Slashdot Mirror
Livejournal Bans Ad-Blocking Software
Anonymous Emo writes "The community/blogging site LiveJournal recently introduced ads on some pages for free users. More interestingly, they also added a new restriction to their TOS (XVI 17 b.) banning users from using or providing ad-blocking software. The new TOS also permits them to immediately terminate the account of anyone they catch doing this."
I've been expecting this... Now we'll have to modify our ad blocking software to download and discard the ads that are currently ignored altogether.
A first reading of the ToS suggests that it is just journal *owners* who are banned from using styles etc to hide the ads from everyone. There's nothing to say that people *reading* the journal can't be running ad-blocking.
The relevant clause:
17. Employ tactics and/or technologies to prevent the full and complete delivery or display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Making journal style changes, customizations, or overrides that effectively block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on a Sponsored+ account's Content or other pages within the Service.
2. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
Does this mean they would ban for using Adblock? or flashblock or if i block their ads via my router? Very ambiguous.
Well livejournal does need to pay for their bandwidth and running costs right?
With ad blockers getting more and more prevalent and sometimes getting installed by default with some firewall software, it might get problematic for websites depending on ad revenue.
Although I guess peopl installing ad blockers on their own, probably would just ignore the ads anyway.
Way to drive people on over to MySpace!
The free LJ users aren't providing LJ with any revenue. Bandwidth costs money, money comes from users or ads. If you don't pay, you get the ads, if you don't get the ads, you're basically stealing their bandwidth.
In the end, though, would you really give a shit if your LiveJournal suddenly went offline?
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
You'll be seeing ads every time you visit the journal, profile, or entry pages of a Sponsored+ user.
This is pretty silly. People are going to not read that, then have adblock on firefox, and then have their accounts banned. Not cool. I know that if I didn't read this, that could happen.
How will they go about enforcing this? Ad-block software will counter any JavaScript, and if it blocks out an Ajax call -- we'll just need to update Adblock to still do all the processing, but just no render the element.
where they're coming from with this. Running a website isn't cheap, and bandwidth isn't delivered to your servers every night by helpful magic gnomes. Personally, I just use Adblock to block ads that I consider annoying and/or intrusive. Otherwise I'm not bothered by ads in principle, they might even (gasp!) have information about something I want to buy.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
It is clear one thing this rule is aimed at is people changing their journal to block the ads on livejournal. This is perfectly reasonable and even slashdot doesn't let you foil their ads by posting cleverly formated comments on a story (not technically possible here I presume).
What is less clear is if this is intended to apply to people VIEWING livejournal content. After all you aren't even really acting as a livejournal user when you do this you are just reading someone's blog.
I think we just need to wait and see if this actually amounts to any changes or is just overbroad legal wording to cover their ass in unforseen circumstances. Remember there are all sorts of crazy conditions in some EULAs/TOS that don't necessarily amount to anything.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Actually, Ive always provided free community hosting for anyone without ad's.. Its my way of giving back to the internet...Though I THOUGHT About it.. but then I also thought of how annoying ads are in the first place, so I disregarded the idea all together... I was also thinking of having something like Live Journal for my Network, but I never could find a good one.. But in the mean time, I have all the free hosting in the world Praeon Network (Gotta throw in a cheap plug in for that : ) In regards to Live Journal, and the topic at hand, I can understand where they are coming from, but you would think they would be a little bit more understanding, and realise that not everyone on the internet are as smart as us Slashdot members. : )
Just me
LiveJournal might be a little over-the-top in actually introducing this as a deal-killer in their ToS, but I can see their point... hosting and other expenses have to be paid for by someone, after all, and it's far better from a user's perspective to pay for the tools and content you access by allowing a few ads to show on your screen than it is to have to whip out a credit card and give money to every site that you find useful. Secret Cinema, the Cult/Arthouse torrent site -- http://www.secret-cinema.com/ -- has been doing the same thing for almost a year now, but instead of inserting a clause into their ToS and threatening to ban people, they simply ask nicely that users don't block their ads. LiveJournal might find that they make slightly less money, but generate more goodwill, by taking a similar approach.
Good job, Slashdot, with your bullshit disinformative article blurb. Let's go over this like intelligent human beings and show why it's a non-issue:
Livejournal just recently added opt-in ads for users that would let them have pretty much all of the benefits of a paid user for the cost of having ads on their journals. After you opt-in to ads you can opt-out at any time and return to your ad-free cost-free journal. Free users viewing another free user's page, their own friends page, or a paid user's page will see no ads but they will see ads when viewing the journal page of someone who's opted for ads. Paid users will see no ads at all. Even so, all I've seen of these ads so far are Google ads. This is article is total FUD and should be tagged as such.
No, the TOS does *not* say that you can't use "ad blocking software". It says that if you have ads on your live journal page, you're not allowed to mess with the layout so that the ads can't be seen by people LOOKING at your page. Not quite the same thing.
........ this is a story?
Geeze
you wind up with these regions where the browser displays the error message "unable to contact host"
Geocities has had this as far back as I can remember, this rule just means journal writers can't try and circumvent the displaying of ads on their journal, whether readers block them via say, Adblock Plus and the Filterset.G updater (look for the "Plus", not the original, and filterset is just below it, it is a set of filters maintained by people for Adblock) is another story
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
before you leave, could you or anyone else please provide links to porn-related LJ pages?
