Microsoft Patents the Mother of All Adware

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has an article on the mother of all adware patents filed by Microsoft: 'It's such a tremendously bad idea that it's almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time.' Ars discusses this disturbing concept, which was originally unearthed by Information Week and we first discussed last week."

Comments

Less of an interruption???

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

According to the patent application, "The benefit to the user is the perception that the ads are more relevant, and therefore, less of an interruption."

For me, ads that look more like the content that I actually want to read are more of an interruption because it takes me longer to differentiate between the important content and the crap.

Re:indeed

[morgan_greywolf]

this is a horrible idea. Using the client's whole computer, hard drive contents included, to sell ads is just wrong.

I think you guys are all getting the wrong idea. Microsoft isn't likely to be so much as implementing, as much as being in the patent license business. IOW, the plan is to sue adware producers for patent infringement, driving them away from producing the adware that plagues their operating system products. They might license it to a select few companies who do adware that doesn't screw up someone's entire OS, but I think the general goal is to get rid of adware through brute force rather than fixing the technological problems that allow it to proliferate.

Re:If We're Going To Patent Software...

[SirSmiley]

I recently went to Feisty Fawn from XP/Vista. I've dabbled in linux many times but never kept it around. I finally went and did the switch because I have a PS3 for games (mainly playing ps2 games and renting the ps3 ones).

I could not be happier...vlc plays my movies, im comfortable with the odd command line (apt-get install vlc-player) i have azureus and limewire...all is well :D I do work on the side for people on their pcs and its amazing how many request me to get rid of vista and put their old xp back on once theyve gone and upgraded....keeps me in business!

my laptop is still xp though! (for some reason I have issues on occasional live video streams for instance all the ones on proelite.com (mixed martial arts). I am happy for the fact that i come home, turn ubuntu on and just use it...i dont have microsoft telling me what i should and could do....im a convert and i have samba sharing up my movies folder to my xp media pc in the basement (itll be linux once i figure out how to reliably get my tv tuner to work)

Re:Prior Art

[networkBoy]

Rather than modding I will respond...

Specifically Google has an exchange that reads: We'll give you software applications, remote disk space, and e-mail. In exchange anything you use our services for we will parse for key[words|phrases] and serve you an ad or two. This is how you agree to pay for using our services.

Now... if Microsoft were to come out with an OS that was free as in beer in exchange for taking a percentage of your screen for ads then it would fall under the same overall principle, aside from the disk space portion. If the ads were as inoffencive as Google's text ads, I may even consider it. My gut feeling, however, says otherwise, and if I have to pay for an OS then looking at my files as anything other than blocks of bits to store on a disk and optimize for space will happen over my dead computer.
-nB

Re:indeed

[morgan_greywolf]

I'm not a Google fanboi. Check my posts. I'm as quick to criticize them for their negative actions as anybody. And I'm just as quick to praise them for bringing useful tools to the Internet. If Microsoft is out to screw Google, it's no skin off my nose -- it's not like I own any Google stock. But Microsoft does have a history of using patents to threaten and beat potential competitors into submission, and I'm very much against that, no matter which of their competitors they're playing dirty pool with.

Re:indeed

[suitepotato]

I think you guys are all getting the wrong idea. Microsoft isn't likely to be so much as implementing, as much as being in the patent license business. IOW, the plan is to sue adware producers for patent infringement, driving them away from producing the adware that plagues their operating system products. They might license it to a select few companies who do adware that doesn't screw up someone's entire OS, but I think the general goal is to get rid of adware through brute force rather than fixing the technological problems that allow it to proliferate.

It would be a great thing if this is true and really, I want to believe it. No one loses more than Microsoft every time someone else screws up something that happens to run on their OS. On an irregular basis Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online client crashes my PC's sound system drivers so badly that my machine blue screens. MOST Slashdot people would reflexively blame Microsoft for that, but neither the client nor the drivers were written by Microsoft. Do I or anyone else blame Red Hat when I have trouble getting third party screen savers to build and work right on the newest iteration of Fedora Core? No.

If anything, using the IP-infringement cudgel against the miscreants would be priceless. It's like designing bioweapons before your enemy gets them done so you can get a headstart on the process of designing blocking agents and cures for them, negating them before they can be deployed, but (mostly) without the messy prospect of them being deployed by your side. That being said, Microsoft might use this to their advantage with IP-mismanagement vis a vis multimedia and the ongoing war over fair use, but then again, Microsoft WROTE Windows so if they wanted to root kit their own OS, they could do it a dozen times over on multiple levels to the point that the OS was one large trojan dedicated to monitoring everything you did and really, would they get far with that given that if a third party fouls up their bugtesting, no one blames that third party and instead just whines that Microsoft sucks?

If anything, the paranoia towards Microsoft works towards making this patent and sue the miscreants thing a big win for us and Microsoft as we get the biggest dog on the PC block throwing its legal weight against the schmucks who write malware and we get to see Microsoft taking these threats seriously and instead of being reactionary and patching, actually being proactive and offensive, taking out the people who write these things. Sure, it could go wrong, but then, it always could.

Trusted Network Connect

[tepples]

Microsoft can't make it part of my operating system. I won't let their system anywhere near my hardware. And within a decade, the two high-speed ISPs in your area won't let any OS that hasn't been digitally signed by Microsoft Corp or Apple Inc anywhere near its last mile because free or cracked operating systems fail its Trusted Network Connect tests.

Who says you will get a choice in the matter?

[jmorris42]

> 3) Thank you for your offer, Mr. Gates, but intercourse you, I'm buying a $1000 PC and installing Ubuntu.

Nice sentiment but take a moment to consider what the actual offer will be:

Option #1, the Dell M-Box, brought to you by Pepsi (this month, next month another sponsor....).

Plays mainstream media. Meaning everything on sale at Best Buy/Walmart in the movie, music and games depts. Cable TV will be delivered through it. Allowed to connect to the Internet and perform E-Commerce, required for E-Voting, filing your taxes and renewing your driver's license. Can run Microsoft Office, required to interchange documents via Microsoft Hotmail, the only approved mail service since they merged with the Postal Service. The only way to transfer content to your iPod. (Even in a total distopia I can't see the Zune beating the iPod at this point.)

Not allowed to run any unsigned binaries.

Option #2,

Buy a PC on the grey market and install Ubuntu. You can run anything you like but you won't connect to the Internet with it, at least legally. There will be hacks to allow basic IP access but no major website will allow you to connect because your browser won't bear the mark of the beast. Generate too much traffic out on the dark net and you will get noticed so P2P will be right out. Warez will of course not cease, just return to face to face exchange of really high capacity media, Linux will of course be part of that warez scene since after the Patent Wars any useful program will be in violation of at least one and therefore illegal to traffic in and also comply with the GPL.

Now, how many people will actually pick Option #2? They won't even have to police the gray market too hard, no more than they pretend to fight the War on Some Drugs. Just the social stigma of being outlaw will keep it safely contained to a ghetto.