Do you think running AdBlock is stealing? [Archive]

Serapth

04-13-2010, 01:10 PM

I'm not sure which one mine would fall under. Probably "Yes, but I do it anyway".

However, I have sites I go to regularly. CoG, GR.org, etc. that I have on exempt and I use the CoG link whenever buying from Amazon.

On the other hand, totally not my fault. If websites would stick to banner adds, I'd be fine and wouldn't have it. Instead they have ads that throw out insanely loud sound, scroll with you, pop up in the center of your screen, and have the most obnoxious animations. I'm not walking anywhere, I'm not in my car, I'm not surrounded by strangers, I'm not huddled in some public place. I don't need the non-stop strobelight effect telling me to buy pills for my tiny erection.

I was trying to figure a way to put this into the poll and couldn't really fit it in. I think adblock software should default to off, with a single press button that blocks all the ads on an offensive site like the ones you are describing. At least from a moral perspective, frankly though, I don't think any of the ad blockers work that way, you have to manually disable it for each site.

Stoke

04-13-2010, 01:11 PM

Serapth

04-13-2010, 01:13 PM

Not stealing. Ads are annoying and I'm already paying for my ISP. Just like skipping through commercials with a Tivo or DVR...I'm already paying for cable.

This argument is simply intellectually dishonest. I mean, you pay taxes that fund your roads, but you still have to buy a car and put gas in it. When you pay your ISP, not a cent of that money goes to any of the websites you visit, ISPs are not content providers. Now the scary part is ( and partially because of the use of ad blocks ), some companies like FOX ( its always Fox... ) are pushing for ISPs to give a share of the money to them to pay for their content. So, if the ad supported business model fails on the net, you will likely end up paying for content regardless to if you want it or not!

This is not a future I want to see.

Goronmon

04-13-2010, 01:19 PM

What it comes down to is that if you are reading the content on a site and they are trying to bring in some revenue with ads, you are being kind of a dick by blocking the ads but still consuming the content of the site.

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 01:30 PM

This argument is simply intellectually dishonest. I mean, you pay taxes that fund your roads, but you still have to buy a car and put gas in it. When you pay your ISP, not a cent of that money goes to any of the websites you visit, ISPs are not content providers. Now the scary part is ( and partially because of the use of ad blocks ), some companies like FOX ( its always Fox... ) are pushing for ISPs to give a share of the money to them to pay for their content. So, if the ad supported business model fails on the net, you will likely end up paying for content regardless to if you want it or not!

This is not a future I want to see.
To be nit-picky, the taxes go to law enforcement, pavement, and maintenance or upgrades of the roads - you don't pay taxes to drive. You can drive a car on a dirt path if needed. That's an argument that didn't need to be made - I know - but maybe my point is that your illustration isn't really valid.

While I agree that paying for the access to the content is not the same as paying for the content, I don't see an inherent obligation to generate revenue for a website.

Put it this way: if you print a web page and give a copy to a friend, are you stealing? If you view a page together, are you stealing? If you let your browser sit on a page with self-refreshing content, are you stealing?

Adam Blue

04-13-2010, 01:30 PM

Not stealing. Ads are annoying and I'm already paying for my ISP. Just like skipping through commercials with a Tivo or DVR...I'm already paying for cable.

What it comes down to is that if you are reading the content on a site and they are trying to bring in some revenue with ads, you are being kind of a dick by blocking the ads but still consuming the content of the site.

And it costs to keep a site up.

Ravenlock

04-13-2010, 01:30 PM

I voted "Yes, but I do it anyways", but my real answer is "I turn it off for sites I want to support." Which is most sites I visit regularly and/or trust. I let the ads through on CoG, and on pretty much all other forums and gaming sites I care about.

I would much rather have a policy of only turning it ON when a site's ads are annoying me and I want to react against them, but unfortunately the nature of the web is such that doing that can be justifiably viewed as a security risk.

Purple Santa

04-13-2010, 01:31 PM

First i'm a pirate because I rent my games. Now i'm a pirate because I block ads. I'm just going to wear a patch, put a parrot on my shoulder then place a patch over my eye. Beware ninjas!

