this by forcing the issue? Really, tell me how, I want to know!
Know also, I don't have to get the content.
This means more than you would think. We are all being attacked more and more in this new age of information. This will backfire and when it does, where will you be then? Consider your answer again after you remember also that everyone gets to talk about it --a lot and for a long time.
Right now, there is more content presented than I can reasonably view. When I seek to meter my Internet time, guess who won't get the attention?
Remember that when your stats go down as interested visitors don't come back after being treated like criminals. Our time is valuable too, why not create an experience that rewards participation rather than the opposite? It can be done though it takes work. Isn't that what we are supposed to be doing to make money. Isn't money made by adding value where you realistically can?
Maybe there is some hope left though. If we feedback (which is what they really want anyway) our negative experiences, marketing people will begin to seek those who are actually working at providing an experience that people will come back for.
Tell 'em what you think people, it is the only thing that actually matters in the end.
Blogging because I can...
So you are peeved that I'm not looking at your pop ups?
/. style communal web log. Me and my bretheren have hundreds of sites to check through on an almost daily basis. Treat your visitors like this, and you won't be getting a link...
I'm running a
What next - TV companies coming round and smashing up your telly if they found you didn't look at the screen during their ad.
I feel like going and removing the banners from my site in rage!
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
Just let pop-ups pop up in an invisible (not rendered) window. Doh! Then they can check all they want... as for cookies, just rewrite them as session-only cookies (session cookies are ok IMO), but don't tell the site that.
I didn't mind a few banners. But with blinking red and yellow banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, nested, timed, infinite amount of pop-ups starting to show up, I killed them all. It was a source of blatant abuse, and I'm sorry for all the average sites that are just trying to make a living. I'd like to support you, but it'll have to be another way. There's no way in freezing hell that I'll turn banners and pop-ups back on.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1. If I throw away all the junk flyers I find in my (snail)mailbox everyday, am I stealing from those advertisers?
2. Why am I obligated to read anything I didn't ask for? How is rejecting something that is shoved in my face stealing? It takes really twisted logic to make an argument that it is.
3. How many casino ads do these "advertisers" really need me to see? Casino ads make up about 3/4 of the pop-ups I get. This is why I now have popups turned off in Mozilla.
I also reject 3rd party cookies. Better swear out a warrant on me now.
If companies that use popups depend on them to stay in business, I suggest they write a new business plan.
Popups are just another form of spam.
Yah all those dirty blind people are theives!
Ehm. Just went to their site and tried the "Test the security of your website"-function.. Try it yourself for a laugh. My favourite was where they show me the HTML they received from my web page and try to make it look like it's a security breach that that code got sent out.. hilarious.
I've found the web to be a much better place since using mozilla. Another great thing is my 1800 line hosts file which redirects the majority of ad servers to 127.0.0.1. Now, that seems like the simple and easy way to do it, but is there any way to get statistics on how many ads I'm missing and how much bandwidth I'm saving or am I better off not knowing?
..this is but a fantasy..
So IE usage is now down below 85%? Wow. That nap must have been longer than I thought.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
User-Agent: Fake Ad Blockers(out) URL Match: $LST(AdBusters) Header Value Match: * Replacement Text: Slurp/0.01 [fu] (Win67; X; KnifeCollector) Add a site with UBER LEET ANTI ANTI AD TECHNOLOGY to your AdBusters.txt list, and it magically works.
I don't think these people understand who the real thieves are. Sites that serve unwanted popups, banners, etc. without my consent are stealing the bandwidth that I paid for. If they want to use my bandwidth, they can damn well pay me for it at the prices I set. If they don't want to pay my prices, then they shouldn't be able to use my bandwidth. By the same token, if they don't want me to use their bandwidth, they're perfectly within their rights to deny me access to their sites.
These bandwidth looters are trying to set the tone of the game by portraying those of us who are trying to preserve our bandwidth usage as something dirty. I am paying for my bandwidth, and I will be the one to determine when it gets used.
Honestly, I could care less about banner ads or image ads within a given page. What pisses me off to no end are pop-up ads. How much more effective are pop-ups, really?
GOATSE TROLL LINK ABOVE!!
Damn straight, now we know who is in charge now don't we?
I went ahead and sent this to their sales support and general questions departments. They might just find it as funny as I did.
Bravo!
Blogging because I can...
Theft? That is insulting and offensive.
:)
I guess you can consider these other things theft also:
* Using the Lynx web browser
Lynx is 100% fine. It works perfectly and is not blocked for a reason.
* Any TV using Tivo or ReplayTV
The day everyone has TIVO, you'll see that the advertizements start to get buried INSIDE the show, or that that show you loved in no longer supported. All you can access for free will be propaganda supported stuff or pay-per-views. I'm nt looking worward to that day
Going to the bathroom during commercial breaks.
Nobody requires you to look at the screen when they display an add last time I checked. Not even to stay on the channel. Most websites are not asking people to click the banners nor asking you to pay carefull attention to all the banners.
* Coming to the movies a bit late for the commercials.
They couldn't care less, the fact is some people enjoy those commercials, and for the movie you have already payed a ticket wich is the way you supports the creation of movies.
unfinished: (adj.)
Their website will be assimilated (not that I would want to).
Tried it with Avant Browser (http://www.avantbrowser.com). The website detected the popup blocker, so I turned off Java/scripting on the fly, reloaded and dropped off their "maaaaajical" radar.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Been using the HOSTS file on all my machines to block most ads, wondering if it would work for this too by simply adding any domain name anti-leech uses to it?
C:\>
It seems that kazaalite.com is now using similar technology, because I cannot access it with Mozilla when pop-ups are disabled. How frickin ironic can you get? The ONLY reason that kazaalite exists at all is that people were so annoyed at the advertising software embedded within Kazaa. Now we are forced to view popups in order to visit that site? Pot. Kettle. Black. Screw you, kazaa lite!
You can get around their HTML blocking by saving the web page in mozilla. They use some obfuscated javascript to try to hide the location, but when you save the entire web page with Mozilla, it saves what it's displaying, not what was sent to it, so all the javascript stuff is expanded. The image protection isn't any better, either. If I want to protect my images, I'll use mod_rewrite, I don't seem some stupid javascript thing.
Run the Anti-Leech security tester on "your site" - www.anti-leech.com
then see all the source and links that are visible, and howly poorly written "your site" is.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
What do they think of Earthlinks TV adds, which focus on blocking unwanted popup adds.
Get a free ipod.
Disabling JS might do the trick, as well...
In the end, all this page provides is a little heads up to Proximitron/Privoxy/Junkbuster users and coders. Talk about shooting yourself in foot.
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
Since every other current browser allows USERS, and not 'webmasters', to decide how their browser behaves.
/I/ am supposed to see?
Lynx/Links users are thieves, since they don't allow any JS at all.
Opera users are thieves, since they can deny non-requested pop-ups.
Mozilla users are thieves, since they can use a blacklist/whitelist of pop-up sites.
Netscape 6/7 users become thieves, if they add back disabled Mozilla behaviour.
What's next? People are thieves if they disallow blinking text, flash, marquee, Java applets, ActiveX controls?
Blind and deaf people are thieves, because they can't see the info?
I become a thief if I use a user stylesheet to turn purple-on-green websites black-on-white?
I am a thief if I copy text from a website, to read it in Notepad, or print out a web page?
When did the WWW turn from a collection of hyperlinked text with markup into a visual medium where 'content providers' get legal backing to decide what
I think the problem is people using the fully featured website while trying to suvert the very means that makes the website stay online.
I don't see a problem. If they don't want to put a full featured web site on-line for free, they don't have to. Nobody is forcing them.
If there existed a way to automatically reformat a printed newspaper into a non-ads newspaper, they'd have to charge everyone more and due to reduced audience they'd also have to cut jobs and lower the quality of the articles.
Tough cookies. Technology makes some good business models go bad and eliminates certain categories of jobs. It happened for farming, it happened for manufacturing, why should newspapers or content providers be exempt?
So, the bottom line is it's ok for you to try to block adds, as long as you can recognize that when your favourite site closes you are part of the reason.
The fewer sites that are created with commercial motives in mind, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Companies and advertising already dominate newspapers, television, and radio. I think it would be great if such business models simply didn't work on the Web. So, please, go ahead: block all you can.
I always loved Google because of their advertising methods, as well as their prioritizing pages that has the most pages that link to it. But lately I'm seeing more and more commercial sites pop up at the first page of links, obviously because they're buying the listing from Google, and I have to dig way down deep for the pages that have the content I am really looking for. Yes, it's great that they are keeping their layout simple, but I think this type of advertising, perversion of links, is a worse form than banners or pop ups. On the other hand, it could possibly be the only way for sites to make everyone see their ads. If they can successfully inbed ads in their content, sort of like Maxim magazine, without ruining the content, then more power to them.
1) Your analog cable connection will be phased out.
2) You will be required to have digital cable (if you want cable that is), with a set top box that they provide.
3) They will track your viewing habits.
4) They learn that you change channels during commercials
5) They disable the channel changer before commercials are shown.
I kid you not.
Aliasing to many things to 127.0.0.1 isn't a very smart idea, it can break your resolver code.
Better thing is to place them in your firewall with a REJECT (not block) rule.
If you take a look at their page, they seem to just be marketing to inexperienced or really paranoid web masters. They are providing services that aren't needed. My favorite one is their "Anti-link protection." On their demo page, you can type in a web site URL and it will get all the links from the page. Now, iirc, having a bunch of links to other sites is a good thing in terms of search engine rankings. I sure wouldn't want links to my site on other web sites blocked by some expensive service. And honestly, who cares about how much HTML code a visitor can see?
I think these people are just trying to get as many newbies to buy their services as they can. I really hope nobody does.
"No manual entry for woman."
I wonder what they think about me blocking images and cookies from their site as well?
... disabling javascript. It's funny how impotent the anti-leech system is when something that simple nullifies it.
What the phoenix and mozilla projects should add is a javascript manager, similar to the cookie and image managers. That way you can let specific sites run javascripts and block all others or block specific sites' scripts and run ones from sites that haven't been added to "the list".
They should also add an animation/flash manager. I really hate flash ads.
there's and article in Buisness 2.0 about the success of Google's text-only ads.
K5 also has unobtrusive text-only ads. More websites should follow this example; the ads don't get in your face and they work. I know I've clicked on a few, and I've not clicked on one of those hideous flash ads.
-witty
So I ran their example, and checked it out. Sure enough, they block right-click, shift-f10, and the right-click key on the keyboard. Next stop, my browser's cache. Whoops! All the files and images are in there. Do'o!!
Yeah, right.
Seems to work around it fine.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
With one step less, I merely left JavaScript disabled (as I always do) and looked at their page. Since I got no indication of whether they were classifying me as an obedient sheep or a rebel, I have to say they are lacking in communications skills. Perhaps they are too tied up with technology.
... and roam on their site.
To be more proactical
use the toolbar from XULPlanet.com
(a checkbox to enable/disable JavaScript).
Evidently if the site contain "pertinent"
data that need javascript....
my 2 cent
Remmeber to also boycott http://www.netpumper.com/, they are a spin-off from the anti-leech guys. :)
If you look at the source code it includes a javascript files, that includes another javascript file, than finally writes the data like this:
document.write(unescape("%3Cfont%20size%3D3%20face %3Dverdana%3E%0D%0AThis%20HTML%20code%20is%20prote cted%20by%20Anti-Leech.com
if you are a webdeveloper to have 3-4 files to do the work of 1 makes no sense! And if you are NOT a webdeveloper do you think the secretary knows how to update a webpage if the code is writen with %20's all over the place?
It looks like Anti-Leech is selling job secuirty more than anything!
my favorite quote is this: Take a look in the source code of this page for a better view of how good the protection actually is.
if i can get around the protection so can anyone else... real good protection!
The thing about popup ads is that they use your system resources without getting your permission. And many of them have false "close" buttons that actually just take you to some other website. When you use someone else's body without their permission it's called assault. When you use someone else's property without their permission it's called tresspass to chattels. The user who falls victim to this has to go through a nuisance to get rid of the popups, and some of them hose the system so bad that it has to be rebooted. What's your time worth to you?
Then there are the popups that spawn more popups, which are really an egregious abuse of trust. Every time another popup springs up it's potentially money for someone other than you. Why should these assholes earn money by annoying me?
Banner ads are PERFECTLY acceptable. They occupy some real-estate on the website. But anything that pops up a new window has exceeded the bounds of what I implicitly agreed to view by pulling up the website, because now I have to dismiss it (with the attendant problems of closing one popup, only to spawn ten more).
Calling users "thieves" is really a great example of the pot calling the kettle black.
...of Javascript being used against you. I turned off JS and everything was fine.
If sites are struggling, why not take donations from people using the site? It's worked for a few sites. I usually try to donate a few buck to a site that I regularely enjoy.
Beats the hell outta pop-up's that's for sure...
--iie1195
A web site has every right to decide wether or not they allow a particular browser configuration to access their site. Of course, the more people block pop-up ads, the fewer people that will be able to visit anti-blocking enabled sites, the less cash they'll get for ads, and eventually they'll die a natural death from lack of money.
A free market cure for stupid business models. one that I will totally support by continuing to use pop-up blockers - and encourage friends to do likewise.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
You might consider getting a better (more robust) ad blocker (like Privoxy, JunkBuster, or Proximitron) that can block ads in subdirectories, and (even better) by regexp!
Or... you could just peruse Google's list of ad blockers.
Bon appetite!
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
The Sites that i block is mostly porn if i whant to read somthing of a site does i hawe to get 10 messiges abut som sick prorn site ? Thae question is moral in a way, if i make my own poppup filter that mean i alreddy read ther popups once. So must i read the same shit ewry day ?
I am PAYING for my bandwidth (first via dialup and now via cable HSI). Also, I PAID for my computer. In addition, I PAID for the software I'm using. I have NO problem with banner ads. I have a BIG problem with pop-ups, pop-unders and e-mail SPAM. Those who use those to "advertise" their products or scams are the real thieves! They are stealing from me! I have the right to self defense, and that includes preventing them from stealing from me (my time in having to close their ad windows and sort through their e-mail, and my money which paid for the items listed above).
"Well. We used to send one popup before. Now, as we installed the crap, we send one popup to check for anti-popup software, and finally the ad popup. So:
- anti-popup users still steal us one popup-unit of bandwith.
- classic browsers cost us twice the popup-dedicated [..] bandwith."
Cool. Thievery is the argument.
Kalou. ((void(*)())(char[]){0x31, 0xdb, 0x31, 0xc0, 0xb0, 0x01, 0xcd, 0x80})();
Consider a company like Telstra. This company supplies connectivity to internet content to Australian ISP's and a very large percentage of the content that Australians consume originates in the good ole USA.
Does anyone think for an instant that the USA interests that carry this content are willing to allow Testra to get access to it for FREE? Of course not - Telstra pays big bux to connect to the POP's.
The point is that while Telstra is willing to pay American interets to get access to internet content, at the same time Telstra does not offer this deal to any Australian interests, that is unless they happen to be part of a cosey little club that Telstra has organised a business arrangement with.
Not only is it likely illegal under Australian competition laws for Telstra to pay one group (americans) while simultaneously refusing to pay Australians for access to this internet content, it is extreemly unpatriotic.
This illustrates the problem with the business model the net operates under. Web Servers _ARE_ providing a service - to their upstreams who in turn pass this content on to other upstreams until it eventually reaches the backbone. Now - everyone in this pecking order of delivery of web content from the server through to the end user gets paid - EXCEPT THE PEOPLE WHO CREATE THE CONTENT AND RUN THE SERVERS.
It is the only business in the world that I can think of where success can bankrupt you and this is because it is the only business in the world where the supplier and owner of the content does not get paid by those who consume it.
The bottom line is that a webserver's upstream should be remitting money to the owner of the server based at least on the amount of content they suck out of the server.
If webmasters were to band together and block their content from distribution to certain large players (like say AOL) on certain days then I think the point might be made.
Please note that the end user does pay his upstream for access to the content they consume and ISP's also pay their upsreams. This chain of payments seems to stop somwhere.
