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Porn-Jacking Crackdown
The FTC today announced a crackdown on pornjacking, errr, pagejacking. Apparently these smooth operators have been copying other sites wholesale in order to get hits on certain keyword combinations - search engine fodder. And then of course when you click through from the search engine, you are whisked away with Javascript into porn land, never to return... It seems that the actual offenders were Australian so international cooperation was required. Hmmm, here's a couple of readers submitting a New York Times story too, it's a little more in-depth.
We can probably assume there were assorted copyright violations involved; but when does this rise to the level of consumer fraud? Using dictionaries to get search engine hits is a stupid practice, one that the search engines are right to minimize, but if it starts being regarded as some sort of legally-actionable fraud, a lot of people are going to be in trouble - and there's a lot of potential side-effects (see the various lawsuits that have been filed about people using certain keywords in their META tags, such as Playboy suing a former Playmate who used "Playmate" in her tags: Playboy lost). Where's the line? -- michael
Honestly, did anyone read the FTC's summary? These bastards disabled the back/forward buttons on the browser with Javascript so people would be barraged with pr0n. Imagine if you unsuspectingly did this at work and were fired for it. Would you be crying "foul" then?
There are a lot of reasons to be mad at the government. We don't need to manufacture any.
- A.P.
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"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
http://www.google.com/linux?q=porn&num=10
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
One thing that might help is a redirection permission meta tag. If it's not present in the original domain, redirection is not allowed, and alta vista keeps the older link.
The idea of an open source browser here is interesting because it makes our acceptance of the commercialization of the internet voluntary to some degree. If something really irritating like pop-ups from hell (or blink tags) is invented Mozilla is patched to ignore it by default. More people use Mozilla, bad advertising goes away from lack of people who can see it.
Why should the courts/governments/police get involved? Cause it's fraud. Just because no one is out money doesn't mean they're not harmed. Imagine...
You call your dear mother long distance with one of those new-fangled prepaid thingies. However, instead of your mother answering, it's Debbie in Duluth making a living as a phone-whore. Good thing you didn't have it on speaker phone!
Or, your online TV guide lists "Dumbo" showing at 7:00. It's a great movie for kids, so you let your six year old watch it. At 6:59 you go to the back yard to do yard work. At 7:40 you return to find out that your previously innocent child has been watching hardcore porn for the best part of an hour because someone jacked the online TV listings.
Or, you walk into a building that house "First National Bank" above the door. It's a large marble building like banks should be. But once inside it turns out to be a Mustang Ranch franchise. Desperate to uphold your reputation in the community you turn to leave only to find that the door doesn't have a handle on this side.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Personally I just hope all these victimized sites don't try any pagejacking of their own to get back at the porns sites. Few things would piss me off more than having a legitmate site pop up when im trying to get my daily porn fix :)
Pardon me if I don't see how deceptive advertising, fraud and entrapment are rights. (Posing as offering different content, then forcing people to look at what *YOU* want them to look at? Even if these people were selling tofu it would be a problem!)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!