There is no law to blame--it is very clearly against such Wiley tactics. Parody is protected under First Amendment rights and any corporation attempting to use trademark law to override the First Amendment is engaging in bullying. See, when an individual looks at all their assets and considers that the legal battle alone would consume them all in days, it's pretty scary... something like "either you change your ways or we'll take your house away." At least that's how it feels. There's no way for an individual to do the same to a corporation.
Make tinkering, not fear ... free tinkering, baby!
on
Engineer in a Box?
·
· Score: 1
... The reason no one tinkers anymore is because they don't have to...
Two things come to mind that thwart tinkering: teaching that science, math, engineering, and invention are hard, and, "don't do that, you might break it."
With advancements in "building blocks," the amount of information you have to learn to do something cool is dropping. When I was a kid growing up in the 1980's, I wanted to do all kinds of cool stuff with electronics, but I didn't have the degree in electrical engineering to figure out how to bias a transistor. Now I could--but I'd rather just go to Radio Shack and buy a 555 timer and a 741 op-amp to tinker with. They're cheap and have well-defined behaviors.
If we'd only teach our kids that these building blocks are available to them, maybe they could do great things. For goodness sake, though, don't tell a kid that something is hard. To them, hard means toil, difficulty, and no rewards. Building a tree-fort is hard, but kids can focus on the results of the work and get down to it. Nobody tells their kid that they need a degree in architecture before they can hammer some scrap lumber together--why should we say the same thing about building an amplifier?
The other thing is that we yell at kids for using a device in a manner other than its intended purpose or when they try to figure out how something works--all in the name of not breaking it. Despite the amout of stuff we throw away, it's a sin today to break something. Why do we teach our kids that going to McDonald's and throwing away 50 grams of waste for 500 grams of food is a good thing, but chastize them for taking apart their remote controlled car? It'd probably be more educational to risk breaking a US$40 toy than spend those same 40 bucks on carefully designed educational stuff... heck, the kid is curious so fan those flames instead of stomping them out.
The point isn't that it's more secure, it's that it is embedded in a physical, static object--essentially a passive device that generates reproducible random values given an input value.
In other words: the important part is that it's really really cheap. Given the same number-of-units produced, I can't imagine that even the cheapest smart card could be manufactured cheaper than a drop of epoxy with some shiny things in it.
I find it annoying that Apple "kindly" puts aliases (shortcuts/soft links) to a couple programs on the desktop whenever I install the OS (not for patches, only full installs) and I put them in the trash can. They go away and stay away.
Why does Microsoft need a separate control panel to do the same thing? Why can't they just put shortcuts (aliases/soft links) to the programs on the desktop so you can just delete them?
Also, it's too bad they can't make the fix smaller than 30,000,000 bytes, too... I thought all those DLL's allowed you to not rewrite the whole OS every time you wanted to put up a couple radio buttons, but I guess not.
One of the things to consider is that these contracts also limit the artist from changing at all. They have to play the same kind of music and still produce hits. They can't change styles, or replace members with someone who sounds different, or change the instrumentation of the band, or change the sound of the lead singer... all these things can really stifle creativity.
Imagine if Vincent van Gogh got stuck in a contract where he had to produce 6-8 paintings but all of them had to look and feel just like Starry Night. The guy probably would have become depressed and killed himself.
Remember that Keith Jackson is having a conversation with some reporter. From my own experience, reporters are usually less aware of both obvious and non-obvious things than little kids. Unfortunately, Jackson was mistakenly addressing his local audience (the reporter) rather than attempt to address the audience of readers--"I don't care whether you understand, this is big-people talk so just write down exactly what I say:..."
I'm not an expert on what exactly the music industry is proposing as legislation, but the impression I get is they consider themselves the voice of the entire industry. However, as someone who sees a lot of non-mainstream bands (at least two shows a week I list on my website) it concerns me that some of the new legislation will run roughshod over the independent artist.
For example, the independent musician can now sit down in their basement with less than $1,000 in equipment and produce an okay sounding CD, then rip copies manually for ten cents each to either sell or give away at their shows. It seems that some of the laws being proposed will hurt that niche (i.e. can't make a copy of a CD at all, or CD technology is a patent of Sony)--do you also think this is a problem and what can we do to make sure the laws don't cause any collateral damage?
I think I gave him a fair shot
on
Mr Anti-Google
·
· Score: 1
I went into the article putting my bias aside that Google works. Brandt seems to be making two points:
Google collects information about you and keeps it for a long time, which leads to privacy concerns.