Livejournal isn't phasing out free accounts in favor of these new ones. It's just an option that adds a few features to people who still don't want to pay. I can't predict how many people would choose this sort of account, but the minmal gains (extra userpics, 1GB of photo hosting, and mobile posting) aren't so compelling that I can see people migrating in droves to that type of account. Maybe a few photo whores who can't afford a paid account, but that's about all.
No one's forcing you to view the ads. You're agreeing to see them to get more features on your (free!) account. You can also pay $20 for an entire year and get even more features and no ads.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
What's next, will they force us to see commercials in video?
I already have enough with those annoying flash ads. With AUDIO.
I count two hours until a Greasemonkey script comes out to just set the CSS "display" of all the ads to "none". Now we can load the ads, and hide them from view.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Two thumbs down. :( This really compromises the integrity of the site.
Compromises the INTEGRITY of LiveJournal. Hmm .. LiveJournal.. integrity.. cognative dissonance...
hmm, does lynx count as an ad blocker?
Tools->Adblock->Adblock prefcerences and select hide ads at the bottom. Ads will be downloaded, but you won't see them. Presto!
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
"Terms of Service" and EULAs are interesting from a legal perspective. They say:
1) You have a contract with us.
2) You have no control over what the contract says.
3) We can change the contract at any time. You are bound to the new provisions of the contract, even though you became involved after acceptance of the old contract.
4) We throw in some terms of the contract that try to show that the contract is balanced, and that we are contracting to do something for you. However, there is no balance; if we decide we don't like what we have said we will do for you, we will just write a new contract and leave out the provision we don't like.
It is a measure of the corruption in the legal system that the issues surrounding one-sided contracts like this have never been fully considered either in courts or in Congress. The rich and powerful do what they like, even though what they like is definitely against the spirit of contract law.
One of the problems is that, once you are involved with an online service or an operating system, for example, the cost of changing is very high. Typically online services require investing considerable time to be useful. Typically the cost of software is a small part of the total cost of involvement with an operating system.
Another problem is that Terms of Service and EULAs are usually written in extremely tricky language; it would require a legal professional many hours to understand them. So, users "agree" to a contract they cannot understand.
First, the good people at live journal have made another account option, Sponsored+, where members agree to place ads on their journal in order to have more features that paid users usually get. The member gets to decide if they want ads on their journal.
Second, the TOS change means that members cannot sign up for a Sponsored+ account and then attempt to jack with the layout so that the ads don't appear.
Wow.
Free accounts don't have ad's but have less features. You have the option of having more features in exchange for having ad's, instead of paying for them. If a person just blocks the ad's they are basically stealing those extra features, so they should be booted. This story really should be edited to reflect the fact that free users can opt to not have ad's and that paid users do not have them either. The way it's written is really misleading.
Back when slashdot first introduced their annoying large square ads in the body of a story (this was around 2002), you could embed javascript in your own customized box to the right. This was used by some as a backdoor to prevent the annoying slashdot ads from loading. Next thing you know, slashdot prevents javascript from going into your own customized box citing security concerns.
It's cool not to be a money-grabbing bastard, but there's nothing against a realistic business plan.
If putting a clause that certain members should view ads is realistic is a different story, though :) I mean, they can easily check if the ads are downloaded, but how are they going to check if the readers actually see them. Maybe they perform a grep on their entries, if the users are not whining about the ads and finding appropriate emo music that so-much describes their anger on this, then something most be wrong ;)
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
To back up this line of though, I browesed the ToS.
I. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS
"LiveJournal, blah blah provides the following service to you, subject to these Terms of Service ("TOS") blah blah blah. Failure to comply with these TOS may result in account revocation."
So, when you put that together with their wording about blocking ads, it obviously applies only to those who have an account (and consequently accepted the TOS).
There's always been ways to get around auto-inserted ad code. The guy who runs http://www.cexx.org/ has a selection of simple tricks that you can use to defeat some of the more obvious ad-insertion techniques. Just scroll down to "Free" Webpage Providers.
Mebbe he should update his site to include CSS and other sneaky ways to defeat the current set of 'free' sites.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
You've never heard of Livejournal? Ever? What rock have you been living under, I think it was around before myspace!
There are hundereds of thousands of emo kids posting about how their life sucks more then anyone elses does and you some how avoid even hearing about it? I salute you!
Wtf is livejournal, you ask? It's the website that separates the women from the flamingly homosexual.
Install COX in your backend today!
17 Employ tactics and/or technologies to prevent the full and complete delivery or display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
a. Making journal style changes, customizations, or overrides that effectively block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on a Sponsored+ account's Content or other pages within the Service.
b. Employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
This looks like LiveJournal is just setting some ground rules for Supporter+ accounts. For those who don't use LiveJournal, Supporter+ accounts display ads on pages related to that journal, and in return those members get access to some of the previously friends-only features, such as more avatars, and the ability to create custom mood icons.
This is just making sure that those who sign up Supporter+, which includes extra customization of Journal layouts, don't write up CSS and the layouts in such a way as to hide the banners under other content.
