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D Squared To Stop Sending Pop-Ups
bizpile writes "D Squared Solutions, the company created by college students Anish Dhingra and Jeffrey Davis, has agreed to stop bombarding computer users with Internet pop-up ads to advertise its ad-blocking software, avoiding a court battle with the Federal Trade Commission. They were sending pop-up ads using the Messenger function enabled on many Windows operating systems. Their attorneys claimed the pair were not trying to extort consumers with their ads and only intended to send one a day to computer users. Lawyer Anthony J. Dain has said the ads are 'annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.'" (The San Diego Union-Tribune also has a story.)
'annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.'
No, no I don't. Thank you, FTC.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
And this whole "internet" thing is still pretty new to you, but that was the previous story.
Lemme guess, their popup was advertising for how to stop popups, right?
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D Squared agreed not to send pop-up ads using the Messenger function enabled on many Windows operating systems; such ads do not require an open Web browser to display. The company also won't sell ad-blocking software any longer, and it is barred from sending other ads unless users can choose not to receive them.
Looking at this it looks like their advertising days are over. That last bit will be hard for them to get around since they'll likely be heavily scrutinized by the FTC for some time to come.I certainly won't feel sorry for them, they were sending their popups using the windows Messaging function, making them even lower down than most popup advertisers. Kudos to the FTC for going after these guys!
Which? Lawyers that defend assholes like this?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I guess they learned about another annoyance in a free society: Lawyers
Oh yeah... Right...
Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - can't get fooled again.
Oh, wait, that's the guy from Texas, isn't it?
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Anyone got this "Dain" person's IP address? I have a "NET SEND" that I'd like to throw his way.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You know, when I first read that headline, I was thinking of the Square D company that makes circuit breaker boxes and other electrical supplies. And I was thinking "What the hell?"
Has anyone thought of sending out messages telling people how to turn off Windows Messenger?
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Messenger should never have been exposed as a default running service on Windows XP, 2000, & NT computers.. with no authentication and no option to turn it off without going deep in to a services menu.
This proves that software developers in general were caught flat-footed by the internet, and that they failed us as customers by claiming that their computers were now "internet ready" and only meant by that that they gave us integrated no-choice branded browsers and instant messengers to save their market share, they didn't even think about us, just themselves.
Bottom feeders like Square D exist and will always exist. The real failure are software developers, and they should take the blame for the decisions they made from 96 - 01 (when XP was released with Messenger ON) and do better.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run a virus scan and delete my tracking cookies.
There is a rage in me to defy the order of the stars, despite their pretty patterns.
annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.
Yep, we dealt with them all right. Same way we deal with shoplifting,
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
of how the government can properly work with the internet community in policing legitimate nuisences. I'd almost go as far as to say this is evidence we don't need a ton of laws specially tailored to the internet.
only intended to send one a day to computer users
... that still seems like a lot.
Only once a day?
-K
This proves that software developers in general were caught flat-footed by the internet, and that they failed us as customers by claiming that their computers were now "internet ready" and only meant by that that they gave us integrated no-choice branded browsers and instant messengers to save their market share, they didn't even think about us, just themselves.
No, it proves that Microsoft had zero regard for the Internet and for their customers. The Mac OS had no problems like this. Linux had no problems like this. BSD had no problems like this. The only developers that seemed to think that allowing authentication-less control over the local environment was acceptable (and then tried to promote the view that "no desktop machines should ever exist on the Internet without being firewalled") were the developers at Microsoft. Unfortunately, for them, all their competitors did not completely ignore security when designing software, and as a result, the Microsofties came out looking rather pathetic, especially when they tried to shunt blame off onto sysadmins for not trying to patch over *their* poor design with a firewall.
May we never see th
Its truly sad that Windows XP Service Pack 2 sets the messenger service to disabled by default. It was always nice to know that no matter if you friend on a lan was on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, etc, you could send them a message. Its a shame marketing agencies abused this. I for one leave write on in *nix and messenger on in windows because I'm behind a NAT and dont get these annoyances, and sure every once in a while at a LAN party someone will annoy you with it when your playing a full screen game, but none the less its a shame that this functionality is going away by default, it was truly a cool feature in windows.
Oh, yeah, this is slashdot, um, in Soviet Russis you annoy popups
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
But seriously, it's quite amazing that they are admitting in court that their business model is a regretable annoyance. There are so many ways to make money which are a) legal and b) not annoying. I do agree with their lawyer that they should be allowed to continue; users should turn off functions which make their computers accessible to the net in general if they don't want to receive such things.
So we can strip the annoying slashdot theme prefix and maybe do other neat stuff, like convert news links into regfree google links :)
So if I come 'round and kick them in the groin once a day and then leave, is that another of those 'annoyances (sic) you have to deal with in a free society'?
Seems like assault and battery, but really, it's not! And those ads they're sending, they only SEEM like an invasion of privacy, but trust me, they're not!
You know other annoyances you might have to deal with in a free society? People throwing excrement at your house and car if you're a scumbag lawyer.
Hell, it's biodegradable, so it can be argued that it takes even less action to clean up than a windows messenger pop-up.. just leave it there long enough and it'll go away.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Funny how you can net send spam millions of the world's computers and get away with it, but spam one gov't agent and you'll be promptly(after months of legal stuff) shutdown. Because of the inconvenience of not being able ignore them like traditional email spam I'm going to side with the FTC on this one.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
nuff said. what a strange excuse for bad marketing habits. "Hey it's a free world, that is, no rules... or isn't it?" I don't want a free world without rules, I want a free world with proper rules. That's a difference.
In the red corner, at 110 pounds, we have a pencil-necked geek from UCSD, who is an accused spammer.
In the blue corner, at 250 pounds, we have California's Special Prosecutor for Spam, the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Let's get ready to rumble!
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Lawyer Anthony J. Dain has said the ads are "annoyances you have to deal with in a free society." Hmmm...let me see. According to Mr. Dain, a Free Society is characterized by a lack of property rights. For example, strangers are allowed to use my PC in an unauthorized manner and, in the process, disrupt my activities. All of this done with impunity on thier part. Hmmm...this doesn't sound like Freedom to me!
...annoyances you have to deal with in a free society
They seem to be very selective about that freedom.
I assume they're more than willing to call on the agents of the government (the police, for instance) to protect them from people exercising their freedom to visit the company offices and beat the living crap out of them. And I'm sure that they would not be so dedicated to people's freedom to slam every system they own with a DOS attack. The only "freedom" they're concerned about is their freedom to commit extortion without that mean ol' FTC interfering.
They're all fired up about their rights (is there a right to commit extortion?) but they're conveniently ignoring one thing: rights come with attached responsibilities. You can't separate the two, and when you try, you get problems. For instance, if you have the right to swing your fist around, it comes with the responsibility to stop short of my nose. If you have the right to drive a car, it comes with the responsibility not to squash pedestrians. A society which granted those rights but does not acknowledge the associated responsibilities would be murderous chaos.
In a truly civilized society, people are as aware of their responsibilities as they are of their rights, and act accordingly. Only in such a society can there truly be freedom.
In modern US society, right and wrong have been equated with legal and illegal -- or, even worse, with getting away with it and getting caught. Rights are everything. Responsibilities are not in the picture at all. Civilized behavior is mocked. This has cost us many things, including the expense of feeding an ever-more-bloated government. But most of all, it has cost us freedom.