Major players would make MORE MONEY if they would play by the rules that govern every other industry on the planet - that is those who are suppliers need to be paid for what they supply.
No one is expecting anyone to do the accounting and disbursement for free. Those who carry the content can expect to make say 15% or more for the service of collecting a royalty on the content they suck from web servers. Indeed in general this accounting is already being done because it forms the basis of billings that ISP's pay and the fees charged for access to the POP's.
The only thing is that the lowly webserver must be included in the business model. As it is now, it is not the end user who rips off the web master - it is the telecommunication industry that attempts to treat a webserver as a consumer instead of a supplier.
Strictly from a PR point of view, I can't imagine that kicking users off your Web site for any reason is all that good for business.
But all this talk about ad blocking reminds me of PrivNet's IFF. In 1996, PrivNet launched the Web's first ad-blocking software, "Internet Fast Forward", saying "if it's out there, we can filter it". When PrivNet was threatened with various legal nastiness, they responded with "The Scissors Defense".
The Scissors Defense argues that if you pick up a copy of a newspaper (even a free one), you're full entitled to cut out the ads out with a scissor and throw them away, and the newspaper has no standing to sue the scissors manufacturer. Hence, they argued, just because someone uses PrivNet's software to do something undesirable doesn't make PrivNet liable for the outcome.
If "enough" people snip the ads, the newspaper may ultimately have to raise their newsstand price, but that's capitalism for you.
-Mark, who has some experience in this area
Their image protection worked, for about 3 minutes. I just copied the whole page from mozilla, pasted it in Word, and then copied the image from the word document to Photoshop and saved it.
Is this what it's supposed to say?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Damn you original poster you just encourage them.
STOP NOW!!!!!
I hate people that dont have a sig
Well now we can't throw out junk mail. We have to read it all.
Anyhow, on to the point of this post:
Here's something I worked up... sloppy.
Check out this page:= demo_ga t&name=test
http://www.anti-leech.com/antiimage.php?id
The source for it is taken from http://dynamicdrive.com, which appears to specifically forbid reselling their scripts.
The "Hide your HTML" stuff has me baffled. I can't get their demos to work in IE or Moz. It shows me a page and tells me the HTML is "encrypted"...but there's nothing on the page except that message. Everything I see in the browser, I can see in the source.
;)
;)
;) ), and adding a link to one of those spambot trap pages (which generates endless random email addresses for the poor bot). Whoop-tee-do. I could do the same thing on any web site in about five minutes.
;)
;-D
I'm dying of curiosity...I'd love to know how they're tricking potential customers into thinking their HTML is "secret", short of writing their own web browser to decode their "encrypted" content...
Their other "protection" schemes are silly. Let's see what we got here:
The "hidden" URL of their test download file:
http://www.anti-leech.com/ddd/test.zip
The "hidden" URL of their protected image:
http://www.anti-leech.com/pics/logo.gif
Got both of these in about twenty seconds. Turns out their right-click menu doesn't work in Moz; it displays the JS message, but then the right-click menu opens anyway. Heh... Even if it doesn't, all you have to do is copy the URL of the image from the source and paste it into the browser. It will not only display just the image, but it will also redirect you to the real URL that is supposedly hidden. As for the file download, Mozilla helpfully tells you the URL you are downloading the file from, and the filename. Stick the two together, and there's the real URL. Duh...
Their "anti-spam" service involves using a Javascript to print your address instead of plain HTML (wow, that's innovative...
Can't see the "Source Code" protection, but I'd bet it's about as effective as the image and file "protection" schemes.
About the only thing on here that really functions is the popup detector, and that obviously doesn't work right most of the time itself, judging by the posts here...
Anti-Leech.com says: "We estimate that our system can protect you in 98% of all cases and in the other 2% make it a lot harder for anyone to copy your content." Apparently, they figure 98% of the people on the web are too clueless to know what an image tag is, to know what "View Source" does, or to be able to concatenate strings in their head... Maybe they're trying to push their system on site owners whose target audience is limited to AOL users?
DennyK
Seriously though, I understand that sites need to advertise, but there is a limit. I love Opera for the 'Disable Popup' feature (and many others) and use it. And if a site is really annoying, I just don't come back. I have yet to find a site that I couldn't live without.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Even funnier is putting in the URL for the site itself, and getting the same canned response. Apparently, *they* aren't even using their wonderful technology.
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
Biggest laugh in a while from /.
Can you get a 6 for funny?
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Am I stealing from you if I visit your site and can't see your ads? What if I'm blind and have a speech synthesizer speak the text to me (and ignore the banner ads)?
Well, as long as there are alternative sites they'll obviously get a visit from *me* instead of those just showing a message that I'm blocked.
And if those alternative sites use ads in a more pleasant way (hint: *not* popups) and you enjoy the site, they'll get the money if you click their ads once in a while.
Ironically, this will only hit hard against the pop-up sites the protection is supposed to assist, since you'll definitely not be able to help those anymore if you don't like pop-ups.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Uh oh... Between downloading mp3s and blocking pop-ups... Well... *gulp* I'm going to hell!
See ya'll down under and I'm not speaking of the outback.
On a more serious note... There was a time when there were no popups. It was good. Now they come STEALING my bandwidth and precious desktop estate (1024x768 doesn't cut it any longer). So who's the one stealing?
_________ Help me get a PSP!
Closing a pop-up window takes time. And as we know, time is money; hence when you pop up a window you cost me money. Expect a bill soon.
Find out how they get their ads (ad company, in house, etc) and pay to display banner or pop-up ads on their site which bring the user to a site that explains what they're doing, and how easy it is to get around it
Seriously, just like those web sites that make it difficult to right click (assuming that anyone who right-clicks on their site is stealing images or content) they have every right to add code to their site that prevents one from reading the material without jumping through some hoops.
I simply avoid those sites. Chances are this technology will be picked up by the kind of sites I don't visit anyway.
If major sites which I frequently visit become the victim of stupid thinking, then I will simply hack around it, or stop using them.
-Adam
...the popups block you!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The day everyone has TIVO, you'll see that the advertizements start to get buried INSIDE the show, or that that show you loved in no longer supported. All you can access for free will be propaganda supported stuff or pay-per-views. I'm nt looking worward to that day :)
This is why I want the penultimate filtering technology: the glasses from 'They Live,' rigged to filter out any advertising you happen to see, even in real life.
My God -- they'd be glorious.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In related news, I'm a thief because I channel-surf or visit the toilet during loud TV commercials.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
But we have to make popup blocking more widespread.
Good way to put a nail in that disgustingly annoying technology once and for all. The nice sites survive, the ones who don't care about their users... don't.
Won't let any of us access your site? Fine! Let's see who rots first!
Suddenly website owners think they can sell space on my screen? Simply because I go to their website? I don't recall signing anything or agreeing to anything which forces me to bear the popups and the incessent full screen ads which I can't close.
The same w/ TV commercials. If I own a DVR and decide to zap the commercials in the privacy of my own home, that's not theft. It's fair use.
We are now in an era which will place consumer choice and corporate business model at odds with one another in ways never before concieved of, or even thought possible. The real question here is whether the Government will be asked by these corporations to shore up their old and tattered business models, or will they be forced to come up with a solution themselves?
There will, of course, like with Napster, be a fight over who has the right to dictate to you, the consumer (don't you love that word? Haven't you noticed how we're now considered "consumers" and not people?), what you will and will not see on television (this is one of the reasons I don't watch TV that much, just the news) or any other media and, as usual, it will be driven by the person/people/companies with the most antiquated business model who have been around for years and years who don't want to change.
Eventually, as with Napster, the corporations will put all of the new startups and such out of business by suing them until kingdom come and then start their own pale imitation of the same bloody thing (BMI, etc). Sounds like a conspiracy? Probably.
I don't think that file sharing is a right when the content is copyrighted, so don't get me wrong here folks. What I hate is the overriding need to control people's thoughts that some companies engage in to make themselves more money... the consequences to your rights be damned.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Actually, if you remember this thread from not too long ago you'll see that you can order digital cable pay per view simply if you rent the digital decoder, you don't need to pay for the "digital basic" channels unless you want them.
So no, you're not paying for the ability to get PPV when you're paying for the other channels.
After letting the "denial message" show up, I found you can modify the words at the top to show anything you want. Try it out! Edit the URL line in your browser...
Y od a+has+determined+that+you+use+ad+blocking+software .+This+site+is+provided+for+free+and+depend+on+an+ income+from+these+ads.+By+blocking+them%2C+you+mak e+it+impossible+for+us+to+continue+keeping+this+we bsite+online+for+free.+Therefore%2C+you+will+not+b e+able+to+access+this+website+again+until+you+unin stall+or+de-activate+your+ad+blocking+software.%3C br%3E%3Cbr%3EClose+your+browser+window%2C+uninstal l+your+ad-blocker+and+come+back+here+to+visit+us.
As an example I changed the first two words from "We have" to "Yoda has."
http://www.anti-leech.com/at_block.php?message=
Thanks to the wonderful art of XSS, we have this here
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't feel like wading through all the threads here. So to the people who probably say 'we're taking their means of survival away' or something along those lines. I say, there is no reason for popup ads. They get in the way and its annoying. Put the ad on your page and no one's going to say a word. Popups are bullshit. Anti-Leech.com is bullshit. In the event that lame things like this are widely used, one of us will come up with a way around it, and I'm sure someone already has. Sites don't need popup ads to survive. This is like blocking browsers who block the blink tag. They can all go to hell. I'm within my rights to filter the information coming into my computer, and they're within their rights to try and stop me. We'll see who wins. Its just a cycle of them implementing blocking and spending money on it, me finding a way around it, and them spending more money. End result, popup blocking browser blocking sites(say that 10x fast?) will die. GOOD.
"ANTILEECH:
No more ad-blockers
No more pop up-kills
No more cookie-stops"
And then....
"We do not tolerate theft of our bandwidth!"
Err... hold on, it's my bandwidth too you're filling up with all these flashy blinking ads!
If you don't want people to download from your website unless they have looked at something, make it so that they have to look at something before they can download. If my browser, with all its bells and whistles, can allow me to watch it, then ad stopping software can do it too! Fix it where it is broken!
bash$
Nuff said.
Ok... so if I eat painkillers before going to my sadistic dentist, he can sue me for not getting the full experience out of it too?
I would hate to be such a retard as to have thought of this.
think we should charge them the common hosting fee for cookies left on our machines? isnt it some cost up to 10 mbs and more over that? morons..
At least the war on the environment is going well
They also offer a way to prohibit you from seeing the source. Only one problem, there's a link to the actual source in the frigging "Blocked" source, they have a javascript go out and get the code from the linked page and write it out. So I can still read the code just fine, it just takes me an extra copy and paste!
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
then do I or do I not have an inalienable right to;
Block whoever I want to block,
Block whatever browser agent I want to block,
Or do whatever else I want to do with respect to how content my on website is served?
Whether people *visit* my site is entirely up to them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
The truth comes out!
Well it seems that atleast 2% of their visitors going to their site don't even have javascript enabled.
Are they theifs as well?
[alk]
Maybe we should just advertise back at them that by not downloading their pop-up's we are giving them INCREADIBLE SAVINGS ON THEIR BANDWIDTH!!! They can then SERVE ADS 500% FASTER to the other chumps. And while their at it they can ENLARGE THEIR PENIS!!!
Does Mozilla, or any other browser support opening windows on an alternative desktop tab in like KDE? open anything beyond the main window on an alternative desktop.
Sure, but likewise, your viewers have the right to configure their browser however they want.
It's a battle for the ages!
Now comanies will find that their browsing customers won't/can't visit and will be forced to abandon popups!
I think this is a great victory for Cyberspace.
Proudly typed on Phoenix.
(oh ya BTW, AnalogX has a popup buster that seems to not be affected by their 'protection' works with IE/Neo/Mozilla)
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
...and fast forwarding through commercials is theft, then
Ignorance is Knowledge.
Slavery is Freedom.
War is Peace.
All for the love of Big Brother.
How could it possibly be theft if I don't click on ads, ever?
They steal a little of my time and a lot of my patience everytime I encounter pop-ups. As so many have said, truly, banners are an eyesore but they're fine. If I see one I'm interested in checking out, I'll click it. Pop-ups are advertising forced down my eye-socket. Some sites with numerous pop-ups and especially the ones where you close one pop-up and 5 more open in its place, make my eyes bleed.
Calling the client end-user the "thief" for using a pop-up killer is like saying, "The guy who got robbed at the ATM at gun point and ended up killing the robber in self-defense deserves the death penalty for murder because he defended himself with a gun of his own."
Everytime we drive down the street, listen to the radio, watch T.V. or even go ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING, we are bombarded by advertising. I pay good money for my HighSpeed ISP. I paid for my computer and all my software on it. I want to be able to surf the internet, which was supposed to be free and open to all, without having to pay for it with bleeding eyes and a spiked frustration level. Fine, advertise with banners, but KILL ALL POP-UPS, before it drives me to breaking out the AK. Seriously, I will never even try to visit a website again that uses this code and won't let me in just 'cuz I use a pop-up killer. Seems as though the old addage of "The Customer's always right" is totally and completely dead, period.
"It is essential that justice be done
Ha ha ha
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If I ran a squid managment thingy that blocked all ads at the gateway would that still show up??
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Of using Mozilla to browse all those pr0n sites without ads for viagra "leaping up" in your face :(
That should be modded +999999999999!
That is exactly what those bastards deserve!
I surf with javascript off 90% of the time, but I turned it on just for the test page. The test worked, but obviously didn't work when I returned & had JS off. Funny thing is, according to the site's note... it only tests once per browser session, so once you've been tested, you'll have to restart your browser in order to get a different result. Apparently doesn't work that way tho. Pretty funny joke they've put together... they even went through the trouble of trying to look they were serious.
Don't be a fucking moron ...the only thing I am 'required' to pay for is my OWN ISP charges. If you wish to run a website, the cost of running it is YOUR problem, NOT MINE. If you wish to block me from your website, that is your perogative. If I wish to block your popup ads, that is my perogative.
What kind of fucked up mentality thinks that the world owes them a living, and that everyone not following their website's 'business plan' is a thief and/or pirate?
I am using Chimera with popups blocked, I could not figure out what the big deal was about the page, I can see it just fine. I had to turn on Java and or Java Script to get refused. Am I a thief if I do not use these features?
Wow. This is a one-sided argument if I've ever seen one. Personally, I draw the line at pop-ups. That seems a blatant abuse of power. But for those people who extend the reasoning to banner adverts, I must disagree. Yes, I've been on a slow connection and been severely annoyed waiting for my content to load last while every last advert loads up, or it gets stuck at that stage and I have to reload and watch it all over again. But know you what? I'm not paying a penny to see that page. Yeah, I'm paying for bandwidth, and the computer, also the food it's taking to power my body and rent to shelter me meanwhile. Blah blah blah. The page is free. Someone has put content there that I think I'll benefit from (info, entertainment, whatever). Obviously I want the content or I wouldn't be there. I'm free to not load it if I don't want it. MS isn't forcing me to view the page. Come on!!! I'm taking something from them. Period. If I think loading a few ads is too big a price to pay, I can bloody well skip the content, can't I?
Yes, their economic model is broken. Yes, their tech solution is simple and backward. The only reason I'm playing devil's advocate is because I thought the article was a bit thought provoking -- but maybe I'm the only one without the knee-jerk reaction here. What got me was their use of the term "leech" -- which as many of you probably know is used in P2P as a person who doesn't share files but sits there downloading em. ie: someone who expects something for nothing -- uses the system without contributing a thing. Yes, I know it's ironic since the files have been pirated in the first place. Thanks for the info. What I'm saying is, I pay for my computer and bandwidth, and I contribute my time, so why should I have to share files? Because that's how that system gets paid for, just like our current economic system is partly paid for by advertising. You can't rape the system and then complain: "See? It doesn't work! Haha!" That's a self-fulfilling prophecy, not to mention staggering wilfull ignorance.