Section b does appear to state that the use of such things like AdBlock on their site could be grounds for removal or other disciplinary action. However, unless you blatantly state in your LJ that you are using such technology, and using it actively on the site, I'm not sure how they could pin it down. And what if the user uses Lynx, or has images turned off?
If they have the means to do so, they stand to make a lot of money; there are lots of sites that rely on advertisements that would love to be able to stop people using banner blockers from using their site.
In short, this is probably nothing new; I've seen some similar things used at other sites, and seen people banned because they said they block any and all adverts.
So this is just to keep people from becoming Supporter+ and then screwing the system, with a browser-end technology stipulation thrown in for good measure to scare some people.
As Slashdot often says: Nothing to see here, please move along.
(For the recond, I have a Supporter+ account.)
People who block ads need to be prepared for subscription fees. Any content provider that relies on advertising for revenue will have to resort to subscriptions if viewers block or skip over their ads. In my opinion, if you choose to block ads, that is your choice. It's your hardware and you should be able to decide what your computer downloads and displays. But once you've made the choice to block ads, don't complain when you have to fork up a couple bucks a month for everything you once got for free.
Duh. One alienates the "eyeballs"; the other alienates something there is sadly no shortage of- bloggers.
Thank god this wasn't under "your rights online"; honestly, who gives a damn? Next at Eleven, media conglomerate institutes another policy change on its privately owned website...
Please help metamoderate.
Fortunately I have a paid account on livejournal, so I never have to see them
Well, not never. There is one rss feed I take that inserts its adverts onto my friends page. Pity, that.
Firstly, you are an idiot. You may be paying an ISP, but that is only to access the internet. Companies like LJ have bandwidth bills that are easily larger than your yearly salary. You don't just put a website on a server and 'magically' connect it to the internet. Companies charge you to use their backbone. And they don't charge cheap.
So yes, ad blocking is stealing. Or then again, you are just a cheap fucking bastard who is having problems with denial.
An invention from Royal Philips Electronics prevents TV viewers from switching the channel during commercials or fast-forwarding past commercials when watching DVR content.
+ viewers+to+watch+ads/2100-1041_3-6062861.html
http://news.com.com/Philips+device+could+force+TV
You have to 'get' Livejournal. It doesn't have the buzz that Facebook and Myspace do, but it really needs more credit. It has a huge community of bloggers, but unlike Blogger/Wordpress/MovableType/etc. bloggers, the LJ community is inward facing (like Myspace and Facebook). Unlike Myspace and Facebook, LiveJournal had very early support for APIs and RSS/Atom syndication and they make it possible for even free journals to cleanly insert their custom CSS inside the HEAD where it belongs. In other words, they're pretty unique.
... And neither do I, so carry on.
Most important about that uniqueness was the contempt Brad Fitzpatrick (founder) had/has for advertising. See his post here. So Livejournal adding ads, even if they are opt-in (the free / no-ads option is still available; the ads just get you the features that were previously for Paid accounts only) - is a big deal for LiveJournal.
Now, finally my point - the B. part of that ackward ToS means this for LJ users: "Don't post scripts to LJ-nifty," a community on LiveJournal where quasi-crafty scripts are frequently posted. That's what they're talking about without talking about it. Lawyers just don't know how to get to the point.
"Wah wah wah wah wah my free lunch is a bit cooler than the other people who pay for the ovens wah wah wah."
Smegma.
"Hey kids! How would you like to be the first person on your block to have a Myspace account? You can post photos, and music, and communicate with your friends, and --possibly win a PSP by clicking on the scarry clown-click here now!-- and write messages. It even has a blog and a photo gallery where --you could possibly win a free pink RAZR if you can save the hostage-- MySpace: An online community for everyone --to click here now and have bigger breast overnight!--"
/MySpace.com -- A News Corporation -- Visit Bill O'Rielly's Myspace! Fox Owns Your SOUL!!!!!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No surfing with just images turned off? meh, hosting is cheap, people who really want an "online journal" have....thousands of alternatives.
GP said: LJ has paid accounts and paid for their servers and setup years ago. its just upkeep now.
P said: Yeah, 'cause there aren't any expansion or maintenance or bandwidth or colocation facility costs to running a website, are there?
Well, it's not like memberships are a one-time thing; people have to keep paying for it. Even I know multiple people in a single group of friends that pay for LiveJournal, and it's a yearly thing that they pay it in.
Of course, that's kindof moot to this whole discussion, isn't it? The bit in question is how they've decided to offer users the choice of having ads in return for getting the kind of benefits (less restrictions on page modifications, more icons, blah blah blah) that paid-accounts get. The part I find offensive about this is just the fact that, well, they pledged never to do this. You can read what their "Social Contract" used to be over at archive.org, since they've changed it now. They said that these were "promises that we will keep" . . . although they have apparently been laying contingencies since at least January 2001, saying that "LiveJournal.com reserves the right to run advertisements and promotions on LiveJournal.com journals in the future".
A good example of saying one thing while in the fine print saying the opposite in much more legal terms.
Slashdot is eating the html code for the archive.org links, making even the entire formatting of my comment screwy, so here's the bare URLs.
The Social Contract: http://web.archive.org/web/20040401175244/http://
The Terms of Service circa Jan 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20010126132600/http://
Man, slashcode sure does some weird stuff sometimes. This is what it looks like if I try to do one of those URLs as a link:
Why don't you click over http://www.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml>here
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Not that I even know what livejournal is, but if they simply were to buy a 1,000 random cheap domain names and run the ads randomly generated using the url's, then blocking them would become a tedious task.