Google does not rank his site high enough.
Google has monopolistic powers and must therefore be regulated.
Ok, starting from the top.
As best I can tell, the only information Google collects from me is my preference settings and the text of my searches. In addition, it collects "implicit" information--I am user number 71f612455 something or other according to the google.com "PREF" cookie. Apparently they can then discern that I, as a solitary user, searches for stuff like "chainless bicycles" and "rochester bands." They could probably figure out who I am based on what I search for.
In my opinion, this does not violate my privacy. It's akin to a taxicab driver noting where I want to go. In some weird alternate reality, they might give me a numbered card which I could show them when I got in the cab and they'd remember how warm I liked it in the cab or change the radio station. They could also keep track of everywhere I go. I think the analogy is pretty good, and I probably wouldn't mind the side effects all that much. Heck, for that matter, I don't have much concern over supermarket savings clubs--and they have my name and address as well, which does make me a little more concerned.
On the second point, I don't think it's too hard to get ranked high on Google. Make a page that people link to--or one that has unique information--and keep it around for a long time. That worked for me. Searching for purrs rochester band or
rochester band weekly events and my
JayceLand site comes up pretty high on the list. Even before my URL appeared on Slashdot from posting stuff, I was doing pretty good. Maybe if he did some research as to why Google hates him he'd find some stuff to correct.
Third, Google is acting like a benevolent monopoly. In fact, I don't think they can do otherwise. As soon as they sell off prominent keywords to porn sites, people will hate them, stop using them, and some other site will take its place. I guess if they continuously spidered competing search engines to kill them off, that would be wrong but transparent to the users... then we'd need some kind of government action. Other than that they're doing okay by me.
I dare ye to compare this to any other company's support story: I bought a PowerBook G3 in 2000. After a couple months the hard drive started going bad (heavy clicking, and not to do with what I was downloading...) Anyway, I thought I could expedite things by having them send me a new hard drive. No dice--I'd have to send the whole laptop back to Apple. Great, I thought.
On Monday afternoon I called them and they said they'd send me an overnight shipping package.
Tuesday, mid-day, an Airborne Express box was sitting on my porch. I packed the machine and brought it to the Airborne office for shipping.
Wednesday, I check the website and my machine arrived in the morning, has been fixed and is being shipped out in the afternoon.
Thursday, mid-day, an Airborne Express box is on my porch with my laptop with a new hard drive.
Time from problem discovery to problem resolution: 70 hours. Cost to me: $0. (Well, I did miss out on the $200 rebate offer when I bought it by one friggin' day... darn you Apple--why won't you be nice and give it to me anyway? why? Oh... sorry... )
Actually, at what point do we consider lying in print via e-mail a crime?
I went to Crushlink, but thought it was a scam... I went back several times and got a bunch of clues--none of which were contradictory, but none of which actually pointed to anyone I knew. I never typed in a "guess" e-mail address--rather, I'd have confronted the person face-to-face. I don't know that I'm all that "stupid and young" so I guess you think I'm a moron for tentatively trying it out, eh?
Anyway, let's say I typed in an e-mail address that wasn't the right guess. If Crushlink sends an e-mail to them that says "someone has a crush on you" and is referring to me, well, that's at least misrepresentation and at most libel. Are you saying that kind of behavior is A-Ok?
People need to rely on some communication to be at least a little factual. If you never believe anything you sense, you are insane.
It's really disappointing that I can receive advertising in paper mail and after filtering for usual advertising hyperbole, I can believe that (a) the product being sold can actually be purchased, (b) I could contact the company if they provide such information (or are well known), and (c) the advertising copy at least somewhat represents the product being sold. On the other hand, if I receive an e-mail with the same information, I can assume none of those things... consider even that it's acceptable to put a link like <A HREF="http://sears.dreamhost.com">
Sears
</A> to deceive the recipient.
Does she have enough control of her hands to "play" a theremin? Really though, all that would be important would be the position sensing aspects of the instrument.
Two things--first, real studies have shown (none available off hand, so let's just say IMHO for now) that fonts with serifs like Times and Courier are read slower but with more accuracy. San-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica tend to be read quicker but less accurately. For this reason, san-serif fonts are often used for headlines where accuracy can be sacrificed for speed, and serif fonts for body text where the opposite is true. Anyway, this article is written in slippery Veranda which, to me, not only looks awful but reads fast and is very innacurate.
