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French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus
HughPickens.com writes Frédéric Filloux reports at Monday Note that two groups of French publishers, the GESTE and the French Internet Advertising Bureau, are considering a lawsuit against AdBlockPlus creator Eyeo GmbH on grounds that it represents a major economic threat to their business. According to LesEchos.fr, EYEO, which publishes Adblock Plus, has developed a business model where they offer not to block publishers' advertisements for remuneration as long as the ads are judged non-intrusive (Google Translate, Original here). "Several criteria must be met as well: advertisements must be identified as such, be static and therefore not contain animation, no sound, and should not interfere with the content. A position that some media have likened to extortion."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
...as someone else will develop a list, and just a list, of hosts serving ads, and someone else will develop a plugin that can read lists of any kind to block content, with claims that the content blocked can be for adult material or any other form of objectionable content. The user will put the location of the list in to the program themselves, and they'll continue to block the content. If the list gets taken down in one place, it'll be propped-up again somewhere else, or even stale, would still be better than no list at all.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
They use my bandwidth (without permission) to peddle me ads for things I don't want and they think the courts should force me to look at their ads by removing my choice? I use ABP specifically because I don't want their invasive rubbish. The courts should be forcing them to ASK me if I want them using my bandwidth if anything as they are effectively stealing it.
IANAL, so I'd like a tort guru to enlighten us on exactly how creation and distribution of a product (AdBlock) that that gives consumers an informed choice over another product (advertising bullshit) is an actionable case. It sounds like a water utility company suing faucet makers for making a device that restricts flow of billable water, or the electric company suing light switch manufacturers.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
There's really no other rational choice than to block most/all ads, in a world where ads can do just about anything they want. The annoyance and performance slowdown are trivial issues compared to the real problems. The same openness that allows Web-based ads to track you using cookies, launch plugins and pop-up windows, and prevent you from viewing content until you watch a video or wait some time, also (fortunately) allows users to fight back as a natural defense mechanism against these predatory tactics. For the advertisers to abuse this openness for their own personal monetary gain, while presuming to control what *I* run on *my* computer, while being appalled at my choice of doing the same, is ridiculous and contradictory.
Far and away the gravest problem with ads today is that the vast majority of them pose *serious* security and/or privacy issues. Most ad networks do very little to prevent bad actors from embedding malicious content that tries to exploit browser zero-days, steal cookies, track your behavior, or trick you into visiting malicious websites. Until website owners and ad networks decide to completely purge all the security and privacy risks, advertising is essentially synonymous with an opportunistic attack on each user who visits an ad-infested site.
On the open web, the only way advertisers are going to get any revenue is through earning the trust and goodwill of their customers. And we ARE customers -- customers who are currently being treated like shit. How would you like it if a car salesman walked up to you and started giving you a tattoo on the arm with the manufacturer's logo, seconds after you get out of your car and step foot on the lot? That kind of intrusive behavior should not be tolerated. And it isn't: users are doing exactly what the advertisers should expect them to do, given how they are being treated.
Ad networks should start by having a manual screening process for each entity that wants to submit ads through their network. The integrity, ownership, and status of each entity should be scrutinized to ensure that they are a legitimate business and are registered with the proper authorities. Additionally, the network should perform constant random sampling of their current ads being run, and employ experienced security auditors or penetration testers to examine the source code and other dynamic behavior of the advertisement payload on various popular browsers, to determine if it is tracking the user or malicious in any way. If it is, all further business with that partner should be stopped immediately, and the advertisement removed from the network. Website owners and users should not be the ones having to push the ad networks to remove these abusers.
The open Web is not going away. Users are in control of what displays in the web browser. Advertisers must either learn to work within a system of reasonable rules that do not attack users' systems or try to compromise their privacy, OR just keep fighting until their revenue stream is slowly strangled to death by their own despicable policies.
Seriously, I *work* for a communications marketing company, and still, I think the whining and gnashing of teeth over plug-ins like ABP is misplaced!
You can't realistically expect to stop people from blocking your ads with software any more than you can stop people from pressing "mute", channel change buttons, or just the "on/off" switch on the television when commercials come on!
The truth is, ad banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, animated page overlays and the rest of it are just distractions. If you create one that's minimal enough so most people can't be bothered to actively use a tool like ABP to filter it? Then you've probably just made an ineffective advertisement that people aren't even paying attention to in the first place. Advertisers who "get" this and have worked hard to build more effective ads are prompting people to "fight back" with these blocking tools. The takeaway we probably all SHOULD be getting from this is that this form of marketing isn't a very good one.