It's no longer about popularity, it's about how many you can alienate, and how fast you can make them wish they never visited!
....Greasemonkey?
'If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.'
The real issue here is not whether such TOS terms are valid, acceptable or moral.
It is whether companies are allowed to one-sidedly change their TOS in such drastic ways.
It's not like they're clarifying some previously enforced term or merely extending it a bit in the spirit of the original intent; they're making a U-turn in service.
I know companies can insert clauses in their TOS that allow such changes, but surely there must be a limit to how far they can go.
What if they suddenly insert a term that forces all their users to pay $100 a day or leave without even a change of retaining their data.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I'm having a hard time believing anyone actually read the article. They are introducting ads as an OPTIONAL feature of the site for people that want added features (more user icons, a personal photo album with 1gb of space). On peoples journals who DECIDE to participate in this, ads will be seen. But for regular free users and paid users there are still NO ADS. So if you don't want ads, don't sign up for their Sponsored+ service!
I have a question. And pardon me for asking, because I really don't know the answer.
Do Slashdot editors get paid for the shitty job that they do?
the rise in use of tools like ad-blocker software indicates that the customer is unhappy with the use of advertising, or there is something wrong with the way advertising is being done that is turning the customers off. one of the principle tenets of all highly successful business people is "give customers what they want. in spades." the challenge now for businesses and those seeking to fund non-profit services on the web, is to find new alternatives to advertising that don't alienate their customers.
since you have the choice of less features or ads, I've already informed all my LJ friends that I'll instantly de-friend them if they switch to ads.
A friend of mine was checking out some of her friends pages of LJ and saw an ad for an Ad blocker for Firefox! Seems they may be contravening there own policies...
There were over 100,000 users before april of 2000, and nearly a million users by 2005. What's so significant about this? Well for starters, until 2005ish you had to have an invite code, sort of like gmail, except that you only got one invite code to give out - ever. Livejournal sort of started the whole online social networking craze.
moox. for a new generation.
maybe you should try reading about the package that has ads before you try to gain a low numbered post.
the ads come as an OPTION, they do not appear on free user accounts.
since when can a company say what i can or cannot have installed on my machine if its perfectly legit i mean ad blocker software is built into firefox IE and many other browsers its pretty much impossable to view the internet with out it any more, LJ are taking advtantage of thier possition and should be put to shame
Is because they aren't enforced. I've never seen a company try to enforce a redicilous one sided contract. I think they are just written to make them feel good. It's also something I don't think that worries lawyers much. I work for a state university so we have to be on the up and up contract wise since we are the state government in a manner of speaking. You as the employee are not permitted to sign contracts, they ahve to be sent to legal. However they've told us we can just ignore shrink wrap contracts and click "ok" on click through ones. They are not concerned that they are real, enforcable contracts. No signatures, no negoation, no contract.
What's funny is every once in a blue moon we'll get a software vendor that wants a real, signed contract. Those of course do have to go to legal who just shreads them. They go back to the company with several pages of revisions. Their reactions tend to be amusing. They seem to think you should just agree without reading. We had one that basically asked us "Umm, can't you just sign it as is? We aren't used to this." We told them no, legal has to agree and only they can sign. It looked like the company probably lacked any sort of real legal representation and they finally folded and just said forget it, and sold us the software with no contract.
Though one thing to note is that ToS's usually ARE enforcable, even if one sided. The deal is basically I'm providing you a service, so I get to decide what that service is and what it entails. I don't have to offer you something if I don't want to, and I can require you to obey certian rules. If you don't like it, you are free to not pay me. I can choose to change the service I offer, and you can reevaluate if you still want to buy it. Likewise, if I decide you aren't worth it as a customer, I can stop providing you service (and stop taking your money).
For example I have a mostly unstated term of computer service I provide: If you are too big a pain in the ass, I'll stop working for you. I don't care to support really high maintainence people. As far as I can tell (yes I asked a lawyer), this is totally legal. Just because I provided you with a service at one point, does not mean I'm obligated to do so again. I can refuse to accept your money and refuse to do work.
EULAs are a little different because they are trying to restrict what you can do with something already bought and paid for. They've already taken the money and sold you the good, but then they want to tell you how it is and isn't going to work. That's not kosher. The terms need to be laid out on the table before the exchange of funds takes place. The exchange of things of value is what seals the deal, so to speak. That's why with contracts where you are giving someone something, there's still a provision where they give you a small amount of money, $10 is the usual these days. It's not a contract without the exchange, and once the exchange happens, you can't go changing it (unless both sides agree to a new contract).
use your own blog hosting
use paid service
http://fanboy.co.nz/adblock
Actually, they didn't have the invite code thing near the beginning, around 2001 at least. They added that requirement sometime in... 2003? I forget. It was supposedly due to expanding faster than their servers could keep up, from what I hear. They did away with the invites in 2004ish.