I read part of a recent study that conluded that people don't watch ads on tv anymore. Is anyone surprised by this? Are the advertisers? No. I mean, really, when they get home, do they watch the ads? Probably not. They're hiding. The whole ratings system is based on variable worth of ad time. They don't know what to do next. It's not like the system needs to evolve a bit. It needs to get tossed out the window and start over from scratch. A lot easier said than done. In the meantime, we pay next to nothing for what they have to offer -- tv shows, web content, and on and on. I say next to nothing, because right now we're ignoring their ads and they know we are, but they can't come up with anything better yet. (except British-style license systems which North Americans would probably hate (how many threads of "so they're going to assume I watch tv?! ok, I do, but they don't know that!") and PBS style systems which people also hate and stay away from in droves)
Like I said, I do draw the line at pop-ups, and was rather appalled when I first saw them. It's a blatant subversion of my right, yes right, to simply navigate the web! Like a car that's designed to make you stop at corner shops. But if I choose to stop at the shop, I can hardly rail at the store owner, can I?
WTF? I just set my IE browser to "disable active scripting" and I didn't get any popups on that site. Liars.
Poor Kitty!
As far as I'm concerned, these people can kiss my shiny white ass. Theft? You've GOT to be kidding me. When these stupid sons of bitches start to pay ME for wasted bandwidth, only then will I uninstall my pop-up software.
This is along the same route as those jerks that say that not watching television commercials is the same as stealing tv services. Bull. I pay nearly $50 a month for high-speed internet access, as long as I'm online within the constraints of my SERVICE PROVIDER and within the law, I can do whatever the hell I want. Screw em. If they don't like it, I'll take my business elsewhere.
My good sig is in the laundry
Or, better yet.. you can use the filtering proxy server I wrote (get it here, or just look at my .sig) which can not only block banners; but can also rewrite webpage content using regular expressions, block certain mime-types, redirect requests using regexp's (i.e. advertisement click-thru's), forward through proxies that use NTLM or Basic authentication, accept gzip encoded content and recompress files on the fly, and can even use any external program (perl script, etc) to parse website content.
"Anti-Leech Java Demo has chosed not to allow any other browsers than Internet Explorer to download files from this page. If you want to download here, please go here and get a free copy of the latest Internet Explorer."
chosed? nice, what a bunch of aholes.
P
... on the example page:
... is here:
? id =demo_gat&l=http://www.anti-leech.com/ah_test2.htm &html=test
http://www.anti-leech.com/ah_test2.html
http://www.anti-leech.com/html/load_crypted.php
So, If the site author really thinks people should watch their popups then I would look somewhere else.
These guys are just begging to make the front page of fuckedcompany.com. Any bets on how long it will take them to get there?
Seriously, do they really expect people to pay them for a few lines of crappy javascript?
And what's up with calling pop-up blockers "theft-tools". Theft is an actual crime. If I go around all day accusing innocent people of crime, you can be faily sure that I'm eventually going to get sued for slander.
Calling a web browser a theft tool, might just be enough to land them a big fat libel suit. I really hope it is. I hope they get sued into oblivion for making wild accusations about non-existant crimes. If you don't like me blocking pop-ups that's fine, but calling me a criminal for doing it might just be legally actionable.
Life is too short to proofread.
Why doesn't Opera/Mozilla/Konqueror/etc load the popup ads, without actually displaying them. That way, the server detects that the popup page was downloaded, and continues displaying the content that the user wanted to see in the first place. There's no way in hell that this popup-blocking browser blocker server software is ever going to win in the long run.
On one side, the client can block popups. Its perfectly legal/morally right.
On the other side, when I request a HTML document from a website, they are no way obligated to send it to me. Calling blockers thieves is bullshit, but they are in no way obligated to serve me data if I block popups. And if IE ever implements popup blocking, the sites that block users who block popups could find themselves with no audience.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Any website that thinks that this is really a 'good idea' won't be around long anyway. // //Program for karma-whoring //Buzzwords= Karma * (212 - 32)/100 always = 5 // //enter current buzzword /````/
I choose to block pop-ups because I abhor having shit shoved in my face.
If I want to buy something on-line, I'll go look for it.
#include
#include
int main (int nNumberofArgs. char* pszArgs[ ] )
{
int buzzword;
cout "Buzzword/karma value always = 5: "
cout Buzzword;
return 0;
}
The way i see it, blocking ads is like eating all the free samples at the supermarket and not buying anything, it's not illigal, but it ain't moral either. Your taking information/bandwidth/cheese and not giving sales/advertising revenue.
I have to pay for bandwidth to see your fucking ad; i guess that means i have the right ot be paid for looking at your fuckig ad which i didn't request to look at to begin with.. you know there was a time when intrusive (spyware) advertising didn't exist and ads themselves were subverted and the content drove the web and drove the #'s that brought the .com goldrushers which have bankrupted the web of both useful content and the driving reason for it's popularity to begin with
i for one read less than 5 websites on a reglar basis now as a result, there is nothign but peoples vain web logs and guestbooks anymore to be interested in.. anyway the point being that unlike cable, where you pay fo ra stream of available channels, many people are still paying hourly for internet access and your lame ads cost all of us money (yes even fractions of pennies to us cable modem users ad up, just ask banks where they get their money from) and you DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE ME VIEW your shitty worthless bandwidth wasting ad..
how's that for some greek fire you unreasonable troll.
if you are seriously interested in lowering your traffic, get the anti-leech. what bullcrap.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
When you advertise (on any medium) you have to count on fostering at least a little good will towards you by your prospective customers. Labeling people who have voluntarily come to your site thieves or leaches is unlikely to inpart the sense of trust and warm fuzziness needed for them to buy something from you or even come back again.
Most people are used to advertising and thus don't mind banner ads, etc... but the pop-up ad is one form that many (most?) do not like. In fact enough poeple don't like pop-ups that a thriving industry that blocks them has formed.
One would think that that would send a message to advertisers to find another, less annoying way to sell products. Instead some sites are choosing to pit themselves against their customers using technology like this. Since this software, as it is now, is easily defeatable (turning off javascript in Opera let me by their demo page and I was still able to copy "protected" images by choosing copy image from the right click menu) then the only message they are sending to visitors is "We don't like you, go away".
I think the highly competitive market out there will deal with sites that use this and favor those sites which try to accomodate their visitors wishes, Google has been brought up many times and is an excellent example.
If Godzilla did not exist, man would have had to create him.
It may be just that we are all helping them test and refine their "technology" by accessing that page.
I can't.
Popups can be used for other reasons. Maybe I'm blocking pop-ups for a totally different reason than advertising. The fact that Anti-leech.com thinks that blocking pop-ups == blocking advertising, is wrong because many more applications exist for the standard pop-up window (like games, application notices, cool effects, temporary data store, etc. -- whatever the programmer can imagine).
On the flip side, there are other ways to make advertising annoying without popups. For example, some sites now use a DHTML layer that floats across the content to get your attention. Now that's annoying, but it's not a pop-up, which proves pop-ups aren't needed, so why protect pop-up advertising? I don't see a reason, but maybe somebody else (an advertiser) can shed some light on this. I would like to hear perspectives from advertisers on that point. DHTML layers are a good idea from the advertiser's perspective because layers can't easily be suppressed, unless JavaScript is turned off completely, which most people are not likely to do. Sorry about giving out such "evil" pointers but it's nothing new that people don't already know about.
Excluding anti-pop-up browsers will make most potential clients angry. Instead, the advertisers (and Anti-leech.com) should better spend their time creating alternate methods for delivery of advertising (like the DHTML layer) intsead of blocking the defunct pop-up. It's easy to see that protecting pop-up advertising is short-sighted because popups are not the only delivery method available for advertising. These companies must not be technically savvy. Whoever buys into this foolish logic will end up annoying their potential clientel, and therefore alienating them. Are you gonna' buy from someone who calls you a thief and then forces you to see pop-ups that you've already decided you don't want? Notice the accusing intonations of the text that the anti-popup detector displays -- very rude indeed -- any descent advertiser or sales outlet wouldn't use it, unless they are convinced they have to deal out punishment to their potential clients as a parent might to a child. Very demeaning to say the least. We're all grown-ups here.
Why do so many browsers allow you to block pop-ups? Because the people have spoken, and the people do not want pop-up advertising! For any advertiser to now force-feed pop-ups and call clients thieves -- especially at this point in history -- it goes against every ethical and smart business practice.
I don't mind advertising being displayed to me, because I am so accustomed to it. However I do despise it being pushed to me in pop-up windows or any other annoying fashion that blocks the primary purpose of my visit to the website. If they have to yell that loud about their product, then I would say the product most likely sucks. For example, you probably won't see the Segway HT in a pop-up window anytime soon because the product speaks for itself. Quality, value, and purpose.
These are all fairly primitive methods. Anyone with a slight bit of clue can find the URLs and set them up for leeching as before.
The interesting bit is the Spam protection. This bit didn't have any examples, but asked you to do it yourself `with a few lines of JavaScript'. Just like normal address-munging, then. And that's just what this site is about. You can obfuscate things so that a human can still work them out but a machine can't, and if everyone is intelligent enough to obfuscate in their own individual way, no script can be written to do it. This works against spam-spiders, which want to get as many addresses in as short a time as possible. But if someone wants to deep-link a reference to the latest TV-capped Buffy episode, then someone else will work out a way to leech it if they're really determined.
The posters who are saying ``circumvent it if you want, it's you who'll lose out when the site goes down due to lack of funding'' are right. If a site wants to keep getting its revenue, it's going to have to guilt-trip its customers into funding them, not just try using increasingly sneaky and unreliable methods (compare with copy-prevented audio discs).
Just for the record, here's how to circumvent all the examples they give (line breaks permitting...). They don't even check the referrer URL, so I don't see how they're in any way reliable.
And the main example? - just use lynx :-) ... alternatively, wait till you get an actual Access Denied type of page, then look at the URL - it'll have a bit saying &adblocker=yes. Just change that to &adblocker=no. ``No ad blockers here, honest guv!''. D'oh.
Note to Visa: I'm *never* going to buy a CapitalOne card *specifically* because you advertise it with popup ads. Take that!
There are plenty of reasons not to get one of those damnable cards. The straw that broke this camel's back was that as of right now -- one year later -- they still don't support Netscape 6/Mozilla for online bill-paying.
Yes, I know it's not a popular choice, and Yes, when I first downloaded Mozilla (0.8, I believe) it was also unsupported by about half of the bill-paying sites out there, and Yes, there are other bill-paying sites I use that don't officially support it today, but the difference is this: When I go to (say) Sallie Mae, I get a message that says "Your browser is unsupported," and I go ahead and use the site without problems anyway. When I go to CapitalOne's site, I get "Your browser is unsupported. You are now being logged out." Turn off Javascript, you say? "Your browser does not support Javascript. You are now being logged out."
To Hell with them; I just dropped off my last payment to them into the mail, and that's the last of my business they'll get.
</rant>The irony is that most of the websites that use their software are mp3s, warez websites.
[alk]
This remind anyone else of the book Contact? When Hadden developed a chip to block out certain unwanted television ads and programs and the television industry responded by circumventing his efforts and back and forth until Hadden won a court injunction against them.
(iirc)
Fiction meets reality.
I just have ALL scipting/java/etc on prompt in I.E. so i just went to anti-leech.com and their anti pop up blocking bullshit and just clicked no to all the prompts, wow that was tough.
I first found this website from a link on the website where you download Kazaa Lite, Kazaa with all the ad-ware and banners taken out. I think it's hilarious that a site that provides software with the ads hacked out thinks people who block pop-ups are stealing.
...
...since I stared using AdSubtract Pro.
No unwanted cookies, popups, banner ads, referers...nadda. I can choose which sites have cookie privledges and which don't...who is allowed to use JavaScript, and who doesn't. Who is allowed popups and who isn't.
Maybe I can do this in IE 6, but I'm not that good at it. This is easy, plus it keeps track of who tried to soil my cache with what.
As a bonus...if I configure it right, when I get HTML newsletters in Outlook, it filters those too.
What bugs me is not so much the pop-up issue, but the fact that the "access denied" page is one of those irritating Javascript jobs that you can't Back-button out of.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So if blocking popups is stealing, does this mean that when their site is unavailable they are obligated to compensate us for the downtime their site was unavailable?
So many times ive been upset because a site i needed to get to was down.. At long last justification for getting money for my loss!
After all, im not paying my ISP for bandwidth just to have these sites be down stealing information from me.
I never click on ads, so they aren't losing anything from me. Even if they made money based on how many people saw ads, as far as their server is concerned I still "saw" the ad, my browser just replaced it with a blank spot on my end.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
This anti-leech.com is clearly a thing that should not be. Hackers and crackers, have at them. Make them pay.
How ya like dat?
Maybe you haven't learned about the Internet in ITE 101, but it's bi-directional. You pay for bandwidth, they pay for bandwidth. Just because people who mainly web surf are downloading only doesn't mean jack to backbone providers. Their routers run full tilt in all directions.
There's a way to even the balance out... run a webserver locally. Then you can contribute reciprocally. If everyone did this, then the ISPs would have to realize that they need to start offering symmetric data transfer profiles. Then everyone would be happy.
Or here's an idea, sell something on/with your goddamn website. Don't expect the infrastructure to help you get paid. That's your fucking perogative. Otherwise, get off the web, cheapskate. It's people like you who think they can get rich with their HTML skills without some other kinda backing or PLAN that ruin the Internet.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
They do make mention on their site of also blocking access to sites to users in countries outside of their target advertising zone:
Now, leaving aside for the moment arguments about thievery and technology propping up flawed business models, why can't they just label me as 'dirty foreigner' rather than 'dirty thief' when I visit their site, since they clearly have the technology to do so. Their advertising would be irrelevant to me anyway, so why should they bother serving their data to someone who cannot purchase the baubles they hock?
And also, if the service they offer is so valuable (also, apparently, not just to North Americans), why are they not offering it on a subscription model, rather than free supported by ads?
SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.
Good publicity move you pulled there- way to get on CNet.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I have a question, though. I have this hosts file on my system (courtesy of Kazaa Lite - thank y'all) but Mozilla (on Win98, sorry!) comes up with an annoying message - "The connection was refused when attempting to contact ". How do I set myself up so that this message stops appearing?
I disable popups because they are incredibly obnoxious and sometimes attempting to close them results in my computer hanging.
However, I routinely click-through on my favorite sites' banner ads just to give them a little extra bank.
There are other ways to advertise or generate revenue than "pop-ups" and "pop-unders". I consider them to be obnoxious misuses of advertising. Especially considering the rather large amount of space on the web-page itself that could be used, why does the advertiser feel the need to create a new window?
Also, I click on banner ads and ads placed about the page. I NEVER click on a pop-up ad, because the advertiser has already offended me by using this mode of advertising.
Voodoo Girl is the bomb!
Funny, I didn't have a single hitch when I mirrorred their entire site.
Oh no! I've got a directory full of protected HTML, Javascript and PHP! I'm a dirty rotten thief!
Exactly....unenforceable and assinine to boot. I don't owe any webmaster a living unless I sign an agreement to do so! Any site which implies you must or forces you to view thier pop-ups should be boycotted. This also goes for sites that force you to use only one browser....the site dosen't have to support all browsers but it should support at least two. Those pitiful site promoting pop-ups are costing the viewer extra bandwith....usually so the webmaster can try and sell you something....incredible isn't it? The WEBMASTER should be charged for wasting your time and bandwidth, NOT the other way around.
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
Does this violate the guidelines for sites for the disabled?
:-)
Can we legislate that all the p0rn sites must use this script?
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Next, I suppose you will accuse us all of theft by NOT coming to your site.[/rollseyes]
01000110 01110010 01100101 01100101 01100100 01101111 01101101
Maybe if the ads didn't suck, and weren't for products and services that no normal, reasonably intelligent person would ever want or need, and weren't specifically coded to be as annoying as possible (flashing, animation, vibrating back and forth), then maybe people would tolerate them a bit more.
If I'm reading my local newspaper and elect to skip over, say, the Sports section and/or not read every entry in the Classifieds... am I "stealing" from the newspaper?