The other related point is: why? If I want to view body text as Times, why do you _force_ me (via the bane of the HTML world, cascading style sheets) to read it in a font that I hate? This ain't advertising copy... it really doesn't matter what font it's in. [gesture hands in futile surrender.]
It can't be a violation of your 'privacy' if you don't post the material in question in the first place.
also (from the article:)
Waqaas Fahmawi, 25, used to sign petitions freely when he was in college. "In the past you would physically sign a petition and could confidently know that it would disappear into oblivion," said Mr. Fahmawi, a Palestinian-American who works as an economist for the Commerce Department.
But after he discovered that his signatures from his college years had been archived on the Internet, he became reluctant to sign petitions for fear that potential employers would hold his political views again him.
He feels stifled in his political expression. "The fact I have to think about this," he said, "really does show we live in a system of thought control."
First, to me personally, the way the world would run without assumed privacy is much better. (By assumed privacy, I'm referring to the belief that, by default, all actions are private. In my mind, all actions are public unless I make an effort to make them private. Ergo, what I'm saying is that I think privacy is necessary (i.e. passwords, etc.) but that it should never be assumed.) I think that once people realize that everyone is fallible and has done dumb things in their past, it'll alleviate a lot of stress in the world--privacy makes a lot of guilt.
Second, some of the things I live my life by are: you can't undo what you've done; align your actions with what you really believe; and no lie is air-tight. I think all those things are good things to believe in, and if everyone believed them too (ha ha) then assumed privacy wouldn't be necessary. Basically, I don't have any reservations about forcing everyone to take responsibility for their actions and thereby (gulp... fingers crossed) making everyone a bit more humble and forgiving. I know it doesn't follow, but I think that's the way it would work: there would be some people who lead their lives to infallible perfection, but I cannot believe that would be a majority and I cannot believe that minority would be in charge somehow, so the majority would be in power and prone to err which would allow everyone to live pretty freely.
Of course maybe this will come back to haunt me someday and I'll have completely changed my mind...
The real "high scorers"
on
High Score
·
· Score: 1
Speaking in near-off-topic diversions, I was curious if the book discusses the literal "high scorers" in the video game world. I always wondered who the legends of the arcade really were--and if they ever went on to do other great things. I mean who was "A.S.S." who seemed to visit every arcade in the country in the early eighties to mid eighties, only to be nearly ousted by "K.U.L." What ever became of the ever present "A.A.A." and the presumably related "B.A.A."--both of who still play games today.
If this book doesn't cover it, I don't know if we'll ever know.
We already have a leaking toxic waste facility that is slowly destroying most of the Adirondack Park. Sulfur dioxide levels have built up so high in the atmosphere that natural rainwater is actually acidic and has destroyed hundreds of lakes in the park by making them toxic to the fish and wildlife that depend on them.
Oh wait, we're just pumping that into the atmosphere directly. Never mind. Definitely continue with that. But nuclear, now that's bad news. </rant>
Seriously, though, consider for a moment if we actually attempted to contain the 13,000,000 [short] tons of sulfur dioxide alone we produce each _year_ (a number semi-intelligently pulled from a DOE report from 1998.) 77,000 tons of solid waste doesn't seem all that difficult to handle by comparison, even considering how much of a pain in the butt it is to handle nukes.
By the way, as for "how do you label something so nobody will open it after you've been dead 1,000 years?" The answer: don't. If we put all this stuff inside a big pyramid, every archaeologist and their brother will be drooling, chisel in hand, to bust in--especially if it's got exotic looking warnings. Stick it halfway through a mountain and put some sticks over the entrance and you might get lucky and nobody will touch it by accident. No icon stands up over time... when was the last time you saw the skull-and-crossbones warning on a bottle and assumed there was treasure inside?
Actually, as [possibly] engineered diseases go, AIDS isn't is fairly good. A friend of mine and I were talking about the worst... best... er... most effective disease you could engineer. We concluded that one that was highly contagious for a long period, had a reasonably long incubation period (i.e. 5 years or so... long enough for the contagious properties to take effect) then quickly deadly. AIDS misses the mark, because it is not highly contagious (as diseases go, it's not, believe it or not... consider the flu by comparison) it does have a long incubation period, but it is not very quick about being deadly.
Look, I absolutely detest Gator, but I have to defend them on this issue.
...