!sig
at least with Safari and my usual Pith Helmet config... I browsed a bit and I haven't seen an ad :) and not a warning either
so they can have all the policies they want but if they cannot inforce them I don't think if it'll change anything for them.
realise that not everyone on the internet are as smart as us Slashdot members
That's good. Or would you enjoy people jumping at you from behind, screaming "Fristy Piss!!!"; Zonk telling you what he found in his diapers and he thinks it looks like a Nintendo Revolution screenshot. TripMasterMonkey letting you see his insightful cock.
There's gotta be some sort of article moderation system to prevent FUD like this from misleading Slashdot readers. I read the front page blurb of this story and was lead to believe LiveJournal was being evil, and if I hadn't taken the time to read the comments on this article (which I usually don't), I'd have had no idea that the entire article was blown out of proportion and context. It's probably the third or fourth time this has happened in the past six months, which is why I hardly even read Slashdot these days.
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
You might want to reread the bit that says "...but they will see ads when viewing the journal page of someone who's opted for ads."
There are more issues here than those of adhesion contracts. The biggest is that "Terms of Service" and EULAs often are changed unilaterally, and users are told that they are bound to the new contract.
It is grossly unfair, for example, for Microsoft to sell a copy of an operating system and then change the conditions under which it is supplied. The cost of implementing the OS is far greater than the purchase cost of the license, so it is not easy to switch to something else.
LiveJournal: You fscking, steeling, robbing, dirty, commie, add blocking user!!!! Why don't you watch our movie adds you b'stard.
LiveUser: Ehh,.. I would but I run Lynx.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
XII.
# ADVERTISEMENTS AND PROMOTIONS
You understand and agree that some or all of the Service may include advertisements and that these advertisements are necessary for LiveJournal to provide the Service. You also understand and agree that you will not obscure any advertisements from general view via HTML/CSS or any other means. By using the Service, you agree that LiveJournal has the right to run such advertisements with or without prior notice, and without recompense to you or any other user. The manner, mode and extent of advertising by LiveJournal on your Content and throughout the Service are subject to change at LiveJournal's discretion. Your correspondence or business dealings with, or participation in promotions of, advertisers found on or through the Service, including payment and delivery of related goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such advertiser. You agree that LiveJournal shall not be responsible or liable for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or as the result of the presence of such advertisers on the Service.
There have been instances where the advertisers themselves have been compromised and browser exploits come from them.
There are also people with epilepsy who cannot view flashing material so disable flashing and moving images without prior approval.
liqbase
Good scare, but I don't think this is really all that bad.
I think GeoCities has had this sort of bit on their ToS for quite a while. Basically, "We're serving ads on your web page. There's nothing you can do about it, and if we find out you've been trying to nuke the ads, we ban you."
They're not going to ban AdBlock users. They're going to ban people who use the ad-supported Sponsored+ things on their own journals, and try to sneak around the ad-displaying code.
If they'd really try to ban AdBlock users, they'd have to open a completely idiotic, uncontrollable, and not to mention bloody and oh-God-does-this-ever-make-us-look-bad can of worms. I mean, ban everyone who browses with elinks, or just turn the JavaScript off. That would be a lot of banhammering and a lot of displeased users and not to even mention lost potential customers.
Personally I welcome these ads as a distraction from the monotony of internet drama and friend memes rife through livejournal.
Does this mean they expect safari and firefox users to disable the popup blocker that's built into the web browser when browsing their extra content areas? (also... do you have to PAY to get into those "extra content" areas, where the ads are "required viewing"? That'd really stink)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Yes, the terms do include a bar on on "employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages", but this is part of a list headed by the words, "You agree to NOT use the Service to" do the list of items.
In other words, you violate the terms if you use the service to employ or provide adblocking software. This will not include using adblocking software on your own computer. It will include putting links on your site to places where people can download adblocking software ("Firefox user? Sick of these ads? Click here to install Adblock now!").
Which seems fair enough, really. This applies to the Subscription+ option in which you get paid-for functionality at the cost of having ads on your site. It's a bit rich to go for that and then block the ads.
If you're serious, I simply quit watching movies. After all, the quality is so poor of recent shows and movies that after watching it, the only feeling I got is that these were another 2 hours of my life that I won't ever get back.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One user is not allowed to block ads, the owner. But all the visitors, perhaps hundreds or thousends of people all block the ads? Makes no sense to me ...
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
I personally follow the policy of only starting to block ads on a site when i'm confronted with obnoxious ads.
Until i see moving (flash or gif, makes no difference), sound making or content hidding ads i'll keep the ads from a site visible. As soon as i see one of those obnoxious ads on my browser they (and all ads from the same provider) get blocked.
Popups that manage to go around Firefox's pop-up protection are reason for me to block the whole site of the ad provider plus the one of the company whose advert is on that pop-up.
It's a ballance between helping the sites i like to keep going on (and even make a profit) and enforcing the limits i've set for what are acceptable ads.
To all web-site managers out there i say: Don't use ad providers that (try to) abuse the viewer's good will and you won't have any problems with having a steady revenue stream from advertising.
THE Dutch tweakers/news site http://www.tweakers.net/ forbids blocking of ads in any way.
Maybe they should team up with Philips, with their unskippable ads TV.
My screen does NOT dictate me what I have to see or not.
Rules for ads are simple: Does it move/blink/make noise? Bye bye ad.
One further rule: Does the ad appear somewhere in the middle of the page I'm trying to read? Gone.
