Gator-style Overlay Ads Are Legal, Says Court

donutz writes "C|Net has the scoop: "A federal court has ruled that pop-up ads for rivals of U-Haul International, placed atop the moving company's own site by a third-party software application, are legal." In this case, it was ad serving company WhenU.com placing the ads, but this decision could have a big impact on the court cases that involve competitor Gator."

Comments

Re:This happens on Cable TV all the time

[LostCluster]

Yes, but both Fox News and CNN consent to allowing that to happen because they each have a 2 minute "local window" within every hour of programming, a commercial block that is specifically marked with metadata as belonging to the cable or DBS provider's ads. The cable/DBS company can then sell those ads to whomever they want, and that just happens to be a rival cable channel so be it. The stations view that as part of the deal they have to make to get onto the cable TV dial.

The difference here is that U-Haul has no relationship with WhenU at all... they'd rather WhenU simply go away.

WHO has "the scoop?"

[poptones]

Sorry, but The Masons covered this days ago - along with several other interesting stories.

If you want news, go to the source.

Re:Fake Windows messages

[LostCluster]

Actually, this one has been solved already. Bonzi was cornered into a settlement that made them promise never to use such an ad again.

Lets make them pay by doing this..

[TheHawke]

All of us (I think that Linux users have this too) open their hosts file and add this to it:

127.0.0.1 www.gator.co.uk
127.0.0.1 www.gator.com
127.0.0.1 www.gator.net
127.0.0.1 webdp.gator.com
127.0.0.1 whenu.com
127.0.01 gator.com

This will fix their wagon quite thoroughly, until they switch their domain addresses, then reopen your hosts file and repeat..
I've got a little hosts file (only 22K) that pretty much takes care of all of the jokers that push ads upon you by replacing their ads with a quaint DNS error.

Let me know if you want a copy of the file.

Re:The ads probably should be legal

[Anonymous Coward]

You should check out Spybot Search and Destroy. I prefer it to Ad-Aware.

Re:The ads probably should be legal

[lpret]

If you have the money, try Deepfreeze. We use it at my university, and it's very handy in terms of keeping everything clean.

Re:Too bad it's so narrow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gator is not the only fish out there that can do pop ups. This person has designed a hardware popup generator.

Re:The ads probably should be legal

[Brightest Light]

If your gaming center has a strict "no installing software" policy, I highly recommend you back that up with something like Jungsoft's HDD Sheriff. The school district I work for has it deployed on all public computers, and it works wonderfully. You simply set the computer up the way you like, then install HDD Sheriff, and leave it at that. People can install whatever they life, you simply reboot the computer and it all goes back to the original, "clean" state. Weatherbug? Reboot. GAIN? Reboot. It's that simple.

Re:The ads probably should be legal

[GlassUser]

Disable automatic activeX control download. Problem solved. Also gets rid of annoying flash garbage.

Adware

[Kyouryuu]

Whether it's in the EULA or not, adware should be outlawed. Companies like Gator, Bonzi Buddy, WebHancer and others do not deserve to exist and should have been blown out of existence years ago. The average computer user doesn't know about spyware or just how dangerous GAIN is, much less what to do about it.

These are vile programs. The kind whose deletion by anything other than the official uninstaller will kill your Internet connection. Programs whose tendrils wrap so tightly around your core components that they are like a weed you cannot kill. Programs designed to befuddle the average user and wreck havoc when they are crossed. In other words, they are completely legal viruses and trojan horses that hide behind the EULA's veil of "we're not responsible for damages to your system."

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I think people need to make themselves aware of this issue and take responsibility for what they download and use. They do need to have a look around the Internet prior to downloading a popular program, just to see what little "bonuses" come with it. However, I also think our government should step in and save those who are ignorant to the problem. Both government agencies and software designers can do a lot more to crackdown on this than they have. Legislation should be passed that outlaws programs whose sole purpose is to produce unwanted advertising and whose nature is elusive at best.

Let's face it. Someone out there is getting very rich off of our personal information. Rich enough to swamp the Internet with more ads to spread the infection to more computers. It has to stop.

Accurate Windoze Time

[ewhac]

I didn't realize this until recently: Win2K has a built-in NTP client. If you are on an NT domain or other corporate LAN, this has probably already been set up for you:

• Open a Command Prompt.
• Enter the command: net time /setsntp:servername where servername is the name of your preferred NTP server (your ISP should be able to provide this; typically something like ntp.my-isp.com).
• Close the Command Prompt.
• Right-click on My Computer; select Manage.
• In the left-hand pane, select Services & Applications.
• In the right-hand pane, double-click on Services.
• Double-click on Windows Time (near the bottom).
• In the configuration window, click the Start button. Your clock will be synchronized to the NTP time server.
• In the drop-down menu Startup Type, select Automatic. This will start the NTP client each time you boot Windows.
• Click OK. Close the Management interface.

There. No cheesy spy-ware necessary. Also, performance-conscious gamers needn't worry. NTP synchronization requires, at worst, perhaps one packet per hour to keep things straight.

Schwab

Re:The ads probably should be legal- FIREWALLS

[BlueUnderwear]

Can't you stop this stuff at the firewall.

Indeed. Configure your firewall to do transparent squid, and then put the following into your squid.conf:

acl dangerousFiles url_regex -i \.exe$ \.cab$ \.scr$ \.pif$ \.ocx$
acl msie browser MSIE
...
http_access deny dangerousFiles msie

Re:This happens on Cable TV all the time

[Lumpy]

your local cable company PAYS those channels for the right to cover up the ad's in the local insertion window. It's in the channel carry fees.. it's a different rate if you insert ad's on them.

It is nowhere near the same.. gator doesnt pay anyone squat.