Ah, but I think you're missing a key point here. Since "free" sites really get their revenue from advertising (except for things like mine and many others which are paid for out-of-pocket as a gumball-machine-quality gift to the world) the product being sold by viewing the ads is the content of the website. Gator is apparently selling an interface for automatic form completion and the cost to the user is advertising--not just when they use the form completion, but all the time.
While the user is surfing, they are presented with ads from Gator. The reason they are surfing is for the content of the websites they visit--not for the product Gator is providing. Therefore, given the nature of advertising business on the web, Gator is circumventing the implied payment for viewing content.
My own weak analogy is that it is similar to walking into a Honda car dealership, removing some of the Honda-centric advertising and putting up Toyota ads in their place. The first few times you tried it, they'd tear down the Toyota ads and put back up the Honda ones. But what if you could do it thousands of times a day as fast as they could put up their ads? Would you be responsible for the cost of having someone replace the ads all the time--and, more importantly, responsible for any lost sales due to people shopping elsewhere? (Or would you just be charged with harassment or something like that and get kicked out and fined because it's the dealerships property?)
Curiously, this argument also makes it illegal^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"wrong" to disable advertising images or pop-up ads. On the flip side, if advertisers were content to make static banner ads (rather than animations, Flash, pop-ups, pop-unders, floating sprites... ad infinitum) people probably would never have circumvented advertising in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Why not just use melted ice cream ... perhaps let it melt throughout the other experiments then "reconstitute" it with liquid nitrogen and serve.
Huh? Isn't this the thread on satellite Internet?
Perhaps someone has an Intercontinental Ballistic Catapult. I was reading about them in the 1123 issue of Jane's.
There is no law to blame--it is very clearly against such Wiley tactics. Parody is protected under First Amendment rights and any corporation attempting to use trademark law to override the First Amendment is engaging in bullying. See, when an individual looks at all their assets and considers that the legal battle alone would consume them all in days, it's pretty scary ... something like "either you change your ways or we'll take your house away." At least that's how it feels. There's no way for an individual to do the same to a corporation.
Two things come to mind that thwart tinkering: teaching that science, math, engineering, and invention are hard, and, "don't do that, you might break it."
With advancements in "building blocks," the amount of information you have to learn to do something cool is dropping. When I was a kid growing up in the 1980's, I wanted to do all kinds of cool stuff with electronics, but I didn't have the degree in electrical engineering to figure out how to bias a transistor. Now I could--but I'd rather just go to Radio Shack and buy a 555 timer and a 741 op-amp to tinker with. They're cheap and have well-defined behaviors.
If we'd only teach our kids that these building blocks are available to them, maybe they could do great things. For goodness sake, though, don't tell a kid that something is hard. To them, hard means toil, difficulty, and no rewards. Building a tree-fort is hard, but kids can focus on the results of the work and get down to it. Nobody tells their kid that they need a degree in architecture before they can hammer some scrap lumber together--why should we say the same thing about building an amplifier?
The other thing is that we yell at kids for using a device in a manner other than its intended purpose or when they try to figure out how something works--all in the name of not breaking it. Despite the amout of stuff we throw away, it's a sin today to break something. Why do we teach our kids that going to McDonald's and throwing away 50 grams of waste for 500 grams of food is a good thing, but chastize them for taking apart their remote controlled car? It'd probably be more educational to risk breaking a US$40 toy than spend those same 40 bucks on carefully designed educational stuff ... heck, the kid is curious so fan those flames instead of stomping them out.
In other words: the important part is that it's really really cheap. Given the same number-of-units produced, I can't imagine that even the cheapest smart card could be manufactured cheaper than a drop of epoxy with some shiny things in it.
Why does Microsoft need a separate control panel to do the same thing? Why can't they just put shortcuts (aliases/soft links) to the programs on the desktop so you can just delete them?
Also, it's too bad they can't make the fix smaller than 30,000,000 bytes, too ... I thought all those DLL's allowed you to not rewrite the whole OS every time you wanted to put up a couple radio buttons, but I guess not.
Imagine if Vincent van Gogh got stuck in a contract where he had to produce 6-8 paintings but all of them had to look and feel just like Starry Night. The guy probably would have become depressed and killed himself.
Remember that Keith Jackson is having a conversation with some reporter. From my own experience, reporters are usually less aware of both obvious and non-obvious things than little kids. Unfortunately, Jackson was mistakenly addressing his local audience (the reporter) rather than attempt to address the audience of readers--"I don't care whether you understand, this is big-people talk so just write down exactly what I say: ..."
