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Prince of Pop-ups

Posted by michael on from the everyone's-gotta-be-prince-of-something dept.

Ric writes "From the article lead paragraph: 'If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that's just the beginning - Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'"

9 of 539 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent!! by Binestar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If this guy can start charging people for using popups then these webpages won't pay and popups will start dying off. While a patent like this is mostly a bad thing, the side effects are good!

    Of course I use mozilla with popup filtering enabled, so it's not really that much of an issue to me. =)

    --
    Do you Gentoo!?
  2. Anyone have this guy's address? by ManoMarks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    To inundate him with junk mail, of course, and also to hit him up for money. Or just hit him. No, wait, I'm a Quaker. I keep forgetting that...

    --

    That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere

  3. Good! by earthforce_1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hopefully he charges astronomical licence fees for both "innovations" retroactive to the day he filed. Hopefully that will be the nail in the coffin that drives these scourges off the desktop.

    Heck, I wish somebody had patented spam as well!

    --
    My rights don't need management.
  4. Re:Hooray! by bhsurfer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not sure that giving this type of scumbag millions of dollars to play with would prevent any future annoying web "functionality". Hell, it might be providing him R&D money to do develop ways to REALLY piss people off...

    --
    Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
    Groucho Marx
  5. Re:Hmm by molarmass192 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thank you, exactly what I was thinking. It's a feature of JavaScript. This is like me patenting the META REFRESH tag. Sad part is I'd probably be able to get a patent for it.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  6. Not a moment too soon by ncc74656 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I got the first unrequested popup I've ever run across in Mozilla when I was reading a NYTimes article linked in this article. The ad-filtering proxy I use at least made it a blank popup, but a change to the config file fixed it so that it closes as soon as it opens. We could only be so lucky that the Times would be targeted by Shuster.

    (The popups appear when you click a "next page" or "previous page" link in the article, so Mozilla must be treating it as a requested popup. In addition to a whitelist of sites that are allowed to throw popups, Mozilla needs a blacklist of sites that are never allowed to throw popups.)

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  7. As good of place as any by SomeOtherGuy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was asked a question by a co-worker yesterday, and did not have a solid answer. Since it somewhat relates to this story and google did nothing but bring back ads for popup blockers, I thought I would loose it to the /. people. Simple question -- Anybody who has used Firebird, Mozilla, Opera, etc -- has seen how much better the browsing experience is without countless popups. What is stopping Microsoft from putting out a version or patch of/to IE that has this feature? I know that the conspirecy theorists could speculate to no end on this one, but is there a simple answer?

    --
    (+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
  8. Not on general popups, but misleading popups only. by doublem · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "interact with the browser to modify or control one or more of the browser functions, such that the user is directed to a predesignated site or page, instead of accessing the site or page typically associated with the selected browser function."

    So he patented misleading people via a web browser...

    Intersting.

    --
    "Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
  9. Re:Hooray! by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Because pop-ups will not go away. What he is claiming is that he invented and patented the pop-up, now that many people use it he wants to get paid. But the likelihood that he will get paid is yet to be seen - the likelihood that the pop-ups will go away very very doubtful.

    However, more telling about where blame for frustrations will lie - is in the quote regarding the popups with sound that you cannot turn off. This is VERY upsetting.

    I OWN MY COMPUTER - its fully 100% a resource of MINE and nobody else. I also PAY for my internet access, by the month.

    If he wants to force feed me ads - then he better damn well PAY me. And protect himself while walking around in public.

    Seriously - this is a major concern of mine and I am sure, many others.

    Advertising is getting totally out of hand and something needs to be done. I can understand certain forms of advertising, like on free TV stations - where I am getting the service (TV for free) and in return I am agreeing to being subjected to ads.

    However in any service where I actually pay for it - I should be asked, paid or otherwise consulted before being subjected to advertising.

    In fact I am in the process of starting an ISP where advertising of ANY kind is absolutely forbidden and technically (as much as possible) prevented. No details on how I am doing this, sorry... but one thing is that for a nominally higher rate you can have an ISP that will not tolerate any sort of advertising to its clients.

    Advertising is polluting the world we live in and even our minds with unproductive thoughts - and actually detracts from our quality of life. I hope to change this.

    On a related note - would you sign up on this ISP?