I won't even go into the overlay, pop-up and -under junk.
I won't buy anything from web ads anyway, so they won't lose a sale by not reaching my eyeballs.
The successful Dutch Tweakers.net site has a policy like this. After they ran a particularly annoying advertorial I (a regular visitor) announced in a forum that I would be running an ad-blocker from now on. My account was immediately blocked and my IP addresses were banned and remain banned to this day.
I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only one who thinks this is a highly questionable policy.
I don't run an ad-blocker on slashdot, just the FF plugin that stops endless animated images from running more than once, and I'm not against ads at all, but I think that websites should use less intrusive advertizing techniques, rather than using draconian measures against users.
X.
The main issue I have with this is how, well, obvious it seems. Imagine your favourite cool indie band signs to a major record label, then releases a record full of a bad, radio-friendly MTV tracks. LJ has done the internet equivalent - "signed" to a big corporation, and "sold out" with the ads. Here's my beef:
When a user decides they want some of the paid features, without paying for them, they can choose to see ads on the LJ site and their pages in return for some of those features. That's fine by me - their choice. What is NOT fine by me is that when I view that person's LJ, I see the ads too. I didn't choose to sacrifice ads for new features, so why should I have to see them too? And now it seems that if I choose to employ adblocking software, I'm actually breaking the TOS? This is really lame of LJ to do, and I'd always respected them as a pretty cool company.
Their justification for needing the ads, as posted by Brad (site creator) was laughable, it didn't explain anything really, just said they've wanted to do it for a while. I think he forgot to say the word 'money'. There can't be any other reason that they're willing to sacrifice their integrity and ruin the look of their pages with big ugly google ads everywhere. I know that I really disliked adding ads to my own site, but we can't afford it, as poor college students, without them. Is it really the same for LJ?
Bandwidth costs money, money comes from users or ads.
And why do they need all of that bandwidth? To serve ads!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As people are starting to post about, this entire article is nothing more then trolling. Livejournal added a new level of service (Sponsored+), people who opt-in to it get many of the features of a paid user, but have ads shown on their journal.
Free users don't see ads except when they go to a sponsored users journal... which if you're just reading people's entries from your own friends page, means never. As a paid user of Livejournal, I never see ads at all.
Whats actually not allowed is a Sponsored+ user doing things to prevent people looking at their journal from seeing the ads. This isn't new, when people started figuring out how to sufficiently mangle HTML on Geocities websites to make the ads disappear, Geocities moved against that... what, seven years ago?
Nobody is getting banned from Livejournal because they have Adblock installed in Firefox.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Just a slight correction here - if a free account user views the journal of someone with a Sponsored+ account, they will see the ads. Livejournal's own information supports this as fact.
Think of me when you shave your legs...
Also, Opera 9 Beta 1 is out today, which includes a generic content blocker. It has a nicer UI than FF's AdBlock, and does pretty much the same job.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Hmmm... It looks like they tweaked it. In the initial proposal, if you surfed over to an ad-supported blog, even paid members would get ads. Their reasoning was that clicking on a specific users blog (instead of, say, seeing their entries via your friends page) was notionally equivalent to going to another website, and so everyone doing that would see ads.
Now it says paid members who are logged in will never see ads. I'm a paid member, so I think that's much better... to a point.
I run ad-blocking software (it's called "Firefox," maybe you've heard of it?) and so I have a good portion of ads blocked by default. What happens if my LJ cookies expire (which they seem to do daily now), and I surf to an ad-supported blog. Do I get banned? Do I get banned for suggesting folks use Firefox? Do I get banned for describing the "Block images from..." feature of Firefox?
This is seriously uncool.
--Joe
Program Intellivision!
Seems that someone needs to make a TOS blocker, something that hides TOS and changes the button from 'accept' to 'proceed'. You can't agree to something you never read and agreed to (not that you really read it anyway). You could even call the TOS blocking software something else ('BS Blocker' maybe?) and have it block other things (like ads) for plausible deniability purposes.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
And, BTW, I could be mis-remembering the initial proposal. I didn't pay too close attention to the surf-to-other-blogs part, mainly because I don't do that real often.
Program Intellivision!
Livejorunal has ads??
The threat is that the website will be taken down? But how in the name of $DEITY am I (as a LJ user) responsible if someone VIEWING my blog uses adblock? And I am the one who signed the TOS, not the user viewing my blog, so in effect this just means I shouldn't mess around with my layout code so that the ads aren't shown.
I don't want to read
> There's gotta be some sort of *article moderation system* to prevent FUD like this from misleading Slashdot readers.
http://www.reddit.com/
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Indeed, I would say the spirit of the new ToS clauses is "we're now giving you this extra stuff for no charge, on the condition you allow these ads on your pages, anything you do to prevent people showing those adds is against our ToS and we'll terminate service to you, as otherwise you'd be getting the extras entirely free".
The one clause prohibits doing so directly in the LJ style code.
The second clause covers "hey guys, I know the ads are annoying, but you can block them like this...", which amounts to the same end result.
The wording of their TOS has made me realize that my understanding of "use of service" wrt web pages is ambiguous.
I am certainly using my web host's service when I change something on my web site. Obviously their TOS applies.
