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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...)"
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?
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!?
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.
There has been no contact or agreement on my part to view ads in order to view the content of the site. Much like television commercials. Your entire argument is completely invalid for a number of reasons, but instead of listing them, let me ask you one question: how far am I, as a web site viewer, obligated to go? Many ad sites don't pay out unless the link is actually clicked. Should I click the link? If I don't, am I "stealing" content? Should I be required to buy something from the site? Am I stealing if I don't?
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.
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.
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
Wow, what an argument. Of course we are thieves, it can't be the site's owners fault that he publishes his stuff in a medium that can't enforce ad-watching. I also steal everyday when I don't read every ad in the morning paper.
For all companies that started up on hype and don't have a sound business model: please, belly up, like, immediately. That means you too, anti-leech.com...
The stuff you browse on the web isn't exactly completely free of charge. There're bandwidth costs to be paid, servers... etc.
...all they're asking in return is for you to do your part and look at those ads... is it that big of an inconvenience?
If they didn't want to pay bandwidth costs, they wouldn't have placed their site online. That is an assumed cost of operating.
Yes, we browse their sites for free, and it's perfectly within their rights to send us pop-up ads. But I agreed to no terms of service when I typed in their address.
If they're going to recoup their costs, they're going to have to do it smarter. Salon, for example, won't let you access their premium content unless you pay, and that's fair. They've implemented a system that doesn't make assumptions. It doesn't really work, but it's still fair.
Whether or not it's a big inconvenience is a matter of opinion, a moot point, and not worth discussing. The issue is whether or not I'm allowed to block their pop-ups altogether.
Wait, scratch that. That's how they want us to think. The issue is whether or not they are allowed to force me to see what they want me to see.
I say no.
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
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
I wonder if Proxomitron can fix it. Yahoo! Mail doesn't work properly on Opera, it recognizes Opera as an "other" browser and displays the screen with ugly 14 and 19 pt fonts, instead of 10 and 12 pt like in IE and Mozilla. So I wrote a Proxomitron script to change the JS variable "isMozilla" to "true", and this worked: the Javascript got fooled into giving Opera the nicer Style Sheet. I wonder if the sort of thing can be applied to this stupid trick. If the script asks "Did that window load?", then we can easily say "Sure it loaded"... well if I have more time I'll work out a hack.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I wonder if this special code can be cleaned before it reaches the browser by The Proxomitron or your favourite page-scrubber proxy. It might be a little annoying to disable javascript every time I run into one of these. (Perhaps the mozilla crew will make a nice interface for per-site javascript blocking.)
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...
>And no TV without advertising? Would that be a bad thing? I think so. Cable costs around 30 a month for basic stuff, and that is all subsidized by advertising. Its not stealing to mute ads on TV, and it shouldn't be stealing to block pop-ups, but if all TV was commercial-free, your cable bill would be many, many times higher. Advertisers are taking a risk when they take out an ads on a website, TV, or even a newspaper. It doesn't matter the medium, there is no gaurantee that people will actually pay attention to the ad, and the advertiser knows this. What I am waiting for is on-demand TV with a commercial option. You can watch the superbowl for $1 with commercials, or $30 without. That way, people could still pay around $30 a month for their commercial ridden cable, and folks who watch less frequently can pay $30 a month for their particular shows, commercial free. To be at all practical, the commercial free version would probably have to air after the commercial one, so the current production could stay the way it is, with a little addition. Ok, I'll stop now, unless someone want to give me venture capital. Actually, even then, I'm done.
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.
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.
But what if I only paid for the channels I actually watched? That would be the capitalist ideal--channels would have to actually put something on that people would pay for. Instead, you have to take a package that includes crap like TBS, TBN, a bazillion espns, etc. I could easily get by with about 10 stations at the moment, plus 4 broadcast stations that fall under the must carry rule. SF, TNN, CNN, CNNhn, BBC, TLC, Discover, Animal Planet, Showtime and HBO, Fox, WB (our local station carries Buffy and Enterprise because we don't have a UPN affiliate).
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.
I don't agree. You have to wonder for starters why it's so easy to block these ads.
It's partly/mainly because the ads redirect you to another site. Is this necessary? No.
Also, why are they redirecting you to another site? It's because they want to track you across the web. I DON'T want to be tracked across the web. I call that spying; I find that deeply unethical, far less ethical than me turning off the advertisements.
I mean what you going to do? Visiting a website should not invalidate my need for privacy just because some idiot thinks they I owe them a living off stealing my privacy. This is every bit as evil, and far more insidious than spam- this is a real 1984 scenario happening in our lives.
Making money on the web should come from selling stuff. Not stealing my privacy. And no I don't care if the websites go broke. I don't owe them a living, just because they think I do. This is the real issue.
Fine, if they want to turn the site off unless I agree to spying- in that case, I ain't going to that site, and I recommend you don't either.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Replying to myself because this is horrible. I mean, damn. I can't try out Javascript because of the way those backslashes show up before quotes. That's a perl thing, right? I find this terribly ammusing.
Non intrusive (like non animated gif or java) banners are a-ok by me. I recognize that sites do need to pay for their bandwidth with advertising.