If Land's End (or whomever) snail-mails me their catalog and I happen to chuck it into the recycling bin without reading it cover-to-cover... am I stealing from Lands End?
If I happen to be watching Channel 5 instead of Channel 2, 4, 7, 9, etc.... am I stealing from all the stations other than Channel 5?
If I'm in the car listening to radio station WAAA and then switch to station WBBB... am I stealing from WAAA?
If I drive by a billboard but don't happen to read it... am I stealing from the billboard advertiser?
If I elect to not listen to every radio station... or watch every cable channel... or read every page of every newspaper, magazine or catalog available to me... or if I trash spam... or hang up on telemarketers...
Am I stealing from them?
Just curious.
--TE
On phoenix I waltzed right in with javascript disabled. These guys are second rate hacks.
So you are a criminal if your browser doesn't support images, frames, javascript, or any feature used for displaying advertisements, such as popups?
Sig: I stole this sig.
Getting donations from mine is like pulling teeth. But, in the long run? If they don't donate, and I can't pay for it, then obviously people don't really care about it enough for it to desperately need to stay online.
I doubt anyone will read this now that this story has drifted too far down, but ...
I have never understood why these people think advertising on the Web cannot learn anything from television advertising. When you watch an advertisement on television, do they know you did? Furthermore, must you immediately act on that advertisement in order for the station to receive payment?
So far, the only two types of advertising on the Web that have worked for me are:
1. Google's advertising - on-topic and non-obtrusive.
2. Yahoo! Mail's advertising - at least, all of the movie preview ones
With Google, you are in the process of searching for content on the Web, and you can choose an advertiser's link that paid to be listed under search results with at least one of your specific terms.
With Yahoo! Mail, some of their advertising is still annoying, but when > 50% of all ads served one day are for a specific movie, you can bet people hear about it. After all, that's all you need. Do you have to immediately buy a ticket online for Yahoo! to get paid? No. Does a lack of an immediate purchase mean that the advertisement was useless? No.
There is no need to punish consumers just because you lack the intelligence to establish a working business plan. I used Yahoo! Mail for years, and I have recently decided to use it as my primary mail client, paying the $30/year. They provide a useful service, and I don't mind paying for it.
Is that so hard?
$ for i in `seq 1 999999999999999`
> do
> wget http://www.anti-leech.com/theft_example.html
> done
872835240
Yes, you can arbitrarily block people if you really want to.
However, unless your website is so utterly mercenary that you probably don't have any of your own content anyway, it's a stupid thing to do - why alienate people for no good reason?
If the purpose of your site is to sell your products, you'll sell them better if your site is accessible. If the purpose of your site is to provide information, you'll provide that info to more people if you let them in. If the purpose of your site is solely to attract ad revenue, I don't want to be visiting it anyway, so I suppose you blocking me is actually sort of useful.
(For blocking read unnecessary Flash, excessive scripting, gratuitously incompatible HTML, or anything else that detracts from your site's purpose)
-- smcv, owner of an ad-free website
OMG that is hilarious. Very clever, d00d...
pop-ups use my bandwidth, my computer, my software, and my electricity for free. That is theft. It will remain theft until I sign an agreement that gives them the right to access my resources.
The problem in this world is we never recognize the real thieves.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
..but what if you're a parent trying to eliminate pornography ads from webpages, so that you can trust your children to do a bit of searching without seeing banners of all sorts of explicit imagery, or getting lost in some sort of a fake portal site with more of the same? I wouldn't let a kid watch the kinds of things Fox advertises early in the morning either..does that mean that I'm stealing advertising money from the porn industry?
... not presentation. Case in point: HTML standards have long fought to separate content from presentation. CSS and XML come along to help abstract the icing from the cake. But browsers have always allowed the viewer to customize the presentation (block images, define custom font sizes, colors, disable javascript, disable ActiveX controls and automatic plugin downloads). Blocking popups does not mean I refuse to view their content; it only means I am defining how they are able to present it to me. Calling it theft was just the brilliant idea of some marketing wanker.
Pop-up ads obviously work. They have to be profitable for someone or they would have gone away by now. Who cares if sites start rejecting you based on your preference for viewing their advertisements? Surf somewhere else. I will. And if invasive advertising stops making them money, they'll stop using it.
If I use software to block ads, it's my choice. If the webmasters want to put up a pathetic attempt to keep me out, then I don't have to browse their site.
And by the way, I'm going to put out a shameess plug for the shareware author that makes the most awesome ad blocking software on the 'Net in my opinion, Ad Muncher. Thanks, Murray! Ad Muncher (It's *tiny* -Less than 100k- Blocks almost every kind of ad on the 'Net, as well as preventing webmaster from disabling your right mouse button, obscuring the status bar, or moving/resizing the browser window) And it's non-expiring, non-nag shareware. I beta test new versions, so I got a free registration.
If I want to spend my money online, I'll do it when I'm good and ready to. For instance, I'm moving into a new home in January, so I went over to Wal-Mart to browse for, and maybe purchase some items. Why, if I run ad-blocking software, do I shop there and spend money? Because that website relates directly to a purchase (or purchases) that I need or want to make at the moment.
I specifically allow a few sites to send me unobtrusive advertising, and these sites pay me in points that I can accumulate for free items, in cash, or with free DVD's, for example.(MyPoints comes to mind..)
They get around it buy trying to make the ad as intresting as possible.
I wish.. most tv ads I see in ny here are still boring and stupid. Maybe if they actually were clever, funny, or just.. SOMETHING.. I'd be more interested.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Personally, I don't care if most commercial sites hit the dust. Maybe then the World Wide Web will return to more reasonable proportions. It is what I always thought all along, if you base your entire business on the Internet you better be prepared to have something people WANT to pay for. AND ONE THING they don't want are popup ads.
If your revenue is totally dependent on popup ads and nasty nonsense like it, then good-bye and C ya! I for one won't miss it one bit and I won't morn the loss of a couple tens of thousand sites that do nothing but clutter and clog bandwidth anyway.
Take your ball and go home.
Second, their code to disable right-clicks is lifted from DynamicDrive, comments and all. It's not like they have any new technology.
Third, calling someone a thief may be libel. It's hard to prove libel in the US, but falsely accusing someone of a criminal offense usually does do it.
Did anyone else get this strange (yet true) response after blocking the popup? (click link before you mod me down!!)
http://www.anti-leech.com/index.php?option=itchy_b um
Avant Browser, With a built in POP-UP killer (blocks ALL pop-ups, good and bad but it's easy to disable it with a click)
I think you have it all wrong... people exist to serve the computer networks. /sarcasm...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
You can just edit the first ad URL ending in "1a.*" with say a "4.*" and skip to the end of the ad. I'm on dailup at home and used it to avoid downloading all that flash.
After I skipped all the flash I got a page asking to click here to continue and got a cookie that let me back in all day -- it's not too bad b/c I noticed the ad was for a... ah... maybe they are doomed...
By the same reasoning (blocking the images is "theft"), anyone could argue that Lynx or any other text-based browser is just a tool for theft, as of course the images won't be shown.
From time to time I've become irritated at the fact that websites and webmasters seem to feel that it is their right to popup windows on my screen or do other things that annoy me (does any site really need 9 cookies to load a single page?). But then, of course, they dont answer email or comments submitted or anything.
:
:
: /dev/null' b eing_only_subserviant_lackies_to_your_corporate_ma sters"i ts_my_computer"
: : :
So I've used something like the following from time to time just to vent my frustrations. It uses curl to fetch URLS from a site and embeds nice messages in the URL, the UA field and the referrer field. The idea is that a responsible (!) webmaster will notice this in the logs. Of course it is not likely to go to the people who actually need to get the message. Just to make that more likely that it be noticed by someone (anyone!) the messages sent are intermixed with random fortunes. I doubt it will teach the sleazeoids anything interesting, but maybe they'll at least get a chuckle out of it.
There is a delay programmed in so this won't just hammer a site (which would be a DOS and illegal).
Of course I've since seen the error of my ways and sold my soul, so I will recommend AGAINST every considering anything like this - after all it might be considered a theft of service in that it actually takes up the webmaster's time.
Still, it was fun to write and run once or twice.
Python code follows
import string, re, os, random, time
replpat=re.compile(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9.?!_,:;-]+')
host="http://www.anti-leech.com/"
def getmsg()
m = os.popen("fortune", "r").read()
return replpat.sub("_", m)
while 1
cmdstr = 'curl -A "%s" -e "%s" %s/%s -o
ref="Oh_go_away_you_vendors_of_intrusive_software _however_you_might_justify_it_given_that_you_are_
ua ="I_ll_use_a_popup_blocker_when_I_want_after_all_
suburl="its_you_who_are_the_leeches_not_us"
if random.random() < 0.5
ref=getmsg()
if random.random() < 0.5
ua=getmsg()
if random.random() < 0.5
suburl=getmsg()
cmd = cmdstr % (ua,ref,host,suburl)
print cmd
#
# DO NOT UNCOMMENT THE LINE WITH "os.system" below !!!!!
# this script is only intended for its amusement value
# do not actually use it
# os.system(cmd)
time.sleep(5) # dont want to do a DOS - just make sure the message shows up in the log files
is that it's so Lame. the execution i mean.
you could block it with proxomitron on windows.
you could write a little script to swap out the cookies you get with an "allowed" browser to your "bad" browser.
and these folks are trying the hard sell; not sure who would be interested in their language, much less their technology.
as for the ethical question about blocking pop-ups, i think the answer is to integrate the ads into the page content. if people block those, then i think it's reasonable to deny them access to your content.
a popup, however, is a lot like a magazine insert. a very large number of readers will just shake those out and throw them away (or pollute the street with them), and publishers are well aware of that.
This Like That - fun with words!
Popup Stopper from Panicware doesn't seem to be phased by their site :oP
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
Assuming the script and error page are supposed to run off their site, it is too easy to fix.
/etc/hosts
For *nix:
echo "0.0.0.0 www.anti-leech.com anti-leech.com" >>
For Windows, add this line to %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts:
0.0.0.0 www.anti-leech.com
0.0.0.0 anti-leech.com
You may be able to put those on the same line, I don't have a windows machine to try it on.
Proxomitron handles their sad little test just fine. Here's the message I get:
We have determined that you use ad blocking software. This site is provided for free and depend on an income from these ads. By blocking them, you make it impossible for us to continue keeping this website online for free. Therefore, you will not be able to access this website again until you uninstall or de-activate your ad blocking software.
Close your browser window, uninstall your ad-blocker and come back here to visit us.
The message displayed is passed as a parameter to a script so one could easily display one's own message
Here's a question: do you think people want their pages to be found by search engines?
If google found your desired content, would it be on the blocker page or the real page?
iirc, the glasses from "they live" didn't filter out advertising, they reduced it to its base message. so instead of seeing a billboard for jooky, you'd see simply the word "CONSUME." it's been like 15 years since i saw the movie, though, so let me stress the iirc part.
they're intended to get people to remember the brand. brand recognition breeds familiarity, and when you're in the supermarket or when faced with a situation in which you need to buy something, people are more apt to choose the product they have some familiarity with.
So what do I do if our obscentity filter blocks the blocking message?
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Great tool, it converts a working web page into a "Warning: Too many connections" message.
Anyways, even if it worked, one or two revisions later, the blockers would be stealthified...
Warning: Too many connections in /web/al4/htdocs/include/db_connect.php on line 10
Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /web/al4/htdocs/include/db_connect.php on line 10
Unable to connect to database
I guess there is yet another problme with their idea.
FYI, this site is a great resource for information on detecting popup killers.
/. does here -- micropayments.
/. who simply can not afford this, and/or are not interested in this.
Now, onto getting myself flamed out of existence.
I run a Web site hosting over 60,000 message boards. The service is free for anyone who wants to use it. Yes, it comes with ads - banners and popunders. Those who wish to not have the ads have the option to pay for our ad-free service, much like
Now, many of you have stated that you are under no contract to have popups come up, so they shouldn't come up. But what about everything else on the page? Did you enter into a contract to view the content of the Web page you are viewing? No? But you are still viewing the content of the page, so why are you not viewing the ads that came with it?
When you download a Web page that someone puts online, they send you the layout (images, etc), the content, and yes, even the ads. You should respect the fact that the person who has put this content online has put effort into creating it, and you are repaying them with a moment of your time by closing an ad window.
It seems to be the general sentiment here that you should just do micropayments for everything online. What about the people who do not want to do this? There are many people who are less fortunate than many people here at
So what do you do for these people? Advertisements. The ads that you view help pay for servers, bandwidth, employees, etc. Personally to run my Web site I spend around $3,500 a month on expenses (servers, etc). Most of my money does comes from ads, because most people are not interested in paying for a free service like mine. I do make quite a bit of money off of these so called "micropayments" from people who want ad-free.
If I ever wanted to switch to a paid-only service model, I know I could do that successfully without a problem, and probably make around the same amount of money. But do I want to do this? No. I would isolate the majority of the people that go to my site and piss off a lot of people. I'd rather keep the community atmosphere that my site has with the ads, than go to paid only and kick 90% of the people out who are not interested in paying.
When you view an ad, you are compensating the owner of the Web site for their efforts. Downloading a page and preventing the ads from displaying is stealing. Webmasters who let you download a page that has an ad are letting you have access to that content because you are doing something for them in return. They give you content, you view the ad. The Internet is not a one sided deal. You don't get your cake and eat it too.
Deal with the ads, they aren't going to kill you.
Bring on the flames.
Patrick Clinger
ProBoards.com
The test site linked to above didn't work(i should've gotten a popup, right?) using Opera 6.05 and Norton Internet Security 2003.
I DEFY ANYONE TO STOP ME FROM DOING WHAT I CHOOSE WITH MY PC, BE IT LEGAL OR ILLEGAL.
It is the eternal battle of the popup vs. the anti-popup vs. the anti-anti-popup. These people will block my popup blocker. I, in turn will get a popup blocker-blocker and will have the last word. That is, until, they come out with a way to block my popup blocker-blocker. This will continue until everything becomes so bloated that my P ][ cant handle it anymore.
Who exactly has declared it a theft to block pop ups? Was there a court decision? What legal precedent(s) were consulted? Is there a law journal where I can read up on this? Or is this like the president of Ford calling me a theif because I drive a Jeep, not a FORD Exploder?
Popup blocking is a security feature. It protects the user's retina against harmful flashing imagery on the screen.
So, they want us to circomvent that by switching it off?
But circumventing a security feature is illegal by the DMCA, isn't it?
Despite the fact that the guys at anti-leach don't seem to be able to use irregular verbs, how fucked up is that?
And the fake eMails for Spambots are classic:
I used Mozilla, with no pop-up blocking enabled. It first used a java program to popup a small window, then promptly told me my access was denied anyway.
I know. But surely the same basic technology can be adapted to what I propose.
OBEY
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
...want to start blocking pop ups. I always operate out of university computer labs, so I just use the Netscape installed on them, and deal with the pop-ups as they came. Now that I know that there are people out there in the world who are mad about people blocking pop-ups, I'm going to put a Mozilla installation on the CD I take with me, that has all the things I use on it, and use it exclusively from now on.
This article has inspired me to action. I will fight the forces of the anti-pop-up cabal and not be informed about great deals on X10 cameras and offshore gambling. Think I'll drop them a note thanking them for opening my eyes to this issue. Go team spiteful!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
iDEFENSE will be posting this site to Bugtraq soon ... this is going to make another GREAT cross-site scripting iDEFENSE marketing ad on the SecurityFocus mailing lists.
/. ... would they?
Meanwhile, no one's cookies are actually being stolen by h@X0rZ using this new K-rad 31337 anti-leech.com XSS attack, because no one would waste their time posting such formated links to
I had the fortune to click on their Anti-Image demo, and found out how well they code. It is meant to prevent people from downloading and saving images to a hard drive using the shortcut menu. They have done a great job. For one, images are stored in a cache and are accessable that way. Two, using a non-IE browser with JavaScript enabled (Phoenix, Mozilla and Galeon), I can right-click on the image and save it to the directory of my choice. If you open the image in a new page, you will find that it's named logo.gif. And from there you can save the image.