For example, the independent musician can now sit down in their basement with less than $1,000 in equipment and produce an okay sounding CD, then rip copies manually for ten cents each to either sell or give away at their shows. It seems that some of the laws being proposed will hurt that niche (i.e. can't make a copy of a CD at all, or CD technology is a patent of Sony)--do you also think this is a problem and what can we do to make sure the laws don't cause any collateral damage?
Ok, starting from the top.
As best I can tell, the only information Google collects from me is my preference settings and the text of my searches. In addition, it collects "implicit" information--I am user number 71f612455 something or other according to the google.com "PREF" cookie. Apparently they can then discern that I, as a solitary user, searches for stuff like "chainless bicycles" and "rochester bands." They could probably figure out who I am based on what I search for.
In my opinion, this does not violate my privacy. It's akin to a taxicab driver noting where I want to go. In some weird alternate reality, they might give me a numbered card which I could show them when I got in the cab and they'd remember how warm I liked it in the cab or change the radio station. They could also keep track of everywhere I go. I think the analogy is pretty good, and I probably wouldn't mind the side effects all that much. Heck, for that matter, I don't have much concern over supermarket savings clubs--and they have my name and address as well, which does make me a little more concerned.
On the second point, I don't think it's too hard to get ranked high on Google. Make a page that people link to--or one that has unique information--and keep it around for a long time. That worked for me. Searching for purrs rochester band or rochester band weekly events and my JayceLand site comes up pretty high on the list. Even before my URL appeared on Slashdot from posting stuff, I was doing pretty good. Maybe if he did some research as to why Google hates him he'd find some stuff to correct.
Third, Google is acting like a benevolent monopoly. In fact, I don't think they can do otherwise. As soon as they sell off prominent keywords to porn sites, people will hate them, stop using them, and some other site will take its place. I guess if they continuously spidered competing search engines to kill them off, that would be wrong but transparent to the users ... then we'd need some kind of government action. Other than that they're doing okay by me.
(... and all that in just over a minute!)
Hopefully they're planning to put up a big sign that says, " NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ." I bet the second picture you take would look pretty cool, too.
On Monday afternoon I called them and they said they'd send me an overnight shipping package.
Tuesday, mid-day, an Airborne Express box was sitting on my porch. I packed the machine and brought it to the Airborne office for shipping.
Wednesday, I check the website and my machine arrived in the morning, has been fixed and is being shipped out in the afternoon.
Thursday, mid-day, an Airborne Express box is on my porch with my laptop with a new hard drive.
Time from problem discovery to problem resolution: 70 hours. Cost to me: $0. (Well, I did miss out on the $200 rebate offer when I bought it by one friggin' day ... darn you Apple--why won't you be nice and give it to me anyway? why? Oh ... sorry ... )
I went to Crushlink, but thought it was a scam ... I went back several times and got a bunch of clues--none of which were contradictory, but none of which actually pointed to anyone I knew. I never typed in a "guess" e-mail address--rather, I'd have confronted the person face-to-face. I don't know that I'm all that "stupid and young" so I guess you think I'm a moron for tentatively trying it out, eh?
Anyway, let's say I typed in an e-mail address that wasn't the right guess. If Crushlink sends an e-mail to them that says "someone has a crush on you" and is referring to me, well, that's at least misrepresentation and at most libel. Are you saying that kind of behavior is A-Ok?
People need to rely on some communication to be at least a little factual. If you never believe anything you sense, you are insane.
It's really disappointing that I can receive advertising in paper mail and after filtering for usual advertising hyperbole, I can believe that (a) the product being sold can actually be purchased, (b) I could contact the company if they provide such information (or are well known), and (c) the advertising copy at least somewhat represents the product being sold. On the other hand, if I receive an e-mail with the same information, I can assume none of those things ... consider even that it's acceptable to put a link like <A HREF="http://sears.dreamhost.com">
Sears
</A> to deceive the recipient.
grumble grumble...
Does she have enough control of her hands to "play" a theremin? Really though, all that would be important would be the position sensing aspects of the instrument.
- identifying spammers so they can be contacted to stop sending further messages or allowing their messages to be filtered easily
- identifying telemarketers in the same way
- identifying the source of all advertising
I don't think it would trample any free speech that isn't already limited (i.e. lying about what someone else said is already frowned upon.)So what did I miss? How would this be used to hurt J. Citizen?
