Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Panama, Leeches, Comeuppance
Excuse me, is this well already poisoned? PHPee writes "Yesterday Slashdot posted an article (only thieves block pop-up ads) regarding anti-leech.com's anti-theft campaign. I happened to be one of many people who sent an email to anti-leech, explaining my disappointment, and I received an auto-responder message today, indicating anti-leech has posted a FAQ regarding its anti-theft campaign."
Wish he'd have been arrested for fraud, instead. MojoT writes "Following up from a previous story, Madison Priest, the so called inventor of a broadband Magic Box, was arrested Friday on drug trafficking charges and possession of a firearm by a felon. He must have been confusing the bit rate of his Magic Box with the number of hits he was getting off his stash."
You mean this stuff is just a kind of data? pelle writes "As a (non Panamanian) geek in Panama, I've been following the UDP story quite heavily. The Panamanian paper La Prensa reports that the Panamanian Supreme court has suspended the infamous order to block UDP's used for VOIP the Enteregulador (the governments regulator of utilities). The suspension was done on a complaint by a company called Net2Net Corp. There has been strong uproar amongst people in Panama about the blocking of the UPD's. So this is seen as a welcome thing. The article quotes Gonzalo Córdoba, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation as saying "Blocking the ports for accessing voice is a form of censorship". For Spanish readers the article is at: La Prensa Note, my Spanish aint all that yet, so I might have missed out several finer points."
I'll wait out the battle in my hobbit hole, thanks. An anonymous reader writes "First scooped at theonering.net: The official Lord of the Rings site has put up an amazing feature that goes into a lot of detail on the motion-capture techniques and programming that goes into the movies' battle scenes. It is one of the best-designed web features I have seen, very informative with interviews from the people working on it and interactive "design your own army"-type features. This should answer any questions left by the recent Slashdot article, and raise many more... (Requires Flash to view.)"
Don't PanIP Timothy Beere writes "Just a quick update to the Slashdot faithful. I received notice several weeks ago that PanIP was suing me and the PanIP Defense Group for the www.youmaybenext.com web site.
The lawsuit claims trademark infringement, defamation and unfair competition. They obviously see the web site as a big threat to their grand plan of suing the potential thousands of e-commerce sites that they could have targeted.
In a preliminary court hearing last week, a judge resoundingly denied their request for a Temporary Restraining Order against the web site. This is the same judge that will be hearing the patent case. We will soon be filing a motion to have PanIP pay all attorney's fees for the web site case as we feel this was nothing less than a litigation threat meant to restrain our free speech. Apparently PanIP doesn't think we have the right to inform people about what they're are doing. Or maybe they are feeling very uncomfortable with the spotlight shining on them.
One other note. We currently have 16 members in our FightBack Defense Group. The FightBack group will soon be posted on the web site.
On a personal note. I can't say enough about the overwhelming response I got from the original slashdot post. I knew if I could get the word out there that people would be disgusted by what PanIP is doing.
We are in the process of filing our responses for the Group and the case will soon be under way in the court. We are still hunting for good prior art in an effort to have their patents invalidated. We intend to stop PanIP and we need your support!"
Also their "technology" is not really effective at all. The bit where they claim to protect the HTML source of a page is absolutely ridiculous and simple to circumvent. Do they actually sell this crap??
Maybe it's just me, but they seem... well, weird. Kinda like those EARN $5,000,000 IN JUST THREE DAYS BY STUFFING ENVELOPES deals. Dunno. Maybe it's just me.
Oh, and the FAQ page tried to install some Gator scumware on load. I bet they did it because they knew the FAQ was going to get hit, because none of the other pages in the site did that.
This has already been discussed quite a bit. Is there any compelling legal argument that there is a real contractual obligation, express or implied, to force us to consume the advertising?
Why are you calling it theft?
Legally it is of course not theft to block pop ups (today)
TODAY?! This implies that at some point, they wish to have pop-up blocking declared ILLEGAL. This really scares me.
Legally it is of course not theft to block pop ups [but] it's like stealing something from us.
The only way to cover for that income is using banner ads and pop ups
Want money? GET A REAL JOB! What is so special about "pop-ups"? You can't find another way to fund yourself? Can't figure out a type of advertisting that doesn't piss people off? Read some books on capitalism, then adapt or die.
Seriously, these guys are nuts and will be out of business in a year. Meanwhile, all the small web sites will either die off or find a better way to support themselves.