But am I using any web host's services when I am browsing sites published by others? I don't think so. It seems to me that there is a parallel here to billboards: passers-by who read the billboard are not in any kind of service contract relationship with the owner of the billboard or the advertiser who put up the content. There is no TOS for the reader of the billboard or of the web page. And if there were, the TOS would have to be presented on every web page that a casual browser might encounter for it to be binding, and that is certainly absurd.
.... Makes things a lot faster, even on broadband, and if I were using a buggy browser it'd be protected from image buffer overflows...
LiveJournal is OPTIONAL. I DECIDE not to use it. Combined with AdBlock, I have NO ADS.
And you HAVE to pay by the month now, back in the old days you could buy a lifetime membership (infact my girlfriend STILL has one) then all of a sudden they stopped offering it as well as seriously nerfed the free accounts to the point people where leaving in droves and they had to re-instate a few things (like more than one user pic). Something tells me this was planned as a last ditch thing if the paid members wouldnt accept getting thier fee's raised too high.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
So does that mean any OS that supports a hosts file is immediately banned?
In the future, subway companies will demand that passengers stop and read all ads on the platform and in the stairs. Far to often people just "run" by them without reading. We reserve the right to deny anyone travelling with us that has not first read every single ad at the station!! After all, we get paid for this advertisment and if people don't read them, we get less money! This is close to stealing when you don't read all ads!!
The summary is so misleading that it makes me want to cringe.
Livejournal used to have two different account types: free and subscription, both with no ads. Free journals are limiting in what they can offer, such as no place to store pictures, only 6 avatars, etc. Subscriptions give storage space for pictures, 12 avatars, all that fun stuff. If you just want to have a basic place to put your thoughts of the day, then the free account is all you really need. Subscriptions are for the bells and whistles.
This new third account type with advertising strikes a medium between the two. It allows users to have the bells and whistles of the subscription member, but for the price of free + advertisements on the journal. For some people, this is their blogging wish come true!
It has *nothing* to do with switching all free accounts to advertisement accounts. People with free accounts can still have their bare-bones journals sans advertisements. This is just merely making sure that if people opt to have advertisements on their sites in exchange for the goodies, that the advertisements *stay put*. It's the exchange that they make for not paying the subscription.
Did anyone actually read it as it is written? Here, I'll put the header of the section together with the subsection:
You agree to NOT use the Service to employ tactics and/or technologies to prevent the full and complete delivery or display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages, including employing and/or providing software programs, browser scripts, or other technologies that serve to block or substantially impair the display of advertisements on LiveJournal pages.
So basically what it says is that you cannot use the LJ service to use or deploy ad-blocking software, but it says nothing about using ad-blocking software which you got someplace else which is not related to LJ.
Bravery is not a function of firepower.
~J.C. Denton (Deus Ex)
You mean it's cool to be a terrorist?
Either yur fur money-grabbing or yer a terrist. Gard blayess thuh money-grabbing bastards.
Much like things on a shop shelf are "free"; sure you can take them and walk out of the shop, but the business model relies on customers paying, be it cash or ad views.
In a shop they actually sell something upfront, but they don't give away products to people that are willing to look at ads. Maybe they give away free samples like those cheese cubes, but they don't give away food to people that look at ads.
The main kind of service that I can think of off the top of my head is porn sites (not that I would know). They give away free samples and they you pay for the actual "product".
Now live Journal is more like a magazine service. They aren't selling actual items or content but rather a place where you can upload text and pictures.
It would be like a magazine that provides two version... The pay version and then free version.
The free version would be a magazine with less pictures and more ads. Kind of likes those free newspapers you can pick up like Creative Loafing in which are totally supported by ads.
The pay magazine has no ads and then have more pictures. This would be more like National Geographic.
The issue here is that they are giving away a free ad based newspaper and then asking you to not cut the ads out of them.
But on reading further, this is more about those who have the "ad supported" LJs with more icons and HTML functionality and I think the old free version (the one with limited HTML functionality and fewer pictures) remains the same.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Didn't we hear about something like this a few days ago....
I suppose Phillips will file a patent infringment suit pretty soon.
Common sense says that people will simply stop using their service. It isn't difficult to understand. They put restrictions on your account that are unreasonable and you quit using them. Move to another service. They aren't the kings nor the sole owners of the technology. Just leave and they loose. Copy your blog articles and repost on another free service.
LiveUser: Ehh,.. I would but I run Lynx.
LJ: Then how did you get past our sign-up CAPTCHA?
I actually have no problem with this. For one thing, the /. headline is, as is often the case, misleading; LJ is actually introducing a new account level, "sponsored", which gives you some more features in exchange for allowing advertising on your LJ. You don't have to view the ads; if you have a free account and don't want ads, nothing will change for you. It's only if you want those extra features that you get ads on your LJ.
So, if you enter into an agreement to allow LJ to deliver advertising to you in exchange for more features, then what's wrong with asking that you follow through on your end of the agreement by not blocking the ads? How is it a violation of my rights to ask that I fulfill my end of an agreement? How is it not a violation of their rights if I take their services and refuse to do anything in exchange for them?
(And yes, I do have AdBlock installed, though primarily because much of the advertising on the web consists of flashy graphics and sounds that interfere with my ability to browse the web, and degrade my computer's performance. There's only so much I'm willing to do for the free stuff.)