Nice work anti-leech.com.
is the Lynx browser now illegal? duh
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
The latest version of Proxomitron, 4.4, successfully bypasses the anti-leech code. (4.2 didn't) Get it here
Yes, I'm trying to be helpful, so obviously I'm a karma whore. Feel free to mod me down. =)
Alari
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
this theory states that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. think goebbels, stalin, clinton. thus, if you have enough money, enough time, and enough pressure, you can redefine any word(s) you want. harassment used to mean i was a boss, she was an employee, i say, hey babe, you want a promotion, he he he...today anyone can harass anyone if the person "feels" harassed. thus harassment means "i say it's harassment". nice.
I recommend the MNGS philosophy to anyone and everyone. If your web site won't let me in, I will do something else rather than jump through hoops to get in. It's not like I lack for amusement or research material anyway. Sites that don't suck as much generally manage to do just fine with unobtrusive and well-targeted ads, minimal or repeated images (thence low bandwidth requirements), and maybe voluntary subscription. The anti-anti-popup whiners just don't want to bother doing a good job, so they try to fence you in instead.
...how cheesy is that? They don't even try to block it, no robots.txt to be found! Makes for interesting reading...
I'd like a list of sites that use the stuff from anti-leech. the only one i found is www.kazaalite.com wich is ironic. They create a program to stop the intrusive advertising that kazaa creates but must have you view the pop ups on that site.
I run a FREE hosting site, that will remain nameless for the sake of my poor server, and on the entire site I have never places a single ad. I have never condoned the use of pop up adds, and the use of pop up ads in any way shape or form is strictly forbidden in my sites charter, and the TOSA. If I can serve based solely on 300 hits a day, and no ads then why dose the web need pop up ads? Pop up ads are offensive, and we should band together to stop the pop up, and pop under ad forever!
X-10, I know, according to Real admin@X10.com is my email address also, but here is the thing. You all know who X-10 is, and almost as many hate them. Why? You had to close their window about 9 million times. Now what if you saw it, and it went away? Wouldn't you like it a lot better?
Now I hear the advertisers in the crowd asking what will we do? If you must have more then the zone out banner ad, might I recommend the popular ad on news sites, flash. Take C|Net, please. On almost every page they have some kind of flash animation. The best is are the re-sizing ones on the main page. Because of the ad's shrinking nature, you can't help but look at it for the three seconds it takes up your whole screen, then is goes away, and at the same time, is catchy enough to be at least a little interesting. These are the ads of the future. Here so you have to see it, then shrinking away, so you don't have to close it. This is the main reason I like it the most. It is more eye caching then the pop up add, while being self removing, as to not be annoying.
Actually, the standard primetime slots have 22 minutes of show content every half hour usually. Syndicated reruns may cut some content to fit in more ads, but it certainly doesn't take it down to 22 minutes in a full hour.
Oops. One of the few times I didn't hit preview, and I screwed up the tags. I didn't mean to be shouting.
If you get Mozilla and PrefBar , you can toggle javascript, popup blocking, and more from your toolbar. It also works on a variety of platforms.
-Valen
Why is this site not slashdotted yet? With everybody abusing, er, experimenting with thier weak software, you'd think the server would have gone down by now..
Personally, since I haven't yet gotten around to installing Mozilla, I just avoid sites that use popup advertisements. My favorite web comics I support by buying thier books; the authors I like don't seem to care for popups either.
Twenties Retirement
How can they get away with this?
/. articles, spam is only going to get worse. As seen here, there is a new breed of spam/popup on the horizon.
Can you say class-action libel suit??
"A website cost time and money to run. Every time you visit a website you will cost the webmaster behind that website money as they have to pay for the bandwidth you use when downloading images, information etc."
Ok, and by popping up images, information, flash movies, etc., you're saving bandwidth *HOW*???
"If you start trying to block that income you will still cost the webmaster the same amount of money as before, but the webmaster won't earn any money from advertsing to cover the expence."
If you are going to call us theives, please at least spell expense correctly. Aside from nitpicking their spelling, do they honestly expect we all get *FREE* access to the internet? And that we all have extra time to read and close all the popups that? Our bandwidth costs us too, and our time is money too.
As I browse their site, I have closed at least 7 ads, AND a popup for that stupid Gator spyware.
Heh, they offer spam protection. But, if you follow their logic, blocking spam email is theft. Those spammers take all the time and effort (download list, slap into mass emailing program, hit enter, go read a Tom Clancy novel while the email zips off to inboxes unknown..) to email us with viagra offers, penis enlargers, and 19% credit cards. All that bandwidth they use, and the email lists they have to buy, and we're stealing by not reading their emails.
Heh, here's a blurb on cookies, "What cookies have to do with all this might be hard to understand at first, but blocking cookies can also cause major problems for webmasters. Many sponsors use cookies to track from which site a sale came from. E.g. if you visit a specific site, click an ad and chose to buy something the webmaster of the website you first came from obviously should earn some money from that. When blocking cookies that revenue could be lost..."
Sure, but they don't just want to track what website you came from, what you did at their site, and where you went to next afterwards... since they seem to be buddy-buddy with Gator, they want to know what you're doing on the web, at all times...
And, as seen in previous
"Ralsky, meanwhile, is looking at new technology. Recently he's been talking to two computer programmers in Romania who have developed what could be called stealth spam.
It is intricate computer software, said Ralsky, that can detect computers that are online and then be programmed to flash them a pop-up ad, much like the kind that display whenever a particular Web site is opened.
"This is even better," he said. "You don't have to be on a Web site at all. You can just have your computer on, connected to the Internet, reading e-mail or just idling and, bam, this program detects your presence and up pops the message on your screen, past firewalls, past anti-spam programs, past anything."
So, taking Anti-leech's arguement to the logical extreme, blocking these invasions of privacy would be theft.
Ain't technology grand?
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Is that with no blocking software on, running IE6 on WInXP, the pop-ups on anti-leech's homepage crash the browser every time.
Rykard
Breaking the Internet one standard at a time, since 1999
In an effort to do my best in contributing to the /. effect, I WGET'd (wgat?) their site. WGET had no problems indexing it correctly.
Motorists not staring at billboards for a full ten seconds are now considered thieves, and will be prosecuted accordingly. Time to invest in Geico...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
You arrogant fuck. The web has been stolen by people that think like you. The web was supposed to be a medium that would bring information to as wide a group as possible. But due to the efforts of companies and people like yourself the web is becoming nothing more than a mall where the customer is obligated to strap a video camera and tape recorder to his back so that advertisers can watch and record every move of every person on the web.
If I am screwing up the business model of a web site by blocking ads, refusing cookies, blocking pop ups, and turning off javascript well, it looks like another dot^bomb has just been dropped. If the web cannot handle low advertising volume then we will accept text only sites that require an incredibly tiny footprint rather than having to listen to the crap that you and people like you spew.
Web sites created for specific browsers using any number of web monkey tools like flash, javascript, macromedia* segregate the web into narrow little focus groups instead of the broad enlightened arena of ideas it was meant to be.
Am I a thief because I mute commercials on tv?
Am I a thief because I skip all ads in newspapers?
Am I a thief because I record my favorite shows?
I am going to be informing people at the Kentucky School for the Blind of your opinions and their reaction to your drivel will be interesting to say the least.
Good day.
The amusing thing is that also advertised on the SAME PAGE as the "anti-theft" programme is an anti-spam program which supposedly blocks spam, and removes ads from email...
Don't you just love hypocrisy in action??
that is tantamount to saying that my flipping by the pages of ads in the front of a magazine is theft. this is a great way to make me never come to your website again.
As George Orwell made so abundantly clear those who control the language control the world. This is why you are called a thief and a bomb that wipes out villages is called the daisy cutter.
It's all double plus good.
War is necrophilia.
Maybe website owners will decide that they might want to provide a useful service and/or goods instead of bambarding hapless users with pop ups for a crappy 8x "digi cam" or whatever the hell they want to push on you
LOL... Proxomitron has no problem blocking that goofy script. And besides HOST file is what for?. :))
127.0.0.1 www.anti-leech.com
127.0.0.1 anti-leech.com
Google should have a feature to exclude sites with popups... now, that would be neat.. much more useful than their catalog search :)
I just had to disable javascipt...
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
Subject: My computer, my bandwidth, my choice.
To: general@anti-leech.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Length: 636
I must say, the gall of your company is simply
astounding. In this market, where consumer confidence
is dropping and the market is as sluggish as it is,
you have the audacity to claim that those people who
do not allow subversive and potentially malicious code
onto the computer which they own, to be thieves.
What's more, you employ methods to block access to
people wishing to give companies their money, by your
estimates, as many as 15%. I wonder if it occurred to
you that the reason popup blockers are so popular, is
that people have no desire to see popup ads, nor do
they do anything but close them as soon as they
appear. Or that they would take an even more severe
approach, to vow never to purchase from such companies
that apply such obtrusive and invasive tactics.
Again, I applaud you for your utter arrogance in the
face of common sense. I only advise you to keep your
resumes polished and ready, I do believe you well be
needing them in the near future.
I totally agree, but there is the possibility that certain people running websites don't *want* a certain type of customer.
I have nothing against this sort of thing in principle.
Take for example the other day, I wanted to order a pizza online from a local pizza house that does pretty goot pizza.
Turns out that their site *requires* Macromedia Shockwave Flash to use it.
I outright refuse to install that particular plugin because its almost always used for brightly colored flickering ads.
I used the phone instead.
I emailed the site admin to suggest he consider the flash phobic but heres the important bit:
Its their right to set up their page how they want.
Its not my right to diss them off for it.
So long as I can either go elsewhere or use the phone instead its cool.
When thats not an option, *then* its not cool.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I wish that was all. Looking at all the comments, you'd think you were in a room full of wanna-be lawyers. Lawyering by dictionary. The people who are accusing him of libel are incorrect. The text is below.
"Website access denied
We have determined that you use pop up blocking software. This site is provided for free and depend on an income from these pop up ads. By blocking them, you make it impossible for us to continue keeping this website online for free. Therefore, you will not be able to access this website again until you uninstall or de-activate your pop up blocking software.
Close your browser window, uninstall your pop up blocker and come back here to visit us.
This website was protect by Anti-Theft(TM) from Anti-Leech.com. If you believe you received this message by mistake you can find more information here."
"Anti-theft" from a company called "Anti-leech". If people want to get all indignant? Go yell at anti-leech for the name. And people wonder why the courts are clogged.
Ummm, sorry guys, but when you FORCE me to view something vis a vis SPAM, then you are stealing my bandwidth.
I, and I alone get to control what comes through my firewall and into my home. If I don't want to listen to your message, that's my right. If I don't want to listen to some part of your message, then that's my right to.
You can't do a thing to force me to listen to it. You don't have to talk to me. But if you are broadcasting it out, then you can't force me to listen to the whole thing - I get to pick and choose.
If you don't like it, then tough nuts. Set it up so you're not broadcasting anymore. But don't blame me for your crappy business model.
I decided to test this out and found that Mozilla sort of defeats the right click protection. When I right clicked it brought up the so called "menu disabled" message, but after clicking ok the menu for right click appeared. If I had the mouse pointer over the image after clicking "ok" it would give me the option to save the image.
The both keyboard keys didn't quite work, even though the mouse was over the image it didn't have the save image option.
morons
Hard work usually pays off over time, but procrastination pays off now.
"it is instead collected through taxes since it is considered that everyone will watch tv or listen to radio no matter how little."
I cannot see this as a fair scheme at all. Why? I highly doubt that your taxation scheme uses any sort of measure of how much tv any given person watches; I'd lay very good odds that it's a flat rate across the entire population.
The last time I watched an hour of television consecutively was September 11, 2001. I simply don't need to watch TV, and I wouldn't want to have to pay a tax to support it. Even for someone who watches an hour of TV a day, the tax is unfair, because they end up paying for so very much more content than they will ever use.
There are some flat rate taxes that are justifiable, even if they're not entirely reasonable. School taxes, for example, help produce a (semi) educated population. Educating the populace helps the nation as a whole. How would a television tax help the nation?
I know that I am at the extreme low end of the bell curve, in terms of television watching. However, the fact that there is such a bell curve should be an argument against such a tax. Why do you put up with it?
Now lets their script show something nice
Like a CIA Logo.
http://www.anti-leech.com/at_block.php?message=
a (very lame) HTML leech: 99.9%...
what a joke...
Based on the comments it looks like Anti-leech can detect Mozilla's anti-popup features. However when I can browse the site just fine (sans ads) using the Proxomitron.
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
Pop Ups are terible.
I don't mind banners at all, even the new really big ones (they are the same physical size as an old banner was for me a few years ago).
What I really hate is pop-ups though, not even limited to advirtising ones.
Why do websites automatically open in a new window sometimes? I have two buttons on my mouse (well 5 if you could mouse wheel, wheel up and wheel down). I can right click open in new window (as can 90% of computer users, the other 10% hold some keyboard button and click).
So why do sights do this too me?
As an example I will give mail2web.com. Why is every message I view it's own window? I really don't get it.
Anyway, pop-ups and pop-unders suck, I prefer 10 seconds of full screen forced diversion flash adds to pop-ups.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
load the images in the popups, and just drop them on /dev/null
Which kind of sucks if you live in a country whose common practice in Internet access is to pay per bit.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'd send them an e-mail explaining what I'll be telling any Web site I encounter running their stuff, but alas their domain now resolves to an address that isn't accepting connections. Pity, that. :)
1 - Blocking pop-up ads becomes illegal. ;)
2 - Browsers which block pop-up ads become illegal
3 - IE ends up being the only legal browser
4 - M$ wins...
for ((i=0;$i<2000;i=($i+1))); do echo $i; perl -e '@a=gmtime(); exec("curl -d accountname=".chr(int(rand(26))+65) x (int(rand(8))+1)." -d pass1=qwe123 -d pass2=qwe123 -d name=anti%20leech -d email=general@anti-leech.com -d title=useless -d url=http://www.anti-leech.com -d category=1 -d version=free -d signup=Submit http://www.anti-leech.com/signup.php");' >& /dev/null; done
a gold star for the first right answer.
Anti-leech.com's "protection" completely fails if you disable javascript. Tested on their demo and kazaalite.com. ROFL! Whoever that was that said only morons try to use client side stuff to hamstring users was dead on. :P
I like OmniWeb's solution to the popup problem. You can simply set it to never open a window via Javascript unless it's in direct response to a click. Just as it should be. I used to avoid sites that had popups. OmniWeb gives me back my freedom to surf without obtrusive "marketing" being constantly thrown at me.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Seriously, I use a browser that provides for a client side preference that disallows window spawning unless in response to a mouse click or even not at all.
So basically because you're (meaning the browsing populace in general, not slashdotters) all using crummy yet market-dominating applications for browsing the web, these clowns feel that they have some sort of legal basis for bitching about some third-party app that denies them an ad impression?
I went to their site, all I got was some lame-ass portal-styled content in my browser window. Should I have gotten something more?
Really, I'm very keen on experiencing this wild concept of the World Wide Web which seems to populated by content that I do not request and seems to revolve around advertising and nto information.
IF.cmg
Remember, Jamie Kellner (new CEO of Turner broadcasting) said it's ok to go to the bathroom. He cuts you that much slack, but he does say skipping through the commercials is theft.
These media execs have such mind-boggling egos, they have no sense of reality. But what they do have is enough money to get senators to do what they want, which means the law doesn't have to make sense to normal people. Scary.
Read this please.
Dont steal from me.
If your business plan doesnt intersect with reality, then change reality. Lots of luck to them.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
I agree, annoying things make me not want to buy stuff. They make me want to use the F word. The people blocking popups gerally LOOK AROUND BEFORE THEY BUY STUFF anyways. On another note I think that people could easily write code to "confuse" theese web programs... as they advertized, it is not very complex.
my own pop up blocker, from earthlink (for free, from them) for earthlink users:
linky linky
all i had to do was hit the 'off' button, and refresh
worked out well, they have truely foiled my browsing popup blocking program...
what will i do now?
