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Judge OKs Competitive Pop-Up Ads

Posted by timothy on from the quandary dept.

Mirkon writes "A while back, U-Haul filed suit against adware giant WhenU for displaying competing advertisements to users as they browsed U-Haul's site. Friday, District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee's ruling dismissed U-Haul's suit, saying '...the fact is that the computer user consented to this detour when the user downloaded WhenU's computer software from the Internet,' and 'Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother, unsolicited bulk e-mail, "spam," as a burden of using the Internet.' While the ruling was issued in the context of unfair competitive marketing, it's speculated that this will have broad implications in the fight against adware - and they aren't kind to the user. WhenU chief executive Avi Naider is unfortunately quoted as saying 'This is a victory for consumer choice -- it ultimately protects consumers' right to control what they see on their computer screens.'"

3 of 373 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ironic by Ignis+Flatus · · Score: 5, Informative

    When running either Spybot or AdAware (can't remember which right now), it detected spyware on my machine that was implanted when I installed a wireless mouse and keyboard from Logitech. So, those are the dangers we face now. Every time we add a peripheral to our machines, we could unwittingly be installing a trojan program. Probably, there was mention of the trojan somewhere in the EULA, but I personally take this as an act of aggression by the device manufacturer.

  2. Re:Popup? what popup? by mark-t · · Score: 4, Informative
    Mozilla doesn't "block" popups, per se... it's just a web browser.

    But as a full-featured web browser, it carries within it a javascript interpreter.

    Mozilla devs have fidddled with the javascript interpreter somewhat, giving the end user finer control over what javascript commands are allowed to execute, one of the selections being to not allow javascript code which opens a new window to execute, unless that code is executed in direct response to a mouse click.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
  3. [Sigh] ...here's some FREE fixes for Windows users by Quizo69 · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.proxomitron.info/ - The Proxomitron (popup, banner, webbug, everything bad on the net killer)

    http://security.kolla.de/ - Spybot Search & Destroy (spyware/keylogger/trojan killer)

    http://www.free-av.com/ - AntiVir (virus scanner)

    http://www.zonelabs.com/ - ZoneAlarm (firewall)

    http://methlabs.org/methlabs.htm - PeerGuardian (anti-RIAA blocklist)

    Start with those, clear your own systems and then most importantly, EDUCATE others to use them and understand why they need them.

    Quizo69

    --

    Visceral Psyche Films