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Nationwide Class Action Filed Against DoubleClick
Stanley Ference continues: "The class action complaint alleges that DoubleClick deceptively and fraudulently commandeered millions of Internet users to the commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers through dissemination of tens-of-millions of fraudulent Internet advertising banners that impersonated computer system messages. The Complaint states that through use of such Fake User Interface ("FUI") dialogs that fraudulently represented themselves as computer system error messages, DoubleClick tricked millions of Internet users into interrupting the work they were performing to respond to the fraudulent system message, only to unexpectedly find both computer and computer user thus hijacked to commercial websites of DoubleClick's customers.
Additional information about this lawsuit, including an illustration of the advertising banners that are the subject of this lawsuit, may be found at ferencelaw.com/doubleclick."
Here's a link to the press release (PDF) announcing the filing of this lawsuit.
But do those signs look like the freeway signs, and are vague at that?
No, that would be a run-of-the-mill advertisement. A FUI would be an offical looking "All Trucks Must Exit Here" sign leading to a truck-repair center.
Or, maybe more realistically, a sign that says "Warning: next stop for blinker fluid in 200 miles"
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
No, the adv. just says: "The road you are on is closed. Come this way."
Despite freeway billboards being annoying they do not attempt to immitate actual road signs, which is illegal.
Even on private streaches of road it is illigal for you to post signes that closely mimic the ugly white on green government signage. Why should critical looking computer message that trick users be all that different... Mike
And when I see signs when I'm on the freeway saying there are once in a lifetime deals at a car dealer I get off the road right away.
This is a bit different. If you saw a sign that said 'Traffic advisery, use this route instead.' you may very well follow it, and would be quite pissed that it was a ploy to get you to look at new cars. I'm sure most computer users aren't savvy enough to tell that it was a fake ad, since it was designed to look just like a message box in windows.
I don't see why you think the FTC should handle it; they'd likely do nothing at all. A class action suit is more likely to get something done, and i for one wouldn't mind if it shut down double click forever.
How about if the sign looked exactly like one of the normal freeway signs, directed you to the exit you were looking for, and you ended up in the parking lot of that car dealer?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
It's all well and good asking for people who have been fooled by these, but to be fair, how many people who ever have thought those things were genuine are likely to ever find out about this action?
They're gonna loose. If people have a case against fast food restaurants for making them fat i think they'll have a case against people actually trying to fool their fat-asses.
If there is one constant in this world, it's people's stupidity and i know that most people have clicked those at least once, twice, maybe even a few times.
It's kinda funny that the whole case depends on people prooving how stupid they are.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Well this is why advertising is legal. I've said it before and I'll say it again - all advertising is fraudulent. There is no such thing as an unfraudulent ad. "Puff talk" or "puffery" is the legal term of art for 'de minimus fraud' and the only reason it's okay is because to prove up fraud, you need to show reliance. Few people, if any, are going to admit they relied on Katherine Zeta Jones saying X product is the best deal around. Thus, the fraud continues.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Problem is, computer expertise is not a matter of intelligence, but rather a matter of practice. My mom can barely navigate through sending an email through yahoo mail, is it because she's an idiot? No, it's because she never uses a computer. Those ads are targeted towards people like her, who don't know better. Of course you and I know better.
But hey, who cares about making sense, you made your funny little post and you'll get your +1 Funny mods, that's all that matters!
I dont understand why they have to fake the AD's. Just give me something I'd click.
Barely clothed Hot chicks. They could have them hold Linux distros with headlines like "Real men use this distro" or "How hard is your Hardware".
Hey, how many of you checkout a vendor just because of a cute Booth Babe? Exactly...
I find this lawsuit a bit interesting, for where, except the internet, would we find this kind of advertisement. Consider a road sign telling you "Danger Road blocked" and an "alternative" rout that ends in Honest Harry's gas station. Sure, you might be able to tell that it was a fake sign, but is it legal because of that?
Anything that makes the Internet easier to use and less scary for the common user without limiting anybody else is a good thing.
On the other hand, if it takes an ambulance chasing laywer to stop these practices, that's not entirely bad. Except that they don't have the consumer's best interest in mind, they have their own best interest in mind.
Legislation through Litigation is the wrong answer. If they really did soemthing illegal or wrong, there are appropriate gov't agencies to deal with it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
On the other hand... Does anyone remember those Orkin commercials where it looks like a cockroach is crawling across your screen? Clever advertising, even if it is misleading. There was a lawsuit a while back by some idiot woman who threw her shoe at the TV when she saw the ad. If I remember correctly, she lost the lawsuit, as she should have.
True, it's a slightly different scenario for this DoubleClick lawsuit. The key difference is that in the cockroach commercial, it's /obviously/ a commercial. Not so for those damn DoubleClick ads, to the moderately-literate computer user.
IMHO, the best eventual outcome of this DoubleClick lawsuit would be some laws requiring Internet advertisers (operating in the U.S. of course, sigh) mark their ads as such, with a big red "ADVERTISEMENT" in the upper left corner. Sort of like newspaper ads.