Runnin' On Empty
slashdoting is one of the best dos attacks out there.
of screw-ups. 1. Konqueror with popup support could not access their website 2. They seem to have forgotten the poor old "text" surfers. Hey Lynx users, did you know you have been "stealing" from the internet ??? Be ashamed of yourselves and go stand in a corner!
DO NOT PANIC
We love America!
They might as well use intersistials, which are irritating, but not nearly so much as popups, IMO.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
All of the warez sites block browsers that don't load their popups.
I consider pop-ups a theft of *my* bandwidth. I will begin tracking and recording any unwanted traffic that I receive. I should be able to retire by next week :)
Look out fer them terrists!
Visit this URL: pants-down
After that you can surf all their site with no popups hehe. I am sure this is just a demo but what good is a demo that doesnt work ?
Anyway, I tried it on Konqueror. Feel free to populate this thread with success failure cases :)
Proud-to-be-a-"leech"
Internet "Thief"
DO NOT PANIC
Post all your successes and failures so that (after it reads it's weblogs) the company'll use this slashdot forum for R&D...
Brilliant
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
now if they were pop up titties I'd be the first to visit.
That the company that is calling us Thieves is using PHP as their scripting language?
# file /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 akamai.net
127.0.0.1 aaddzz.com
127.0.0.1 ad1.aaddzz.com
127.0.0.1 ad-flow.com
127.0.0.1 ads.ad-flow.com
127.0.0.1 atdmt.com
127.0.0.1 view.atdmt.com
127.0.0.1 ads.admonitor.net
127.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com
127.0.0.1 a2043.g.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 a1604.g.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 a248.e.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 a12.g.akamai.net
127.0.0.1 a1484.g.akamaitech.net
127.0.0.1 a52.g.akamaitech.net
and so on......
What if i disable the UseMyCPUForYourProfit(var CylesCount ); function in javascript :-) god I canT believe that!!!
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
I'm confused as to why they 'will not tolerate the stealing of their bandwidth'.
By popping up (often several) unexpected advertisements containing text and pictures when a page loads, without the user's prior knowlege, aren't they stealing *our* bandwidth? And by blocking popups, aren't we freeing bandwidth for their servers to unload their nefarious wares to other unsuspecting passersby?
Have I missed something somewhere?
Do not meddle in the affairs of SysAdmins, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Lets uses the Ransom lience on the web site. by now /. must be ransomed so I don't have to see the adds no??
They want to install gator from their site. Gator should be considered as the number 1 net criminal. The lie about uninstalling the associated application then gator will automatically uninstall needs to be proven in court. I want a class action law suit against them. I want them to file chapter 13.
Get a free ipod.
Personally, I don't throw out any of the junk snailmail that I get.
You know all those business reply envelopes...heh if it doesn't have my name on it, the junkmail goes into one of those envelopes and back to some random company.
I sure hope Providian likes that history book of the month club and perhaps Columbia Music Club can send a donation to that charity....oh wait...I couldn't possibly belong to a music club...I forgot...I download all my music.
This is why I want the penultimate filtering technology: the glasses from 'They Live,' rigged to filter out any advertising you happen to see, even in real life.
Why do people think that "penultimate" means "really, really way ultimate?" Ultimate means last. Penultimate means second to last. Ultimate is sometimes used in the sense of "the last word," aka "the best." Using penultimate in this sense means, "the second best," which is clearly not what you meant.
First know what words mean, then use them, dumbass.
What's going to happen when people start using this service to block popup-blockers from their sites? Their hit count is going to go down by 30%, 50%, whatever. This has two effects: (1) fewer people see their stuff, which in general isn't what people with web sites want, and (2) the "click-through" that their advertisers see (or whatever you call it) won't change, because obviously people who block popups weren't going to follow the link in the first place. They won't make any more revenue and might make less because they have fewer viewers, and those viewers won't see the banner ads that they also probably have, which they might have clicked on even if they hate popups. This anti-leech service is going to be a flop.
Yup, if sites want to go and put this *crap* on their site to prevent users using mozilla or galeon, or using popup blockers, or using earthlink!!. then fine. but they will start losing a LOT of visits to their sites..
People, we in the Free Software world can even get around the bandwidth issue if we just work at it.
HTTP is a transport protocol that sits on top of TCP/IP. TCP uses ACKs to deal with flow control. The secret here is to give ourselves application-level access to "throttled TCP". This would simulate TCP traffic over a very large latency and bottlenecked link for those sockets that we choose to use it for. As such, it could severely slow down the ACKs and thus guarantee that this class of throttled traffic will not burn up too much of our link capacity. (coding this up would be a minor project in a networking/os class)
With this service available from the lower layers (another minor project in adding a secondary interface to sockets), applications like mozilla can use it as the way to "request" all of these "unrequested pop-ups" and their included contents in a way that does not substantially degrade the user's experience.
The asymmetry here between the content server and us is key. The content server can not very well disable access to all users on slow or congested links. Similarly, the content server probably can not computationally afford to try and correlate the link speeds on different streams.
So, we win.
And now for the kicker, by making every geek everywhere test their software, they now know how to fix all the ones which didn't pop up.
I have been kicking around a simple idea which will break their system, however, using IE in a very standard way. The trick is to use the Win32 GDI to hide (not immediately close) any new IE windows that are created on any IE process.
This means that the window consumes resources and the same bandwidth, processes all Javascript, etc, but doesn't show up on screen. Then, after some delay, you close the window with a WM_CLOSE. To kill fork-bomb type attacks, when the threshold for IE windows gets hit, you immediately close all extra opened IE windows until a timer (say 10 second) goes off.
This will work against any window created by IE.
Since some popups are required to use certain sites, this popup program would work best as a system-tray program. Perhaps the icon would change depending on the number of stopped windows.
Anyway, I haven't developed it because popups don't annoy me that much, but you're free to develop it. Perhaps I think this way about this because I work for Microsoft and could easily obtain the source to any system DLL which would need to be hacked to do this if I felt it needed to be hacked. However, I don't feel that you need any hacking to do this. If I recall (off the top of my head), you can monitor other GDI apps for WM_CREATE and find their instance handle, and send their windows messages easily enough (you can even do this from VB).
Cheers. Oh, and thanks for giving me a location to test my idea...
Somewhere deep inside of me, I suspect that people who refuse to look at (any) ads are the first ones to yell when their favorite sites go to a subscription model
Wrong. I refuse to look at any pop-up adds, but when LWN went to subscription I subscribed and I still pay them. why ?
1) they give me a good return for my money.
2) they treat me with respect. They give me a choice. If they'd use popup ads and other nasty tricks that take the choice away from me they'll lose me as a customer in seconds.
provide value, charge fairly, treat me with respect, and you'll get my money for a long time. Don't, and you won't. Like you said, Actions do have consequences.
Working for necessity's mother.
Exactly. A friend of mine who's a UI designer once passed on the following UI credo: "When you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing."
.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
What was the address for the patent office again?
*scribble* *scribble*
Trees everywhere, and not a forest in sight.
Why Oh Why!?!? ... Idiots with websites.
Doesn't this sound a bit like the argument the networks and the MPAA made that ReplayTV is copyright infringement because it allows you to bypass commercials?
Things are getting scary out there folks.
This space available.
But I'm noticing a lot of people complaining that anyone is blocking pop-up blocking software in the first place. Hello? Dramatic irony at work here: "We can block you, but you can't block us." Dream on kiddies, you knew they'd find some other way to get us to buy their shit, and when this doesn't work, they'll find another way.
Those who complain that these people are blocking our ad-busters are the same people complaining that you can't publish exploit code now because "someone might use it." It's more or less the same thing, so don't be a hypocrit.
Besides, it won't be long before all the pop-up blockers (Personally I only care about Galeon) hack up something to emulate pop-ups so that this software doesn't work either. Just a speedbump, guys, don't panic.
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
And what about people who wouldn't want to obey such instructions? Would they be thieves? I'm having a bad feeling about this... One day, that idea of yours might become a reality, so be careful what you wish for as it might just happen. What would it really mean?
Generally, such file would be considered a "terms of service", and the server could choose to block everyone who didn't read the file. Only people who had browser to read the "machine readable website viewing license" or whatever would be able to request any files off the server. And after this, if your browser would ignore that, and would choose to not display ads, it would be violation of the terms of service. Writing ad-blocker could be seen as completely illegal thing to do. Far fetched? Think DMCA.
Is this what you want? How about we got a bit further? How about this...
Servers could implement a new protocol for serving information about what services are available, and with what conditions. This service would be assumed to exist on every server, and if it didn't exist, you wouldn't be allowed to do anything. Once browsers would begin to enforce this, all servers that wanted to be visible would implement a rule serving protocol for sure. If the rulefile said there is only a http service available and it requires viewing ads, trying to probe for ftps or anything else would be illegal. Such protocol would make it easier for search engines to process data (they'd know what is public and what private), it'd make it easy to sue spammers that are using smtpd's that aren't marked public, it'd make it easy to sue for the guys port scanning and the kids who sent you icmp_echo in the morning without checking for the server rules first...
Eventually, ISPs would be forced to comply with this also, preventing rogue users from doing stuff. Transparent proxys would enforce the remote server rules, so that you couldn't request pages without fully receiving the ads first.
Such a great idea, isn't it? Rules are bleh without enforcement, and when MONEY is involved, as it is with ads, there's need for enforcement. Have a nice day.
-- Matti Nikki
Loads of sensationalist crap is what I come here for.
:-P
Seriously though, while news is nice and everything, it's the sensationalist crap that brings people back to slashdot. I like to have a good centralized place that gives me the news I want, but this is what slashdot has become, and if you don't like it then... I dunno, make a sensationalist crap blocker or something. If it works, who knows, somebody might buy it
One reason this site appeals to so many of us is that not only does it link to articles of interest for the nerd/geek crowd, but it also links to things that gives them a sense of community. Its a place where one can sit down for a few minutes and express ones feelings on a subject that we are all bound to make fun of (both the subject, and the expressed feelings, of course).
-- If it aint broke, fix it till it is. --
So I go to anti-leech.com and what is the first popup ad that they give me? Selling me Cable RV Descramblers.
Something is very wrong with that.
I'm really not that concerned about their claim, but let me act for a moment like I'm pissed, because the concept does piss me off.
It's _MY_ computer, and _I_ am the one who says whether or not a window is opened there. _NOBODY_ else (except you elite hackers, of course
I will happily surf away from any site attempting to use this er.. technology. And I'll never come back.
Idiot companies that use popup ads are getting a break right now, because I never know when popups are being rejected. If they end up _telling_ me that they are using popups, they'll never see me again.
Hence, I believe this is a self limiting device.
I also happen to believe that there will be zero advertising supported web sites in 10 years. You heard it here first
Popup ads are almost as annoying as the putrid green title boxes for this topic :-P
Table-ized A.I.
I seem to recal hearing that that cyborg dude from MIT implemented that.
Web interactions can be described at two levels. The first, and the only one nontechnical folks know about, is the human level. Here interactions are described as they are perceived by a human using standard tools. That is, when I click a link I'm asking for a page as rendered by default configuration Netscape or IE -- a bundle of content which you're offering as a bundle and which I see only as a bundle. If this is the way you understand web interactions, then accusations of theft make sense. But it's an abstraction that doesn't reflect what's really going on.
The truth is at another level, which is network level. Under HTTP, I request a chunk of data and, your server may or may not send it to me. That's it. The protocol says nothing about what I do with the data once I have it -- my computer is my agent, not yours. In particular, it says nothing about whether or not I will follow any suggestions to request other chunks of data. The protocol says nothing about what whether or not I'm using the standard tools. (It does suggest that I tell you, but I see that as a detail of the request -- "I want the version you've prepared for IE5".) Those are the real terms of use. If you're server sends out data on those conditions, you've implicitly agreed to them
(This doesn't give me license to violate copyright law or commit identity theft. Those are illegal independently of any protocol.)
If you want to make sure I download your ads, use a protocol (or server configuration) which is a better fit for your abstraction. You can:
- Configure your server to deny content requests until the ads has been downloaded. E.g. don't serve me part 2 unless I've downloaded the ads in part 1 (tale.com does this), or put the content I want in a frame that I have to load last. [But there's no way to tell whether or not I've displayed the ads.]
- Use a protocol in which the whole page -- text, images, and all -- are transfered in a single bundle, like a zipfile or tarball. The protocol makes it clear that the ads and the content are a package. [There's no way to tell whether or not I've displayed them here, either].
- Require me to use code you trust. It could be a signed version of a standard app or your own applet. [But the only way you can require it is by serving the content only to machines that have proven that they know some secret. With fully programmable computers -- i.e. not crippled by "trusted computing" hardware -- the secret will be be DeCSSed.]
In other words, you can readily force me to download the ads, but forcing me to display them is just another DRM use case. Or maybe it's a DMCA issue.The protocol is the law. Or at least it should be -- reality may differ.
Disabling Javascript not only avoids the pop-up, but completely bypasses their "technology", being as it uses the same Javascript that opened the window to see if the window actually exists... Another stupid attempt to capatalize on something not meant to be charged for pwned by Opera's F12 hotkey... *sigh*
Check this out
Seriously though - you saw it on their site - does this make it legal?
If you dont want it, and they force themselves upon you, it is rape.
The most effective 'protection' is to have an updated host-file that forwards the 'rapists' IP/URL to 127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0
This site is doing one for you:
http://www.smartin-designs.com
Best Regards
JemyM
Consider their basic assumption:
People who find pop-ups so annoying that they've gone to the trouble of installing software just to get rid of them will, when forced to look at pop-ups, still think favourably of the advertisers and buy from them.
Maybe they should try cold-calling people at 3:00 am. And wrapping flyers around bricks and then launching them through people's windows is certainly going to get them read.
Sheesh!
Turning off Javascript let me read their "test page", but I went to look at some of their samples from their home page, like their "protecting your code" sample. That's what I was referring to; do those work for you?
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
I realize that this is late in the discussion, and hopefully this will get read.
I use Phoenix for three reasons. First, all I want is a browser. Second, tabbed browsing. Third, the ability to block unwanted pop-ups.
Unfortunately, I am stuck with 56k dialup, where I the fastest connection I have received is 28.8Kbps. I do not appreciate websites that have huge flash ads or anything like that, because the wait is painfully slow.
Who is the thief? Me for using a "service" without full functionality or the company that is shoving a 300K flash ad down my pipe so a website takes five minutes to load? I view it as them stealing my bandwith & time.
I know what penultimate means. And this is second-best. It doesn't filter out advertising delivered through other senses AT ALL. Sound ads will be a serious problem until They Live headphones are also introduced. Industries that use odors (perfumes, food, possibly bookstores) will survive even that.
Taste is kind of difficult to force on people. And I'm not entirely sure how well touch or orientation* could be employed in advertising.
So the ULTIMATE filtering technology is probably some sort of mecha that you sit inside, to insulate you. The glasses don't come close.
Surprising as it might seem, I very carefully and deliberately used 'penultimate' before. Some people do know what it means, dumbass.
*I.e. the Vestibulary sense -- your ability to sense which way is up or down, and the position of your limbs, etc. The major sense organs are in your inner ear.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Too bad that got marked as a troll. That should have been modded as informative if anything.
Did any one check out their anti image "technology"
It is supposed to stop us from "leeching" pictures from websites. If you try right mousing on the image to save an image, it doesn't work. However, right mousing to "view image" and then saving does work!
This is almost to easy. Any think this anti-blocking thing is as easy to break?
-- Please put this in your sig if you think
I know what penultimate means. And this is second-best. It doesn't filter out advertising delivered through other senses AT ALL. Sound ads will be a serious problem until They Live headphones are also introduced. Industries that use odors (perfumes, food, possibly bookstores) will survive even that.
Nice save attempt, but ultimately (heh) lame. You got caught being a dumbass, so you made up a cockamamie story to cover your ass. In situations like this, it's best just to admit you're a moron and learn than thrash around, straining to say "I meant to do that."
Surprising as it might seem, I very carefully and deliberately used 'penultimate' before. Some people do know what it means, dumbass.