Ravenlock

04-13-2010, 01:34 PM

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 01:36 PM

Honestly, I think the question is poorly phrased. It's really hard to label this sort of thing as "stealing" or not, and I think txshurricane gave a few good examples of why.

A better question might be "Does running Adblock hurt the websites you visit?", and the answer to that question is a completely unambiguous "yes." It is not necessarily obligatory that you care about that, but yes, it certainly does.
I agree with that. Nick is pretty candid with us about the Co-Optimus numbers, and certain aspects of our coverage are affected negatively or positively by the amount of ad revenue generated.

PAX, for example.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 01:44 PM

To be nit-picky, the taxes go to law enforcement, pavement, and maintenance or upgrades of the roads - you don't pay taxes to drive. You can drive a car on a dirt path if needed. That's an argument that didn't need to be made - I know - but maybe my point is that your illustration isn't really valid.

Ok, Mr NitPicker! How about license and license plate fee's? ;) Besides, I am Canadian and taxes do go directly towards road works.

While I agree that paying for the access to the content is not the same as paying for the content, I don't see an inherent obligation to generate revenue for a website.

Put it this way: if you print a web page and give a copy to a friend, are you stealing? If you view a page together, are you stealing? If you let your browser sit on a page with self-refreshing content, are you stealing?

Technically to answer your question, the first might actually be in direct violation of the TOS if reproduction is prohibited, then by the letter of the law, yes. For the second, no, unless you are operating a business for profit then the answer is maybe. For example, most bars have to pay special licensing costs for mass audiences... if then a bar had a website being shown for mass consumption on a big screen TV, the answer gets gray. In the final scenario, no.

Panthera

04-13-2010, 01:47 PM

What if I'm reading it via RSS, where there's just text and no banners?

TrackZero

04-13-2010, 01:49 PM

Not stealing. Ads are annoying and I'm already paying for my ISP. Just like skipping through commercials with a Tivo or DVR...I'm already paying for cable.

Bad analogy. Cable companies backpay some money to the networks. The medium and content are mixed. Internet access is simply the medium, nothing else. The sites you visit are content. They don't get paid by your ISP, so your logic is completely faulty.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 01:50 PM

Honestly, I think the question is poorly phrased.

PSHHH, when it comes to polls, everyones a critic!

TrackZero

04-13-2010, 01:51 PM

Serapth

04-13-2010, 01:52 PM

What if I'm reading it via RSS, where there's just text and no banners?

Well, then it is obviously not an issue. However, often RSS feeds are a subset of the content and there actually are ways of monetizing RSS feeds ( most of which are really annoying ). Regardless, in an RSS feed, the content owner/creator has opted to make that content ad free.

Dukefrukem

04-13-2010, 01:53 PM

Kelegacy

04-13-2010, 01:55 PM

Our society is bombarded enough with ads. I DVR my shows to fast forward through all the commercials and I use adblock in Firefox to block ads (most of the time). Calling it stealing is lame.

civil

04-13-2010, 01:57 PM

I suggest Serapth hire Ravenlock as a ghost writer for all his polls from now on. Misspellings, poorly phrased questions...Serapth's got good intentions but shitty execution.

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 01:58 PM

Ok, Mr NitPicker! How about license and license plate fee's? ;) Besides, I am Canadian and taxes do go directly towards road works.
:p Touché.

Technically to answer your question, the first might actually be in direct violation of the TOS if reproduction is prohibited, then by the letter of the law, yes. For the second, no, unless you are operating a business for profit then the answer is maybe. For example, most bars have to pay special licensing costs for mass audiences... if then a bar had a website being shown for mass consumption on a big screen TV, the answer gets gray. In the final scenario, no.
Good points all around. Just the same: we're not talking about reproduction nor licensing...at least, I don't think we are. I was talking about normal, common-sense uses of the internet.