That is such a bad example and it makes you look like such an idiot for bringing it up.
The ads often appear with fake window frames, so that the X takes you to the advertised site. You don't have to be that much of a bumpkin to be taken in.
Well, if you've never had anyone you know get worried because of those ads then you must not know *that* many people who aren't terribly computer literate.
I've had family members and I've had consulting clients who I've had to explain the situation to. With the family members it's fairly easy because they aren't (usually) going to question whether you know what you're talking about, but it's a d*mn pain in the ass when it's a non-knowledgable consulting client. You've told them one thing, but a message that popped up on their computer told them something different. Do they believe you or "Windows"?
In the "real world" deceptive advertising practices are illegal. This ought to apply to double-click just as much as anyone else.
That said, advertisers have never been allowed to make patently false claims. Just because these adds were on the internet, and not on TV, or radio, or in a magazine has no bearing on anything. Given the amount of latitude they have to stretch, bend, and massage the truth, it should be enough. Suing for outright lies seems pretty reasonable, and the couple cents per person they get in damages will make a nice symbolic warning.
Shouldn't they be able to get in on the lawsuit? After all, if a user gets tricked by a FUI in a large company, it's usually IT that has to deal with it--that means added support costs.
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
What I find to be a cleverer advertising method is to have your ads built into little games that pop up. I've been distracted by one in particular from IBM where you have to put different shapes into their respective slots before the timer runs out. Exactly like this kid's game that a childhood friend of mine (don't remember the name of it though). If some ad threw out a tetris game, it'd be all over for me.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. -- Walt Whitman
After browsing 50+ of these posts I must ask:
what the hell is wrong with 90% of the posters here? Are you really so f***ing arrogant or are you just 14-year-olds who have no other ability besides beeing able to use a computer? Wait.. this is slashdot... forget I asked.
Do you honestly think that a person who clicks on these adds is stupid? How the hell do you excpect someone with no computer skills to spot the difference between the add and a genuine warning?
Do you honestly think it requires intelligence to use a computer? The only thing you need is memory silly people! Experience is what lets you be aware of these things, nothing else.
I assume all the geniuses here are instantly able to spot the difference between an true arabic fullblood (a great horse) and the nordic coldblood (another, very different, horse) the horsedealer over there is trying to sell you...?
Oh wait, you need to have seen them before you say? Good golly, I thought you could spot the difference through your amazing intelligence?
and no, I have never clicked on these adds, not because I'm intelligent, but because I have experience with computers.
"...if you are willing to admit that you are stupid."
Most rapes go unreported for the same reason. Women don't like people knowing that they were so foolish as to walk on the beach alone, or that they actually went on a date with that creep.
I think the chance of man reporting that they were raped is even less than women reporting rapes.
On /. we take the piss out of normal people that get duped by fake UI's, but when the guy at McDonalds wipes the Big Mac beef patty on his ass and serves it to us, we get pissed off. Why? We see a Big Mac and we assume it's edible, the marketing and packaging dictate that it is, and we BUY it for the marketing and packaging. That makes marketing and packaging directly liable. A professional conoisseur can easily spot/smell whether a beef patty has been wiped on someone's ass, but does that mean he can take the piss out of us C++ hAxOrS because we can't smell/taste it?
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
No matter what they do, DoubleClick will always, repeatedly, be able to claim a mistrial for conflict of interest. After all, where in the US are you going to find a Judge that doesn't hate banner ads? (Then again, maybe that's why they filed it in PA...)
from the site:
WHy do they sue doubleclick? When benneton had an 'inappropriate' billboard at some time benneton had to fix it, not the ad agency nor the billboard owner... crazy stuff..
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
It seems to me that the success of this suit hinges on who created the ads. Doubleclick serves these ads, sure. But shouldn't the defendant(s) be the company(ies) whose ads these are? The complaint does claim that DC did create (not just serve) these ads, but is this correct?
From the complaint:
"19. In a diabolical scheme to deceive computer users into misdirecting their computers to Internet sites of defendant's clients, thus disrupting the work the user was otherwise performing, defendants devised and disseminated deceptive advertising banners that gave the appearance of being system warnings or computer alerts being issued by the user's own computer, and enticing the computer user to appropriately respond to the imposter alert or warning."
"...devised and disseminated..." If DC did create the ads, then, yay--go to it Fer-man. Otherwise, I think he's trying to get his hand in the wrong pair of pants.
--an aside: "a diabolical scheme"? Dr. Evil is CEO of doubleclick?
The reason McDonalds served its coffee hot enough to scald is simple: It allowed them to use lower quality beans, without people noticing. In short, they were able to profit by making their products more dangerous for customers.
You may as well say that we can't protect people from being duped by Ponzi schemes, so why not make them legal? The fact is, these are false advertisements, designed to convince the recipient that there is something wrong with his or her computer. This should be outlawed, and I'm hard pressed to see how such a rule violates anyone's freedom of speech.
Is California really stupid? Or just avidly pro-consumer?
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!