Two things--first, real studies have shown (none available off hand, so let's just say IMHO for now) that fonts with serifs like Times and Courier are read slower but with more accuracy. San-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica tend to be read quicker but less accurately. For this reason, san-serif fonts are often used for headlines where accuracy can be sacrificed for speed, and serif fonts for body text where the opposite is true. Anyway, this article is written in slippery Veranda which, to me, not only looks awful but reads fast and is very innacurate.
The other related point is: why? If I want to view body text as Times, why do you _force_ me (via the bane of the HTML world, cascading style sheets) to read it in a font that I hate? This ain't advertising copy ... it really doesn't matter what font it's in. [gesture hands in futile surrender.]
(Oh ... what? I thought we were talking about the city in upstate New York...)
also (from the article:)
First, to me personally, the way the world would run without assumed privacy is much better. (By assumed privacy, I'm referring to the belief that, by default, all actions are private. In my mind, all actions are public unless I make an effort to make them private. Ergo, what I'm saying is that I think privacy is necessary (i.e. passwords, etc.) but that it should never be assumed.) I think that once people realize that everyone is fallible and has done dumb things in their past, it'll alleviate a lot of stress in the world--privacy makes a lot of guilt.
Second, some of the things I live my life by are: you can't undo what you've done; align your actions with what you really believe; and no lie is air-tight. I think all those things are good things to believe in, and if everyone believed them too (ha ha) then assumed privacy wouldn't be necessary. Basically, I don't have any reservations about forcing everyone to take responsibility for their actions and thereby (gulp ... fingers crossed) making everyone a bit more humble and forgiving. I know it doesn't follow, but I think that's the way it would work: there would be some people who lead their lives to infallible perfection, but I cannot believe that would be a majority and I cannot believe that minority would be in charge somehow, so the majority would be in power and prone to err which would allow everyone to live pretty freely.
Of course maybe this will come back to haunt me someday and I'll have completely changed my mind ...
If this book doesn't cover it, I don't know if we'll ever know.
We already have a leaking toxic waste facility that is slowly destroying most of the Adirondack Park. Sulfur dioxide levels have built up so high in the atmosphere that natural rainwater is actually acidic and has destroyed hundreds of lakes in the park by making them toxic to the fish and wildlife that depend on them.
Oh wait, we're just pumping that into the atmosphere directly. Never mind. Definitely continue with that. But nuclear, now that's bad news.
</rant>
Seriously, though, consider for a moment if we actually attempted to contain the 13,000,000 [short] tons of sulfur dioxide alone we produce each _year_ (a number semi-intelligently pulled from a DOE report from 1998.) 77,000 tons of solid waste doesn't seem all that difficult to handle by comparison, even considering how much of a pain in the butt it is to handle nukes.
By the way, as for "how do you label something so nobody will open it after you've been dead 1,000 years?" The answer: don't. If we put all this stuff inside a big pyramid, every archaeologist and their brother will be drooling, chisel in hand, to bust in--especially if it's got exotic looking warnings. Stick it halfway through a mountain and put some sticks over the entrance and you might get lucky and nobody will touch it by accident. No icon stands up over time ... when was the last time you saw the skull-and-crossbones warning on a bottle and assumed there was treasure inside?
Lovely sentiment, eh?
Ah, but I think you're missing a key point here. Since "free" sites really get their revenue from advertising (except for things like mine and many others which are paid for out-of-pocket as a gumball-machine-quality gift to the world) the product being sold by viewing the ads is the content of the website. Gator is apparently selling an interface for automatic form completion and the cost to the user is advertising--not just when they use the form completion, but all the time.
While the user is surfing, they are presented with ads from Gator. The reason they are surfing is for the content of the websites they visit--not for the product Gator is providing. Therefore, given the nature of advertising business on the web, Gator is circumventing the implied payment for viewing content.
My own weak analogy is that it is similar to walking into a Honda car dealership, removing some of the Honda-centric advertising and putting up Toyota ads in their place. The first few times you tried it, they'd tear down the Toyota ads and put back up the Honda ones. But what if you could do it thousands of times a day as fast as they could put up their ads? Would you be responsible for the cost of having someone replace the ads all the time--and, more importantly, responsible for any lost sales due to people shopping elsewhere? (Or would you just be charged with harassment or something like that and get kicked out and fined because it's the dealerships property?)
Curiously, this argument also makes it illegal^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"wrong" to disable advertising images or pop-up ads. On the flip side, if advertisers were content to make static banner ads (rather than animations, Flash, pop-ups, pop-unders, floating sprites ... ad infinitum) people probably would never have circumvented advertising in the first place.