Actually, now that I think about it.. I guess I don't mind these guys. They'll let me AVOID pop-ups and the sites that use them! Cool! Hell, I wish Mozilla would put up a dialog that says "oops, this site uses pop-ups, stay the fuck away". Then everybody wins!
Google is profitable without that much advertising. However, Google is a multinational huge company with an enourmous sale force and budget.
Gee, I wonder WHY Google is so successful? I wonder WHY Google doesn't have an "apologies" page like you do, trying to justify its existence. Maybe because they have a legitimate business model, not just a bunch of whining and crappy javascript?
Thank you,
Anonymous Coward who sounds pissed but really isn't
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The law does not call refusing to watch commercials theft or any other criminal offense. We don't live in an Orwellian time where you could be forced to watch the commercials. It's also not any civil offense I can think of -- you're not breaking any agreement you gave real or implied consent to. I think it's going to be pretty hard to make out any implied legally binding promise on your part to watch ads.
To use TV as an analogy, muting all the commercials is fine, and is anticipated by the advertisers. If anything the mute button has encouraged them to make ads less bombastic and more entertaining. However, it can get stickier, at least if you are recording and if you are using technology to block the ads. Recording is legal as a form of fair use, but I wonder if routine ad-blocking would raise a problem. I've heard this discussed in the context of these personal video recorders, where they could make ad-skipping very easy, but have made it slightly inconvenient to placate the industry. I don't know if this is out of legal concerns or political pressure. Now, ad blocking software might be a similarly suspect technology. But that seems weak, and as a practical matter the software will not be challenged.
However, I do think an ethical argument could be made that you should watch the ads, perhaps just occasionally as a compromise. We now the ads are what keep the lights on, and that the advertisers are asking for a little of our time in return to make their pitch. If they ask you up front, would you be willing to watch a few ads in exchange for your nighttime dose of Stargate? Slashdot or Salon ask us to pay a subscription to suppress ads; surely it's implied that they'd rather you didn't do it on your own, thus evading both their revenue streams and being at least a bit of a leech. You're not subscribing for the convenience of having them block the ads, you're paying to block the ads, period.
But this is perhaps just a lot of handwringing. Certainly ad-blocking is not a crime, but we have to acknowledge that in many cases, as with TV, we prefer ad-sponsorship over other models, such as paying. I used to use ad-blocking software and got tired of managing it. I now glance at the ads occasionally, or at least don't treat them like the Medusa, where a mere glance might be lethal. And, significantly, I avoid ad-choked sites altogether, denying myself the content while making the point that theirs is not a site to which I will give a "hit." If enough people do this, ad revenue drops and the site has to improve its scheme or perish.
Vote with your feet. Boycott sites you don't like, and respect the sites that you do visit by suffering the content the webmaster has to include not to die. If you don't like it, walk, and if you care enough, send the webmaster a note explaining why.
Sorry my prose rambles -- I'm still mulling this over.
In Mozilla and Opera, I block unrequested popups and use user CSS to eliminate most banners. JavaScript is enabled, although I reject third party cookies.
;)
Their example just sat there in both. No access denied, no loading images, nothing.
Ironically, in MSIE, with no banner or popup blocking (and I *saw* the test popup it launched), and no reported blocked cookies, I got an access denied message after about 5 seconds.
I'm really impressed by this, uh, "technology". Seriously -- they've come up with something this poor, and actually manage to sell it to people! I wish I could do that, although hopefully with something less lame
I find the argument about blocking ads on a webpage (or on TiVO) the same as I see P2P file sharing: Technology is changing things. It is not the law's place to hold up defunct business models. If websites can't survive without popups, if television can't survive TiVO, and if the recording industry can't survive P2P, I say good. Something better will take their place. Something the people actually want. It's capitalism in action, why can't anybody important see that?
No sig for you.
The rest of the world all has differnt oppinions about guns mostly because they are something that can destabalize nations
And that, my friend, is exactly the point of the Second Amendment.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own a gun.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Hmm I clicked on the link to see their FAQ and their attempt at redeeming any of their legitimacy.. and what do i get? the trademark of the scummiest sites on the internet.... a Gator install request.
Sorry, but they are scumbags through and through. anyone supporting the invasive popups and allowing gator anywhere near their servers are worse than telemarketers that scam old people.
Sorry, but their actions and how their site acts says contrary to someone interested in doing legitimage business and I will continue to warn people away from their company and anyone that uses their services.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.