Well, you know what it means now. "Carefully and deliberately." Stop, you're killing me.
Pop-up free browsers need to emulate a local popup environment. F.ex when a popup is called for, it first goes through the standard smart policy. Then the unrequested popup is launched as an invisible window. From the window tab on the menu-tab, theese popups should be available, in a submenu, and with a choice for closing them all in one click. Anny other thoughs annyone? Mindflow
No, it's really not a save.
I started out writing the earlier post 'ultimate' and then realized the problem with the audio-ad hole. Thus, it was revised during composition.
While this would require your admitting that there are at least two people in the world who know the difference between those words, it's the truth. I really _did_ mean to do that.
Furthermore, even if I had not, do you claim that despite all the examples of the failings of the glasses alone that they are the ultimate form of filtering. Surely you cannot -- meaning that I would've used the proper word.
Often I find that when someone uses the correct word in a situation, that they meant it. Even applying Occam's Razor would seem to favor my position.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I pay for bandwidth. Many ISPs in this country charge their customers according to how much they download. They force me to download something I have not requested, thus costing me money.
It's Mozilla, Galeon and other pop-up blocking measures that are the real "anti-theft" tools.
Six sick
yeah, well. this is slashdot. Only post with your name if you think people will ignore it or give it a positive rating. people here will mod you down for disagreeing. Don't post anything controversial if you don't want to run the risk of being considered a "troll". Someone should rename "flamebait" to "provoking" and make it +1.
Fuel-air explosives are called "daisy cutters" because they were made to kill vegetation and that isn't their official designation anyway (no im not going to look it up). They're being used in Afghanistan to suck the oxygen out of caves, because that's where the terrorists are hiding. I think you'll find that 747's do a much better job of village destruction.
See for yourself: here
Until a Website hosting Banner adds pays for your lines, pays for your internet connection, pays for your nic/modem, pays for your operating system, pays for your browser (in whole or part); only then should X Website have any right to control what gets passed to your computer, and computed into your browser.
Websites are well aware of peoples ability to block ads, it's nothing magical, if they want to make money and ad's aren't doing it for them, then its time to stop using the adds. You can't force advertising on anyone. There is no difference between clicking the X and blocking a popup. Pretty soon theyre going to sue microsoft for allowing people to close web browsers...
If I understand correctly, pay-per-view isn't the most common method to get income from web based advertisement anymore. It's pay-per-click or even pay-per-sale.
People who (like me) filter web ads are the ones who are annoyed by them. Annoyed to the point that they won't click on any ad, no matter how tempting it is. By forcing those people to watch the ads, the result is, at least for me, that I refuse to visit the site at all (unless Google does it, I guess). We can live without most web sites.
Also, I do not understand why they define people as thieves because they do not want to see the ads. What about TV commercial breaks? I know that _many_ people use the breaks to go peeing, make a sandwich, or even zap through the other TV channels. Are they thieves? Should they stop watching the movie if they do not also faithfully watch the commercials?
I think the ones advertising on TV realize that a certain amount of the viewers will not see the ads. And that a certain amount of those will _never_ see any ads. I can't see why it should be any different on the web.
If theft means avoiding pop-ups, then call me a happy thief.
I would never respond to a pop-up ad. I usually keep blocking turned on. There is a reason for this. My window space is mine. I give 'you', the web site, no authority to pop up windows that force me to make a mouse click to ignore an ad.
Feel free to put ads in your page, as long as they don't move and distract me while I'm reading. That means Flash is out, of course. I will never respond to such an ad.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Let me ask you something: Do you know anyone with one of those X-10 cameras? 'Cause I sure don't.
If you get a bad reputation, people won't buy from you. And certain kinds of advertising can kill your reputation.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Anyone want to start a company with me that makes a product which diables you TV if you get up to make a drink during an ad. break?
Keep your programs tidy.
Exitzero.
If the site wants to steal bandwidth from me by serving content rich (bandwith sucking) pop-ups then they deserve what they get, except for Salon. Most sites that are making money divide content between paid/free sections. This is the way it should be. Ramming ads down my throat is the reason I purchased blocking software in the first place. (I thought and still think it was the best purchase you can buy for the money) If a site insists on serving me ads to view their content. I say Via Con Dios, you wont be around very long.
I really have to pee but I can't get up until the comercial break is over and my show is on again.
Have you gone into web design now? Gee, I thought that "only" PVR users were thieves. Guess that there is a whole new medium to conquer.
~N~
Curiously enough, the site also provides an online security audit on their website. Guess what happens when I try it on their example page? All content displayed below was so easy to copy that it only took a few seconds for this script. Imagine what humans can do to you! Judge by the material below if you need Anti-Leech protection or not. You can sign up here. It also returns the HTML source for the example web page...with popups blocked on my machine. So not only are they providing a broken service, but they provide a work-around to their product on their actual site...
They say the same for their own site, the dumbasses.
Don't they make that software that "protects your download links" That numerous warez and mp3 sites are known to use to prevent people from stealing what they've already stolen?
Right, and we're the thieves.
is that the only reason this comes up at all is because pop-ups do not work and people are desperate to lay blame as to why. Just get a new technology already...
Web-enabled STB's rarely support POPUP's because of the HCI problems with a handheld remote (typically no mouse/cursor constrol) and screen sizes, the same can be said for many other web-enabled devices. Mobile phones, etc.
These people seem intent on cutting off most of the next generation of Internet devices so I cannot see this catching on with any other group than blind linking porn advertisers.
It does suggest a HTTP issue that I've been considering for a while. There seem to me to be an increasing requirement for a USER-AGENT-PROFILE header to HTTP requests to identify a clients capabilities, to many web designers assume a PC and MIE/Mozilla access only.
I think these frustrations are being vented at the wrong people. Before I started using mozilla, all I did with pop-ups were trying to beat them back like crazed student protesters at a WTO meeting, I never ever looked at them. What the hell is the difference whether they pop-up or not, actually I'm saving them bandwidth.
They are the ones putting up the site on the internet for all to see, not me. If they think their site is so important to people, make it a pay site, if not, don't complain.
Just like the content industry, they see their business model just does not work, so they demonize their customers instead of looking at the root cause. If the way they are doing it doesn't rake in the dough, find another way or just shut down, don't slander your customers and expect any sympathy in return. They should be glad to get the hits they are, contrary to popular opinion, eyeballs on the internet is a valuble commodity for more than popping up ads.
I just pressed Apple-Dot right after entering the website. This stops the JavaScript from being executed (I guess...) thus the theft prevention, as they call it, can't work. (Tried with Chimera, which comes with a pop-up blocker, and uses the Mozilla rendering engine.)
The parent post was about Language not Afghanistan.
Doesn't work on my Mac running Omniweb anyways. CTL-Click & save image or view sources. So much for that .....
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Not only does the webmaster need to pay for bandwidth hosting and other incurred costs, so does the user.
I wonder if it's feasable to collect statistics on the percentages of bandwidth and time used in viewing advertisements. It wouldn't be too hard to do a localized study for a limited set of advertising sites (doubleclick and co.). Can I send the webmaster a bill?
(They say 36% of email now is spam. If 36% of the web bytes you were served were ads, would you be inclined to keep surfing?)
To all those Slashdot readers intending to use Anti-Theft's software (hehe), take note of the following:
* To successfully require popup-ad viewing, you'll need to make your site worthless without JavaScript enabled.
* Anyone who turns off filters in order to view your site isn't going to click through pop-ups.
* Anyone who can't (or doesn't want to) turn off filtering won't view your adds anyway... or your content. But will incur bandwidth costs of several loads (one (or more) for the attempted page, two or three for the tests it runs, one for the redirect).
* I don't imagine folks viewing your site with a PDA, cellphone, etc. will be inclined in your favor.
Part of the whole theory of advertising is that you throw it out there and hope a rather small fraction of the viewers will purchase your product. Scores of millions of people see the newest SUV during the Super Bowl. How many buy it? Not many.
(Incidentally, you don't have to quit your browser to view the page. You probably just have to reload.)
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
http://users.pandora.be/walter.de.vis/
I read through the comments on this topic and there was a lot of noise about "I am under no contract to view ads from your site."
BE VERY CAREFUL here. Pay close attention to terms of service from now on, because this may very well be the next step:
3) You agree to view advertisements online from Verizon's affiliates and partners. Any measures taken to:
a) Prevent loading pop-up or banner advertisements
b) Prevent the creation of "cookies" on your computer
c) Otherwise prevent the delivery of advertising content approved by Verizon
shall be construed as breech of this agreement, and may be prosecuted as theft of services.
This is not an actual excerpt, but something that might find its way into terms of service if we don't all pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION...
Being blind automatically makes you a thief! Did you not read the rationale for Anti-Leech? You naturally ignore pop-up ads, a genetic or circumstantial conspiracy to deprive webmasters of revenue! You should be shot if you surf the web while blind. Porn sites hate your guts!
Heh. I guess that goes with the "there no such thing as bad PR" theory.
But trust me, it was a royal pain in the reverse proxy. We'd developed this software for both Windows and MacOS, and we'd seeded it to a dozen test sites -- including a bunch of K12 schools were THRILLED with it.
As a small (tiny) software company, we depended on various Web sites to carry our new product announcements and get the word out about our offerings. When we released AdScreen, most of those very same Web sites not only refused to carry the announcement, but many also sent us three-dimensional nastygrams saying that they weren't going to cover ANY of our products ever again.
We had some very heated discussions with many of the Web site owners and editors that morning, and came to the conclusion that they were "holding our head under water", and that unless we recanted, they'd collectively cut off our (free) PR channel to the marketplace. Since we depended on that for our marketing and sales, we backed down.
Our software did not remove ads. Instead, it removed the graphical parts of the ads, replacing them with text-only versions (mostly from the ALT text) that were still visible and clickable, just not as bandwidth-hogging or visually intrusive.
It's interesting to note that several of the most vocal Web sites that were complaining about how AdScreen was going to ruin their business have now switched from running graphical banner ads to inline text-box ads -- exactly what AdScreen would have done to their site anyway four years ago.
Canning the software LOUDLY was a good PR move, given the rest of the situation. But it in no way made up for the extended multiplatform development effort that went into developing AdScreen.
-Mark
http://www.elenor.net/index.php?p=forum&f=4&t= 2
Advertisers take note: I never by anything offered to me by a solicitor. This includes phone, direct mail, fax, and e-mail marketing. This do not buy policy has kept me from falling for a couple scams. I found it good policy to NEVER buy from any direct advertising. When I want something, I shop for it to get the best deal, quality, warranty, shipping rate, etc. This includes research on the reputation of the seller. Push content ads almost always have a lower quality higher margin product in order to pay for the high priced ad campaign. Pushy ads always wave a red flag. Example, everyone hated the popup/under ad campaign for a wireless tv camera. A quick search located 3 other manufactures of similar products. One of them at a higher price was a much better product. If you want to sell me anything, don't direct market me. Be sure your ad properly shows up under a google search. Be sure your reputation is clean. Searches also pull up reviews listing the rip-off artists. Sites that have sponsership are OK. If I go to a skateboarding site and it is sponsored by a wheel manufacture, that is fine. I expect it. Just don't expect to close a deal for 8 wheels just because I stopped by the website. When I look for wheels, I will remember if you bombed my browser with pop-ups, or sponsored a fan site. By the way, I didn't buy the wireless camera that had the obnoxious ads.
The truth shall set you free!
The anti-leech error script lets you include arbitrary HTML (read: cross-site scripting), which the above link takes advantage of.
So much for anti-theft technology. I just paid a visit to the Anti-Theft home page, which promptly tried to pop up an ad. Popup Stopper killed it dead. If they're using their own technology, it's not working. Maybe it's just another brand of Internet snake-oil for gullible Web site owners?
(Who are already suckers for believing that popup ads actually sell anything in the first place.)
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
I never look at the classified section in the newspaper. I look at the auto dealer section every 5 years when I buy a car. Junk mail goes in the circular file unopened. Radio buttons are designed to change stations (when you don't like something...commercial?).
Am I a felon for these crimes?
What, choking the life out of e-mail isn't good enough? Now we have to make the entire web unusable as well?
Don't they realize how many people go out of their way to NOT buy things that have annoying advertising?
remote controls will no longer have a "mute" button. People who use existing mute buttons will be rounded up into camps and executed. Families will be billed for the cost of execution.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Using Mozilla, I generally block a site if and when it sends me an annoying graphic, which is usually, but not always, advertisement. I've found, however, that once I block an advertisement, I click on it more often.
I use the keyboard for screen movement, so I must click on the window to get it focus. I do this by picking a blank part of the screen and clicking there. Increasingly, this blank part is a blocked graphical advertisement. Thus, these clicks become advertising hits when before they rarely were.
This may not match the behavior of other people, but now that I'm blocking ads, the number of advertisements I "click on" has gone up enomorously (less than one a month to about one a week).
Interestingly, if you block javascript (tested in galeon) you dont see the access denied message atall, you just see their example page.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
the first time i see that access denied message will be last time i visit that site...
I agree with you on that level. But I don't mind my favourite show beign financed as producers want.
unfinished: (adj.)
Who ever made the distinction that popup ads were any less instrusive than tv ads - they're a thousand times more instrusive!
Just because some idiotic tv announcer says, "Don't touch that channel" doesn't mean I'm legally liable to leave the channel where it is during that stations commercial break. It's the same thing with popup ads. I don't HAVE to look at anything I don't feel like. If it grabs my attention, I'll watch.
The things that advertisers have seem to forgotten , these days, is that ads needs to be important toward their audience. You don't see too many Dolly Parton record advertisements on BET, do you? NO!
Stop pushing items on me that don't fit the audience and popup ads might just work - even if only a little.
However, popup ads will never be successful because they're instrusive. When I'm interacting at web-browser window 'A' and all of a sudden web-broswer window 'B' steals focus, it's annoying as hell and turns a prospective audiences' buying power/attention off.
DONT DO IT!
127.0.0.1 www.anti-leech.com
WHAAAAH! My site is expensive to run.
WHAAAA! You people who block pop-ups and pop-unders are part of organized crime. You are conspiring to put me out of business.
WHAAAAAH! You people are too cheap to pay for anything, so you're destroying the internet.
Finally, I offer a prayer to our Lord, the most Holy Jesus Christ of Nazareth:
"Dear Lord:
Thank you for inventing Ralph Slate. You put him here to try all of our patience. I see the error of my ways of expecting all people to be non-whiners. Ralph is a whiner, and I lost my temper with him. But Lord, now that I see the error of my ways, please get rid of ralph and all the computers he has and he works with. I believe when you invented Ralphy, you went too far. Therefore, in your infinite mercy, please don't ever let ralph have anything to do with computers again.
In thigh name we prey,
Amen
P.S. I still want the plasma screen TV for Xmas.
Amen"
Unfortunately you can't do anything about that. This is effective for stopping ad images from loading as , but when Javascript tries to do something behind your back (ie. doubleclick) but can't connect, there's not much you can do to avoid that error message.
What I'd like to see is a tool that lets these guys see just how many of their ads are blocked via automatic tools and how many are closed mid-transmission. There has to be a way to do this; since the ad doesn't continue to be served once you've closed the window [though it may trigger a few dozen other ads even if you've ALT-F4'ed it].
Like many of you have said; don't alienate your potential customers but don't shove your ad down their left nostril either.
I imagine a surprising result (at least for advertisers who feel they do no wrong) from a study like this; proving that users refuse material like this and deliberately avoid it. And if they deliberately avoid it then you must be doing something wrong - not that advertisers will feel it is wrong but a different approach should at least then be in order.
Then again, those "different" approaches often then involve true thievery and scams such as long distance dialer theft and credit card fraud - which is real thievery and [I feel] should [still] be punished Old Testament style with missing fingers and hot irons and the like. {When did herding criminals like these ones together in pens and letting them feed off tax-provided welfare ever provide greater than 30% reform rates?}
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
I get redirected to edonkey when i try to go to kazaa-lite.com.
what is going on?