Regardless, in an RSS feed, the content owner/creator has opted to make that content ad free.
Is it then fair to say that the owner/creator of an ad-supported website has opted to generate revenue based on voluntary ad viewing? Ad revenue obviously has some sort of edge over subscription-based access, because otherwise it wouldn't be used. I think that it's a conscious - and smart - decision on the owner's behalf to use in-page ads to support their work, and I think that ad blockers had better be a major part of that decision making process.

TrackZero

04-13-2010, 01:58 PM

Good point, but are you suggesting that sites should rely 100% on ad revenue to keep their sites up?

Sites can apply whatever revenue model they want. Though it's generally common knowledge that information only holds value until the first person sees it, after that it will be freely distributed to other nodes. So the "pay for content" sites usually have a rough go of it unless they have a specific quirk or a extremely loyal base. There's also merchandising possibilities if you have the right audience as well, that can work for some sites, etc. But by and large, hosting costs are covered by ads (viewed or referral) if you're not selling "product".

TrackZero

04-13-2010, 02:00 PM

Ok, Mr NitPicker! How about license and license plate fee's? ;) Besides, I am Canadian and taxes do go directly towards road works.

Er, don't you live in the states? I also recall you slamming a bunch of stuff about your home country in the past. ;)

Kelegacy

04-13-2010, 02:04 PM

I don't block CoG, but I did block EvAv in the past. The ads are not annoying on CoG, though EvAv used sidebars and banner ads, as well as Google ads...AND we had a subscription model that was corrupt. If we ever institute annoying sidebar ads that flash and stuff, I'll have no choice. Right now they are as tasteful as I've ever seen on a site.

I think we could make more money by doing affiliate links, like Cheapassgamer does. Cheapy will actually edit people's posts about game sales and put in or change the links himselves. Sometimes I think that's a bit fishy, but it works. If I could buy games and give back to CoG easily (like Amazon), I would in a heartbeat.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 02:05 PM

Is it then fair to say that the owner/creator of an ad-supported website has opted to generate revenue based on voluntary ad viewing? Ad revenue obviously has some sort of edge over subscription-based access, because otherwise it wouldn't be used. I think that it's a conscious - and smart - decision on the owner's behalf to use in-page ads to support their work, and I think that ad blockers had better be a major part of that decision making process.

Yes, but makes this disturbing ( and the source of this article ), is a browser shipping with AdBlock enabled by default. See what happens now with many sites is enough people don't run adblock or disable it for favored sites, but in this case, the browser itself is shipping with AdBlock taking the decision right out of the users hands. Basically right now, AdBlockers are getting a free ride because enough people don't block ads to make it worthwhile to do anything about it. But eventually if enough people are blocking ads, the entire economics of the web collapse and you will see more and more sites vanish or go subscriber based.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 02:06 PM

Er, don't you live in the states? I also recall you slamming a bunch of stuff about your home country in the past. ;)

I was probably annoyed at going to elections for the seventh time in 4 months.... :D Actually, Ill probably be moving in your backyard within a couple months, although then I suppose we will refer to you being in my front yard, no? :D

BigJonno

04-13-2010, 02:08 PM

I don't know if I'd call it stealing, but it's certainly denying revenue to people who offer you content for free. The only sites I visit regularly are ones that I'm happy taking a few milliseconds of extra page loading time in order to "pay" for.

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 02:09 PM

Yes, but makes this disturbing ( and the source of this article ), is a browser shipping with AdBlock enabled by default. See what happens now with many sites is enough people don't run adblock or disable it for favored sites, but in this case, the browser itself is shipping with AdBlock taking the decision right out of the users hands. Basically right now, AdBlockers are getting a free ride because enough people don't block ads to make it worthwhile to do anything about it. But eventually if enough people are blocking ads, the entire economics of the web collapse and you will see more and more sites vanish or go subscriber based.
I can see where you're going with that, but to revert back to the original topic/poll: it's not unethical for me to block ads consciously. Not in my opinion.

Vandabo

04-13-2010, 02:16 PM

Instead of arguing about whether blocking ads is stealing, we should be arranging a worldwide manhunt to track down and kill (slowly) the people who come up with and utilize the "You've won a PSP" audio ads.

