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

[GlassUser]

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

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