Seriously, showing up unwanted materials on the computer .. Forced onto you.. Isn't this one of the definitions of a virus? I mean, you don't agree to it, and it's NOT expected. It's not given to you from the host site. It's a 3rd party pushing down unwanted software and content without your permission.. To me that sounds like a great way to land in jail and on the FBI's watch list. No?
I'd say that the theft occurs when the ad-space seller convinces the ad-placer that they have a sure-fire way to grab your eyeballs. It's well known (at least here) that popups are extremely annoying, and therefore not to be tolerated where possible. The very fact that popup blockers exist demonstrates that enough people don't want popups that the blockers get created...
The ad-placers and popup-ad merchants may or may not have a constitutionally protected right to display the ads. But I cannot be forced to watch the ads. I believe I have a constitutionally protected right to walk away from obnoxious street-corner entrepreneurs, and the case of popups, that means blocking them. Or simply disabling javascript...
Yeah, but then you'd want to show a friend, you'd tell him to put them on, he'd say no, you'd say yes, and then you'd have to wrestle, secure in the knowledge that if you lose, he'll put them on anyway.
ObRef: the long, drawn out "Cripple Fight" in South Park was based on the They Live fight scene.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Popups are like street people who hand out flyers. They are there for the taking but I usually refuse. There are many issues involved, including spyware taking over popups and displaying their own adds, that should encourage all to annoy them. They take away my bandwidth and my time and I am not getting paid in any way to account for this.
They claimed that you can not copy their image. So it got me interested. Took me a whole 15 seonds to copy and save it.
& name=test and vola!! The page returns me http://www.anti-leech.com/pics/logo.gif which is a normal copyable .gif image.
I clicked on the Anti Image . By right clicking you notice they have a javascript disabling the button. So what I did next? Looked at the source code. Did a search for Viewing picture to find the img src. And sure enough it is a PHP script grabbing the image. It is img src="ai_load.php?id=demo_gat&name=test". So, I took that php script and it parametes and pasted it back to the url. So now I have http://www.anti-leech.com/ai_load.php?id=demo_gat
Pretty basic if you ask me. And they are charging for this? This is a stanrd way of page retrieval and javvascript button disabiling.
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I was just giving it some thought, and Anti-Leech's popup blocking method may be illegal, and fall under the anti-circumvention code of the DMCA.
Argument:
1. They are requesting CPU cycles from you, in a discrete program window... the popup.
2. According to existing computer law, going back to the UNIX mainframe days, all CPU cycles can be accounted and billed for.
3. Thus, system operators have the right to limit user requests for CPU time.
4. Popup blocking, because popup ads are not integrated into the content of the served site, is a legitimate control on the amount of CPU time a user can request.
5. Anti-Leech's "Theft Control" device attempts to bypass this control.
6. The DMCA defines a circumvention device as code that is intended to defeat a protection mechanism.
7. Therefore, the Anti-Leech script is illegal.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
I think you meant "and" rather than "but". I don't know about you, but having ads shoved down(?) my left nostril makes me either feel kind of alien or ancient Egyptian.
I don't block banner ads. TANSTAAFL. I do block doubleclick over privacy and spam issues. For the rest, I use the same thing as I use for TV ads: BrainBlocker. "Come on down to Dodge-Chev-Ford .. hisss ..", commercial gone. Popups are another story. They get killed.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
So they disable the right mouse button. Click and drag the mouse over the image (IE supports this) Click Edit-> Copy Paste it into word. Dont even have to use short cuts, explorer. Just copy paste. do people pay for this service? Laughable.
It is so refreshing that thay have considerately displayed a nice list of sites that I know I have no use for.
Thanks.
I change channels during commercials when I watch TV. Zapping == stealing
Fuck them, and fuck the whores they rode in on.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Whatever "stop" is for your browser (Esc in IE) seems to work for getting to view the really cool content on their page instead of the THIEF page.
Oh man. This commercial vein has got to stop. Next you are going to tell me that software comes in boxes.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Only Thieves Block Pop-Ups
I do not think so. Company who gives Pop-ups ads are Thieves. They use up our bandwidth and cpu, when most users clearly do not wish it. Is it fair, for a person, who pays months for a set bandwidth (let's say 1 gig a month) and some of that bandwidth is wasted for these ads? I do not thinks so!
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
One of the things that makes the Internet great is the wealth of content freely available online. Some might say that the signal-to-noise ratio is rather low, but having funds to run a web site does not automatically mean you're improving that ratio.
This freely-available content has to be paid for by somebody. Usually it's those wanting to make that content available, and unless they have some means to offset the costs of doing so, some will be unable to do it. This is why most free sites resort to advertising over paid memberships.
Yes, "free" sites need to take into account the jerks that want to rape their site without looking at the promotional content as well. This needs to be addressed when they're coming up with a pseudo-business model (keeping in mind that many sites that carry ads are not remotely commercial). But all you're really doing is increasing the bandwidth-to-advertising revenue ratio, and are having a direct impact on that site's ability to stay online.
Yes, it's an issue with their business model. But the only reason their business model is failing is because there are people blocking their ads. It doesn't matter that their ads may be well-placed, are not intrusive and not offensive, your ad blocker blocks them all.
This attitude, quite frankly, sucks.
Thank God we have enough people out there who do not block advertising, or else we wouldn't have Slashdot. Would you rather sites like Slashdot disappear (due to a "poor" business model) just because you're anti-advertising?
I've posted this before in this thread, but it got lost in the crowd.
:
:
: /dev/null' _ however_you_might_justify_it_given_that_you_are_be ing_only_subserviant_lackies_to_your_corporate_mas ters"i ts_my_computer"
: : :
This is my way to send messages to the webmasters of sites like this, or (likely) to webmasters of sites who purchase these guys crap. They dont seem to listen to their email or "feedback" forms, so this script puts messages into their web log where I hope they might see them. Well, responsible webmasters might see them anyway. Who knows about these guys.
This script encodes the messages (hardcoded here) into the URL, the UA field and the Referrer field. The messages are mixed more or less randomly with output from "fortune" for two reasons - one is that the mix of extra words in there might attract a bitof attention and the other is that it makes the output a bit more varied (then too, I consider it a public service in that perhaps I'm helping to educate the fools).
Note the sleep() - this is to ensure that the site does not get hammered, which would be a DOS attack and hence illegal.
Python script follows - should run pretty much as is (modulo line breaks and other format problems)
import string, re, os, random, time
replpat=re.compile(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9.?!_,:;-]+')
host="http://www.anti-leech.com/"
def getmsg()
m = os.popen("fortune", "r").read()
return replpat.sub("_", m)
while 1
cmdstr = 'curl -A "%s" -e "%s" %s/%s -o
ref="Oh_go_away_you_vendors_of_intrusive_software
ua ="I_ll_use_a_popup_blocker_when_I_want_after_all_
suburl="its_you_who_are_the_leeches_not_us"
if random.random() < 0.5
ref=getmsg()
if random.random() < 0.5
ua=getmsg()
if random.random() < 0.5
suburl=getmsg()
cmd = cmdstr % (ua,ref,host,suburl)
print cmd
#
# DO NOT UNCOMMENT THE LINE WITH "os.system" below !!!!!
# this script is only intended for its amusement value
# do not actually use it
# I MEAN IT!
#
# os.system(cmd)
time.sleep(5) # dont want to do a DOS
That you can change their message and insert html/javascript?
Don't make me summaryize your mewing and whining again.
You're like a puppy dog. I've smacked you once (reluctanly) in the nose with rolled up newspaper. I'd rather not do it again, but I will if you keep whining about how you don't make money from your site.
Incidentally, I went to your site.
20-40 hours and that's the best it can look? Any popups, I've blocked. The ads, who cares. But you'd be way better off providing info to subscribers. Charge everybody $10 a year. You'll be better off
Does this mean people really do read Playboy and Penthouse for the insightful articles?
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
No, it's really not a save.
Agreed. It's a failed save attempt.
I started out writing the earlier post 'ultimate' and then realized the problem with the audio-ad hole. Thus, it was revised during composition.
The story shifts ever so slightly.
While this would require your admitting that there are at least two people in the world who know the difference between those words,
I admit that there are at least two people in the world who know this.
it's the truth. I really _did_ mean to do that.
I actually thought so a lot earlier, but considering the amount of energy you're expending to answer an AC who's clearly yanking your chain, I begin to wonder. Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Furthermore, even if I had not, do you claim that despite all the examples of the failings of the glasses alone that they are the ultimate form of filtering. Surely you cannot -- meaning that I would've used the proper word.
Now I know for sure you protest too much. I don't think you would have used the proper word if I thought they were not the ultimate form of filtering. To think you would have chosen a word based on what I think would be a very stupid idea. Since you are the one committing the stupidities, and going crazy trying to prove you aren't (REALLY! I AM SMART! I DID KNOW WHAT THE WORD MEANT! HONEST! LISTEN TO ME! I REALLY DID!!!) the stupidity lies in your camp. You are stupidly claiming that you would not have been stupid if I had been stupid first. That's stupid.
Often I find that when someone uses the correct word in a situation, that they meant it.
I REALLY DID KNOW WHAT I WAS DOING! HONEST, EVERYONE! PLEEEEEEEEEEZE BELIEVE ME!!!
Even applying Occam's Razor would seem to favor my position.
Ooohh, someone told you about Occam's razor. You're just like a grownup! Here's Occam at work:
My hypothesis: You used the word incorrectly because you are simple. I've baited you into defending yourself like a crack-smoking chihuahua because you are simple. The simplest explanation is likely the best. Therefore, Occam's razor says you are a simpleton.
1) Loaded with Opera7 -- changed to Refuse Popups during the test. It said blocked, as expected, like 30 seconds later... I changed it to Accept Popups, and it said refused still. As expected.
2) Restarted Opera7, with set to Accept popups, and it STILL refused it. Even though I allowed popups.
3) Tried with IE, which can't block popups. IT STILL REFUSED, saying I was blocking.
Friggin useless. It blocks everything. And takes at least 3-6 times longer than most people are WILLING to wait to do so. How many of you normally wait 30 seconds for a page to load before closing it and going elsewhere?
This is almost as stupid and pointless as AT&T saying that we are stilling if we don't watch the commercials we are paying for. If a site wants to show 30 popups when I hit it, it is considered extremely impolite, unprofessional, and annoying. As such, I either block the popups or make sure not to bookmark it. Wonder if I can block sites that use their service? If they have to use advertisements to support their site, why don't they do something like /. or Opera, where the banner ad stays at the top, out of the way? Just because a popup shows an ad doesn't mean I am any more likely to look at it. Quite the opposite. I click on Opera banners quite often -- I **never** look at popup ads.
Besides, how long would it really take someone (who was bored, of course) to circumvent this:
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
I reserve the right to read what _I_ want. Full Stop. :) and
On a note, I'm still using Lynx for 98% of my web
browsing, dillo for 1.9% (=userfriendly.org
Netscape 4.75 for BSD/OS (in the emulation) for the
remaining 0.1% of casual sites that won't do without.
Pages that can't be displayed with lynx+xloadimage
usually aren't worth it anyways, IMHO at least.
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
I found a block list that I pasted into my hosts file (running Win2000 SP 2). Even with general browsing, I still get an occasional popup, which I then immediately track the source of and add them to my hosts file. The annoying part is that whenever I make a change, I'm forced to reboot my computer because the change slows down my entire system. After rebooting, I can surf just fine (until I see another popup). Even the reboot is a pain because after I log onto the domain, a ton of stuff runs on login, and I believe my hosts file is then processed. I certainly hope that I'm next in line for a new computer.
*sigh* I hate it when a perfectly good rant is ruined by facts. :-)
I am glad to see they finally got around to it; obviously, I stopped trying to access their site shortly before Halloween. Thanks for correcting me, but I'm afraid they've already lost me as a customer. I have too many credit cards as it is, and theirs is the least useful of the bunch.
you are absolutely right on the mark.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I installed SpyBot-Search & Destroy 1.1 and I hardly get ANY pop-ups or doublclick ads anymore... I don't know what the software did, but I actually don't see 75% of the crap ads out there... and I DO see only ads that are relevant to my interests. I hardly get pop-ups either, though I haven't blocked all of them yet.
Check out this program... its great for killing spyware too!
Then again, I'm using Lynx, so it might be tricky for them to stop me.
That green slime had it coming.
Of course, if you walk up and use a public 802.11b network, there is no such contract. But you expect eavesdropping there, don't you? After all, there's a longstanding principle (with some recent breaches, notably as cellphone traffic) that it's legal to use any signal that hits your antenna.
Even without such prohibitions, I have some protection. If a third party uses my credit card number without my authorization they're committing fraud, regardless of how they got it. I don't see how I could be said to have authorized the sniffer to use it. An intermediate host is like a cashier who runs my card in a store -- it is possible for them to learn the number, but they are not authorized to use it. Similarly, for most of the obvious examples -- legal evidence, intellectual property, inside information on stocks -- the sniffer is prohibited from using the info by other laws. And if the sniffer cracked the intermediate host, then they're already across the line.
Not all cases are protected, though. There are cases in which the info can be used only if it was obtained legally -- suppose the sniffer is a journalist and the content is a salacious email from Bill to Monica. (If you want a web example, assume Monica is using hotmail and that it's the web traffic that is sniffed.)
Nope, can't say that I do know anyone with an X10 camera. However, I know many people with their home automation, remote control, and other products.
Anecdotal evidence is amusing, but it doesn't prove a point (especially when X10's sales figures and x10's popularity on this very site proves your experience in the minority). Besides this, X10 has, since the beginning, allowed you to block their ads by simply installing a cookie - which they, themselves, provided.
What about "He that controls the Spice controls the Universe!"
-Usul-
Actually, you might find that resolving them to 0.0.0.0 instead, for all respective reasons, it works alot better than using 127.0.0.1.
Hello,
p aign for answers.
Due to the enormous respons to the Anti-Theft campaign we can't unfortunately answer all the e-mails we have received lately. Instead we have added a FAQ to the campaign page. Please go to http://www.anti-leech.com/index.php?option=at_cam
Regards,
Johan Wennberg
Anti-Leech.com
----- Original Message -----
From: stinky wizzleteats
To: general@anti-leech.com
Cc: johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 2:31 AM
Subject: theft tools
> I visited your site after seeing a story on slashdot describing how you
> characterize pop-up blocking as "theft". I found this quite surprising,
> and to be quite honest, I fully expected to find that this was an
> extreme exaggeration of who you were and what you are really about.
>
> The reality is that your site, and your company, are so clearly evil
> that I wonder if you can actually be real.
>
> You actually do characterize pop-up blocking as theft, and you actually
> do sell a service (despite the silliness of the technology involved) to
> force web site visitors to see pop-up ads. How unimaginably vile of
> you. What right do you have to determine how my computer is going to
> behave? How dare you presume to force me to view ads I have neither the
> time, processor power, nor memory for? What kind of arrogant
> neo-railroad tycoon do you think you are?
>
> I am very pleased that your technical acumen is as poor as it is.
> Client side "web site security" is pitiably easy to overcome, and I'm
> sure that every non-Microsoft web browser in existence will soon have
> javascript munging features to render your service inert, and return to
> me the same control over web browsing that I have with my television
> with its channel, volume, and power buttons.
>
> I sincerely hope you enjoy absolutely no success with your nefarious
> venture. I will certainly do everything possible to ensure that
> everyone knows your organization for the pack of weasels that it is.
>
Very few people have been kissed by a cartoon. ^_^.
Be happy!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In other words, I am actually paying for those fucking banner ads to be downloaded to my machine. That's totally unacceptable and I think I'm perfectly in my right to do everything I can to avoid having to download them, including using a browser which blocks popups and running a proxy which redirects requests to known ad servers to a 1-pixel transparant GIF on the proxy.
All this is apart from the fact that I hate advertising in general and intrusive advertising such as commercial breaks, popup ads, slide-over ads, etc. specifically. When I want to know about a product, I'll go looking for information then. Don't bother me with it until then...
Does this mean it's now theft if you ignore a bill-board as you drive past it? Just as they have a right to include ads in their websites I have a right to ignore the ads totally. This is so lame, it must be a slow news day or something.