I do not tolerate annoying java ads and popups. I block those. No site should need to resort to popup ads, unless the webmaster is simply greedy.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
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...
Too true! Now I work in the online porn industry. Most annoying spammers, popup artists, and what not, I know.
Recently did an ad campaign using free sites you find on link lists. Two pages of nudie pics, and the only ad was a single standard banner with the site name and catch phrase. 80% of the people who went to the free website visited the pay site. That is incedibley high, if you were wondering :P
My theory in the design was that either people would appreciate the ad free approach and visit out of appreciation (for lack of a better word), or that they would think the pay site was so good it didn't need to fill every pixel with some BS hype. Don't know what it was, but it worked.
I'm in the process of converting all my sites using this approach, and will definately use it more in future promotions.
FWIW I never did popups, "free" sites with hidden fees, or any of that other crap. Honestly got into the biz because I loved porn but hated what was offered :P
> Non intrusive (like non animated gif or java) banners are a-ok
/. don't bother me too, although the
Agreed. I have no problem with advertising per se. Ordinary banners
I don't complain about; occasionally, I even follow one. (So far, on
occasions that I've followed one, the ad has always been narrowly
targeted for the specific content of the page I was viewing; e.g., an
ad for shell accounts ("Panix" IIRC) on a website that provided
information about using Unix. Ads like that I'm not unhappy about
at all. Most of the ones on
squarish ones that get embedded in the story are mildly annoying
because of the way they screw up the layout. But not annoying
enough that I'd actually _do_ anything about it, like block them or anything.) If you want me to see your ads, just present them as
regular ordinary ads. I have no problem with that.
Popups, however, are totally unacceptable. Until Mozilla added
dom.disable-open-during-load, I almost never surfed with Javascript
turned on at all, and just skipped most sites that required it.
I have other things to do with my time than close a bunch of extra
windows all the time. Mozilla doesn't send anything back to the
site when it ignores a popup, so they're obviously using some kind
of chicanery to determine that; whatever it is, the message is a
clear "we don't want you on your site", and believe me, with the
size of the web being what it is, I can find another site that will
be more hospitable in about the same amount of time it would take
me to check the little "popups" checkbox on my prefs toolbar, give
or take a couple of seconds. Guess which I'm more likely to do?
This is not an issue of rights; it's an issue of practice. The
site (assuming it's a private-sector site, which seems like a
reasonable assumption if we're talking about ad revenue) of course
has the right to refuse to serve me pages for any reason, even if
it's "we don't like the list of languages your browser accepts" or
"you are in the same subnet with a former employee, and we didn't
like the colour of his trousers". Hey, you want to block me, block
me; there's _lots_ of other content on the net.
The thing is, there are two ways this can turn out, depending on
how many people find out how to block unrequested windows (which,
realistically, depends on whether any major browser ever ships with
them blocked by default). If almost nobody blocks popups, then the
resources a site expends checking everybody will dwarf the small
amount of resources they are ostensibly saving by doing the blocking.
That is the current situation. If a major browser (e.g., AOL) ever
ships with unrequested popups off by default, then the sites that
refuse to switch to other forms of advertising will be locking
themselves out of that much traffic and ad revenue. Either way,
sites that insist on popups are hurting themselves. And as far
as I'm concerned, they're _only_ hurting themselves.
There are other types of advertising I'm also unwilling to view,
too. Blatantly fraudulent advertisements (such as the ones that
try to pass themselves off as dialog boxes) are Distilled Evil, for
example, and if I worked at the FTC I'd try to go after them. It's
an offense worthy of jailtime, IMO. I'm not talking about mild
marketing optimism, but the outright fraud.
I'm also unwilling to view animations that don't stop. I allow
animated GIFs to play through _once_, but no more. Under no
circumstances am I willing to surf with Flash enabled.
Sites that require any of these things, I just skip. This means
perhaps one in a hundred sites that I was going to view I end up
not viewing, but I always find equivalent content on another site
(usually in short order) because the web is getting pretty big
these days. I think pretty soon there might be more than a million
sites, or something. (Ahem.)
I don't see how this is a rights issue, just plain old stupidity.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
> (Perhaps the mozilla crew will make a nice interface for per-site
> javascript blocking.)
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, a nice interface is all that's
lacking. If you want to mess with capability policies, you can
do that now. However, it's not worth the trouble; it's easier
to just find another site. When AltaVista's advertising got out
of control (more than four animated banners per page), I switched
to Google, which I've been using since. I _could_ have used a
proxy to block the ads, but it would have been a waste of time;
switching to Google accomplished the same thing without taking
up any of my time maintaining a block list.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Google should have a feature to exclude sites with popups... now, that would be neat.. much more useful than their catalog search :)
A cool trick is (if your not running a web server) is to grab the httpd python demo script, mod it so it always serves the same image no matter what the request, and like drop in your favorite buffy the slayer ,anime or pr0n if your inclined that way as the image. combine with host file and amuse yourself as all banner ads turn into buffy.
The 'vampiric' banner ad machine Slain!!!!!!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.