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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.
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
What are they going to do if browsers just *hide* the popup windows/banners, still loading the ads in the background?
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!?
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.
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.
The test URL refrenced is here.
:)
BTW the site works with no blockage in lynx
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.
I think it would be more effective if the message it gave was this.
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?
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?"
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.
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.
No, I'm not stealing from them. There is no agreement saying I have to view the website the way they say I have to, and the Web was explictly designed so that publishers could not impose layout decisions upon browsers. I hate all sites that use popups and would never click on a single one out of principle even if I was interested in what they were selling. So I'm saving them bandwidth costs by not loading their ads which I would ignore anyway.
The more advertisers try to saturate our lives with forced advertising, the stronger the backlash will become. What has effectively happened is that due to the sheer number of ads the impact of each individual one has been reduced to near zero. They're really shooting themselves in the foot by using these invasive techniques.
Using Mozilla is not stealing; I see it more as a start to forcing sites to use more reasonable advertising methods by undermining the market for their invasive techniques.
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
No, something more like this :-)
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!
"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."
OK. So, by that logic try this one on for size. Every time you walk into a store at the mall to browse and maybe talk to a sales clerk about this item or that, do you give them a quarter? After all, there's rent to be paid, a staff to hire, electricity, inventory costs, etc. These things aren't cheap, and if you're just going in there to look, you're wasting their time and energy. You're a THIEF!
Didn't think so.
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.
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
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...
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.
... 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.
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.
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;
"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."
Don't sue -- bring criminal prosecution.
The one guy with the case against Southwest Airlines really didn't have a case, because SWA actually was making it possible for him to purchase tickets. Here, the situation is different. Not only is this company actively and agressively forbidding access to the blind, the spokesperson for the company is accusing these disabled individuals of being theives. I'm likely to get modded down as a troll, but I honestly believe there is a potential for litigation here.
Don't some of the larger internet providers distribute pop-up ad blocking software? AOL? Isn't that the sort of kindling for being a target of one of those lawsuits that bankrupts you just by being sued? You know, the kind of suits that "Everybody" is afraid to make the slightest contraversial move in busines because they're so afraid of being sued?
This would be a terriffic time to show me that's not a myth.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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.