Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia Opts Out Of Phorm
ais523 writes "Wikipedia (and other websites run by Wikimedia) have requested to opt-out from Phorm; according to the email they sent, they 'consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors' behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.'"
Another reader points to this post on techblog.wikimedia.org which includes a confirmation from Phorm that those sites will be excluded.
It's the opposite of Artificial Intelligence: if you network enough marketers you get Sincere Stupidity.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Wikimedia Tech Blog post.
(This would have happened sooner, but Brion was snowed under.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
For those of you, like me, that read TFA and the article linked from TFA and still don't know what Phorm is other than it's something that some UK ISPs are implementing and there appear to be privacy concerns, Wikipedia.
In short, it's system for doing targeted advertising by deep-packet inspection.
aside from the whole invasion of privacy thing, people seem slightly less to pay attetion to the suggestion that intercepting and replacing the adverts on a page is tantamount to theft of advertising revenue, to the page owner for their share, to e.g google for their commision or however they work, and to the advertiser whom may otherwise have recieved an extra click through to their site
The Open Rights Group is keeping a list of people it's asked to loudly and publicly tell Phorm to phuck off. Amazon opting out made lots of mainstream media a couple of days ago; looks like Wikimedia doing the same will get a bit of notice too.
The point is to publicise that Phorm (a) exists and (b) is a bad thing. Schemes like Phorm only get away with existing insofar as people aren't aware of them.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The way they're doing it is likely illegal in the EU. The EU is actually taking Britain to court for not having prosecuted Phorm and BT already.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Any content that is distributed under any of the Creative Commons NC licenses (e.g. cc-sa-nc cannot legally used for advertising purposes. The very similar license under which the Grateful Dead allow redistribution of their old concert recordings explicitly lists advertising and "exploiting databases compiled from their traffic" as forbidden.
Schemes like Phorm only get away with existing insofar as people aren't aware of them.
Wrong.
Schemes like Phorm exist because they are opt-out.
Numerous studies have shown that people are lazy and won't even do things that are in their best interest if they have to exert even minimal effort. That's why opt-out is so successful.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Actually, "-ize" is absolutely not an Americanism - it is in fact correct spelling in either British or American English, whereas "-ise" is correct only in less formal British English.
It is sad that very few of us British seem to understand our language properly; almost no one here realizes that it is actually more conservative in British English to use -ize and not -ise. For example, go and look at an older copy of the Oxford English dictionary or the Times and you will see all those words spelled "-ize". I believe that even the newer editions of the OED, despite now listing the "-ise" forms, state that "-ize" is the preferred form.
To further complicate matters, the only words to which this rule can can apply are those which derive from Greek (and thus contain the Greek suffix "-ize" - this is the rationale for it being the more correct variant). So for example "enterprize" and "capsise" are always just wrong in either British or American English.