The fact that many site operators out there can barely make enough revenue to cover their costs of hosting means there's a strong interest in keeping the current business model in place and pretending it works. But truthfully, I think things would work out far better if marketers would agree to sponsor web sites likely to have an audience interested in one of their products. Just flat out pay their hosting for them, in exchange for the site making it clear your company is doing that for them. THEN you'd win the respect of the userbase and generate good P.R. and sales.
I like how APK is spamming us to promote his adblocking solution. Buying his solution is in effect supporting spam!
I remember not that long back...early to mid 90's when you rarely ever saw an advertisement.
People need to be reminded that the internet is supposed to basically be a large network, where anyone can connect and set up a peer computer/server and trade information. I wasn't set up for making $$. While business is extremely valid on the internet, that is not the primary reason for its creation, and hopefully...not for its continuance nor regulation.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
France. A country that used to matter.
A whole 45 days? 350,000 casualties?
Such effort.
The Soviet Union fought the Germans for more than four fucking years, suffering somewhere between 20 and 40 million casualties.
The Soviets were very proud of the fact that, having executed all of their competent commanders, they relied on brute-force meat-grinding in place of actual strategy. Make no mistake, it wasn't the Germans that killed all those Soviets; it was their generals and kommissars, sending them into needless suicide. And at the end of the day, they ended up killing as many Jews and enslaving half of Europe in place of the Nazi's.
Fuck the Soviets. It's their own fault. Next time don't trade oil for land to Nazis.
I don't hate the french; I just find them amusing. I find the antics of De Gaulle during WWII absolutely hilarious, as in, Monty Python-esque funny. He would march down the Champs Elysees when he did virtually nothing in the immediate aftermath of D-Day to help liberate his own country. Even Montgomery, who himself was insufferable, found De Gualle insufferable.
The Anti-French sentiment stems from lingering inadequacy on the part of the Americans. France did not give the US the Statue of Liberty just because they thought the US was a bunch of really nice guys.
The American Revolution was a proxy war, by France against Britain. It was very similar in many respects to the Soviet-Afghan War, where the United States funneled arms and billions of dollars to the Afghanis. The French involvement in the American war was of a vastly greater scale.
The French supplied almost all of the gunpowder used through at least the first half of the war, almost all the cannon used throughout the war, tens of thousands of muskets, an army about the size of the Continental Army, military advisors, and vast amounts of money. In total they spent about a billion livres and increased their national debt by a third. The ante-climactic battle of the war involved a massive fleet engagement of French and British vessels and forced Gen. Cornwallis' surrender to the American forces. The Americans had no naval force worth mentioning (the description of a sixth-rate frigate as being "rough equivalent of half of a 64-gun ship of the line" is hilarious), and it is difficult to overstate either the power of a massed group of warships or their impact on warfare. Considered from an objective perspective, the American Revolution was an important but not decisive campaign in what should be known as the Second Hundred Years' War.
Why did Americans turn against the French after the war? It's simple: they wanted to promote their own heroes, and the idea that they had won the war all by themselves. It's really embarrassing to have to teach your children that your country wouldn't exist except that it happened to be a bone of contention in someone else's scheme. Similarly, I spent quite a bit of time down in Panama this last year, and I met very few people who had any idea of the US involvement in the creation of that country. They make anti-gringo jokes pretty often too, and they're funny for the same reason that anti-French jokes are in the US, but in both cases the joke is on the one telling it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
There was another huge contributor to The Fall of France. The french doctrine relied heavily of fortifications in the form of the Maginot Line. It was an impressive installation and would have stopped the German army except for one major flaw; The main fortifications stopped at the Luxembourg border. The French Government did not want to isolate Luxembourg and Belgium. The German forces easily out flanked the static heavy defences.
- Contrary to what you seem to think, as far as we're concerned you didn't really have to come save us, the war was already won by the Russians. (Although I do thank you for protecting us from them).
- Historically, French military fares rather well. I'm not even proud of it, it's just a fact.
- A lot could be said about the reasons for the rapidity of the German invasion in WWII, but cowardness of the soldiers wasn't such an important factor.
- This page should be about the future of ad-blocking, using it to express your negative feelings about the French people is stupid and childish.