"A statesman is a dead politician. Lord knows we need more statesmen." Opus
I banned LiveJournal from my life a while ago.
livejournal = obsolete
-Fiend-
If you read the TOS section, it actually says that the LJ member can't try to mangle the templates so that the ads don't appear... it says nothing about running ad-blocking software on the client.
Yes, it's very much like Eudora's three-tiered business model:
Free version with limited features.
Ad-supported version with full features.
Paid version with full features.
Sponsors pay for ads to be broadcast, hoping that a certain number of people will see them, but the viewer has no moral obligation to watch the ads; you're free to get up and visit the rest room, make a sandwich, or whatever.
Similarly, you have no moral obligation to look at ads just because they're put on a site. It doesn't matter whether you use software to block them or just don't look at them when they appear on the screen, the effect is the same.
So let's have no more stupid claims that blocking ads is like stealing from a store. If you bother to think about the matter for a moment, you'll see how ridiculous this is.
I had the misfortune to look at a MySpace page on Monday. I recall thinking, "Wow, if LiveJournal made their pages look like this, people would revolt."
Then on Tuesday, LJ announced the new ad-supported account type.
Though if they stick within the current guidelines for ads, they should avoid ever reaching MySpace-level depths of advertising glut.
Personally, as long as they continue to offer free-without-ads accounts and paid-without-ads, that's fine... except for the fact, as you pointed out, that they swore never to provide ad space. I figure people and businesses have the right to change their minds, but they phrased it as a promise, which does make this change disturbing.
So what exactly does "or any other means" mean? Exact quote:
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
Oh, and this gem:
Program Intellivision!
Two points:
1) Peoples "friends pages" can view their friends entries without ever having to view their journal. When you reply, it also goes to their journal.
2) Are they going to start killing peoples accounts who have Norton Preinstalled? You do realize that Norton's Privacy features are more responsible for the lack of ads being shown/tracked correctly because it strips all information from the browser, add into that that many ISP's have a transparant proxy, so all the host is going to see is a bunch of GET's from the proxy IP and nothing else.
I think perhaps I should start charging advertisers for their use of my monitor space. Perhaps 1 penny per pixel. I could recover the cost of wearing out my phosphors.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's why I told emusic to go fuck themselves. I had an account with them, and they changed their terms & conditions *drastically* a little over halfway through. I told them that I thought the new terms were unacceptable and I was going to cancel. They flat out told me "You can't cancel, you have 5 months left." We were given no notice of the new terms, no warning about the changes, just *bam* "Here's our new service! whee!"
I told them to fuck off, and cancelled the credit card they'd been billing. I wrote them and explained exactly why. Fuckers.
LiveJournal can do the exact same thing. They'll just wind up losing users, but there are enough newbies coming online to take their place. This is another example of $website_that_got_big pissing all over the early adopters.
Porn communities that are good include moviefiles, for RapidShare-hosted movies, kaizersoze125 for a bit of everything (dalibor used to crack site passwords on request, but he's fallen off the edge of the earth of late), user riotclitshave posts a lot of cool stuff, some of which could be considered porn, and the show_your_boobs community is pretty high-traffic, though if you don't like the occasional... larger... woman or man posting, you won't like it. They get all types in there, and I do mean all types.
If you're widening the net to include any blog site, there's a good index of ad-supported amateur porn galleries (which adblock allows you to browse relatively trouble-free) at JazzBabes, with an archive JazzDump.
Enjoy!
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
At least according to Brad FitzPatrick. Basically, the lawyers went a bit bonkers, and the people who were supposed to review it didn't.
For those who don't want to click through:
You could save the entire US economy that way. :)
Just imagine the productivity increases as office surfing plummets....At least i really really HOPE it plummets afterwards....
Brad has addressed this in a recent post to the lj_support community.7 .html
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_support/62990
Brad Fitz writes in the LJ Support community:
"Regarding the TOS change to ban ad blocking software:
Totally our bad.
We didn't catch that the ad-blocker restriction made it into the final TOS changes. From what I can make of the series of events which led to its inclusion was that we basically passed off our TOS to some lawyers and said, "Update it for advertising". They then mimiced some other sites' advertising policies (which said no ad blockers), and then all the right people who were supposed to review it didn't and it made it live onto the site."
The LJ people handed off the TOS to some lawyers to put in the advertising clauses. Said lawyers copied some shit they found on other sites, and the LJ people failed to notice it was bollocks before it went live.
They're fixing the TOS now.
Just put all of livejournal.com in your adblock ruleset.
(Hint for the slow: don't use livejournal at all)
This is a nice feature, but I wish it would turn itself off if it noticed I was getting dial-up speeds.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Oh, my Bad, out of the millions of websites out there, I found one I didn't know about.
Silly me !
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
but isn't this for just a special class of user (ie not you, nor anyone who chooses not to agree to this) who opts in for ad-based paid membership? Does this actually affect us paying members?*
*I'm in from a gift membership; I'll pay LJ when I can have friends in blogspot, and independant servers on my LJ friends list, among other things.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
RTFA; they're asking people to not take their newspaper, cut out the ads, then distribute the ad-removed version in competition with the paid version.
(To get away from the analogy, the problem is LJ bloggers using CSS to remove ads -- the end user can still remove them for themselves)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment