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WhenU.com Enjoined From Competing Pop-Ups
Frisky070802 writes "The NY Times reports that a preliminary injunction has been issued against WhenU.com, a company that distributes software that performs certain tasks for users but also intercepts their website visits so that, for instance, a visitor to Expedia would see a pop-up ad for Orbitz. Now if only we could get rid of all the rest of the pop-up ads."
My favorite pop-up blocker is google's toolbar. ,
If I'm going to have some stupid something sitting my windows toolbar section, it might as well do some useful stuff--search google, block pop-ups, and give me pagerank.
I love free software.
Davak
The linux hacker
Well, based on reading the article, WhenU.com offers software that helps people fill out address forms and check weather forecast, while providing you with the aforementioned ads from competitors of the website your visiting. (IMO, neither of these example tasks seems like something that would require a separate program to do, let alone one that hijacks your browser with popups.)
Company Barred From Use of Some Pop-up Ads
By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: January 5, 2004
JUST when some federal courts seemed unwilling to find fault with a controversial type of pop-up Web advertising, a federal judge in New York has called at least a temporary timeout on one version of the advertisements.
Late last month the judge, Deborah A. Batts of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, issued a preliminary injunction that bars the advertising software company WhenU.com from displaying pop-ups and other types of online advertisements for VisionDirect.com when visitors go to 1-800 Contacts.com, a competing Web site.
The decision is the latest twist in a battle between WhenU and more than a dozen companies that object to its advertising techniques. Many more companies are closely watching the fight to determine whether they, too, should sue WhenU and its closest competitor, the Claria Corporation, or simply sign up as advertisers.
Opponents of WhenU's and Claria's advertising approach compare it to hijacking customers after they have entered a store. The techniques differ from the conventional pop-up advertisements, as when the travel company Orbitz.com pays publishers to have its ads pop up on readers' screens.
With WhenU's and Claria's services, for example, Orbitz would pay to have its ads pop up with Web surfers visiting the competing site Expedia.com - as in fact happened last week when visitors arrived at Expedia.com.
In such a case, Orbitz has an opportunity to lure a prospective Expedia customer from Expedia's own site. For this to work, WhenU and Claria must have the Web surfer's complicity. Each company has distributed its software to more than 30 million Internet users. The free software helps users accomplish various tasks online, whether it be filling out address forms or checking weather forecasts.
In exchange for these free services, users agree to let a piece of software track their activity as they surf the Web. (In some cases, this software is bundled not with software from WhenU or Claria, but with free software from other companies, like the file-sharing service providers Kazaa and BearShare.) It it this tracking software that enables WhenU or Claria to display a competitors' ads when users visit various sites.
Online companies have fought WhenU and Claria in the courts for the last three years, usually claiming that their pop-up ads violate federal copyright and trademark laws by disrupting the display of the plaintiffs' Web sites and by unjustly using their trademark to sell advertising, among other complaints.
But WhenU registered several legal victories in the second half of 2003, beginning with a decision in July by a federal district court in Virginia. In that case, the court rejected the argument of U-Haul that WhenU's ads on behalf of its competitors infringed U-Haul's copyrights and trademarks.
In October, Internet retailers Overstock.com and TigerDirect.com dropped suits against WhenU. In November, Federal District Court Judge Nancy G. Edmunds, in Detroit, denied Wells Fargo's request for a preliminary injunction in its suit against WhenU. Judge Edmunds ruled that Wells Fargo was not likely to prevail on its claims of copyright and trademark infringement.
The judge said that WhenU did not use Wells Fargo's trademark, per se, in its advertising, since the pop-ups themselves did not display those trademarks. No trial date has yet been set for the case.
Judge Batts, in New York, made a different judgment in issuing her preliminary injunction against WhenU. She noted that WhenU places the 1-800 Contacts.com Web address in an internal database that is used to trigger the display of competitors' ads. That, she wrote, violates the Lanham Act's trademark protections, because WhenU has used the trademark of 1-800 Contacts in a way that is likely to cause consumer confusion. Specifically, Judge Batts wrote, consumers could be confused about the connection between
I use Mozilla, and haven't seen a pop-up in a very long time. In fact, I haven't seen any Flash (which I hate) either.
-cp-
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
How about having nothing extra in your toolbar and just use Mozilla instead? :)
http://mozilla.org/
Then you are gonna love once XP SP2 is finally released, working helpdesk for an ISP myself, I receive call upon call of people whos computers either
1. Run slow (its your connection!!!)
2. Boot slow (damn [ISP] software!)
3. GP error (Must be [ISP]'s fault - I didn't install anything!)
etc etc...
Simply disabling the "Enable Third-Party Browser extensions (requires restart)" option 'sometimes' fixes the issue, but being the root of all evil is the browser and the spyware embedded in the registry, most fixes are temporary until you get to the FORMAT C: prompt once again.
However I do hear yor pain, and FINALLY a firewall enabled by default in SP2 (XP's firewall is disabled by default), popup blockers in IE, and warnings when a program is attempting to install itself into your browser is one hell of a great start on improving the state of the nation. I am personally looking forward to supporting the original issues that I was paid to support - namely the CONNECTION.
With all those, all you need is a decent Anti-Virus software and a little luser education and they are set.
Rant is over. Move along.. nothing left to see here...
Use Mozilla. Tell your friends.
Mike Hoye
Spam is easy. Just use a mail aliasing system that allows you to give a unique address to every form and your real one to none. Then if one alias starts receiving spam, kill it. Only problem is that it doesn't fix an account already infected with spam, you have to change address. Best move I ever made was dumping my Yahoo address and signing up for a Spamgourmet account.
since opera has a block pop-up facility
The &btnG=Google+Search is not necessary.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%s will do.
arstechnica report that XP service pack 2 adds a pop-up blocker to IE