At least advertising in other media is regulated in some way, and can be kept to a standard that isn't dangerous or overly annoying.

Ravenlock

04-13-2010, 02:19 PM

Well, then it is obviously not an issue. However, often RSS feeds are a subset of the content and there actually are ways of monetizing RSS feeds ( most of which are really annoying ). Regardless, in an RSS feed, the content owner/creator has opted to make that content ad free.

To that point, several RSS feeds do, in fact, include ads.

Ravenlock

04-13-2010, 02:21 PM

I suggest Serapth hire Ravenlock as a ghost writer for all his polls from now on. Misspellings, poorly phrased questions...Serapth's got good intentions but shitty execution.

I am available at very reasonable rates. I do, however, reserve the right to embed advertisements in my polls. ;)

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 02:36 PM

Since the question proposed the action as stealing or not, my answer is a definitive no.

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 02:39 PM

I am available at very reasonable rates. I do, however, reserve the right to embed advertisements in my polls. ;)
In that case, lemme turn on my AdBlock... :p

Handmade.Mercury

04-13-2010, 02:40 PM

What if you pay the sites directly with your own money?

muddi900

04-13-2010, 02:42 PM

To that point, several RSS feeds do, in fact, include ads.

As a person who mostly browse the internet through RSS feeds, I find it especially annoying when websites with impressions based ads truncate their posts n the feed to get more impressions on their page. It defeats the purpose of RSS.

On-topic, I mute all ads on TV, am I stealing form the tv network.:eek:

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 02:47 PM

What if you pay the sites directly with your own money?
...and they go to Disney World? :D

txshurricane

04-13-2010, 02:49 PM

...and they go to Disney World? :D
*insert R2-D2 "whooooaaaaooooh!!"*

civil

04-13-2010, 02:49 PM

...and they go to Disney World? :D
http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm216/ThinksTwice/MoFi/lloyd.jpg

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 02:52 PM

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/4871/yesmoustache.gif

JRR006

04-13-2010, 02:57 PM

Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars) and TechDirt (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml) both had opinion pieces up on this issue. Ars came down on the "You're stealing from USSSS" side, but TechDirt's op-ed basically said "A user might block ads, but users also contribute value to the community by participating in discussion and linking people to our site."

I am always willing to kick in a few dollars to a site that I love. I buy stuff from the little e-store front that everyone and their mother has set up. I buy books, games, plushies, posters, or direct donation in the case of NPR and PBS and its ilk. My money winds up in pockets of people whose creative output I appreciate, so I don't feel guilty blocking ads.

Admittedly, it might be a bit convoluted and counter to reality assuming that because I purchase BBC DVDs, somehow it's okay to block ads at BBC.co.uk. The system isn't perfect. I'd pay a licence fee if I could!

Xerxes

04-13-2010, 03:05 PM

Not interested.

Satertek

04-13-2010, 03:15 PM

Never have blocked ads, after ~15 years on the Internet I'm just used to them, never even notice except the exceptionally annoying Flash ones that cover the screen, but even those I'm pretty much used to.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 03:18 PM

Im a little shocked at how this poll skews so heavily the one way.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 03:27 PM

I don't block ads. If a site's ads annoy me enough I'll just stop going to the site.

Scull

04-13-2010, 03:50 PM

Like many others I do block ads. I let some sites go through without being blocked (CoG for one), but the majority of the web is blocked. Further, I feel no guilt or remorse in doing so, and if a site I frequent needs to go to a pay for use model then if I feel the content is worth it I'll pay for it, but I will still block the ads.

MagGnome

04-13-2010, 03:55 PM

No, I don't believe it is. I do try to enable ads on sites I like that I know need the revenue. (Digg, 4chan, Hulu) I don't do it for CoG though. If CoG is running low on funds and is in danger of going under all the founders have to do is mention it and I'll send some their way. I don't feel I should have to settle for a poorer browsing experience with flash ads just to support various websites though.

You don't mind supporting 4chan with ad revenue, but not COG? :eek:

I use an ad blocker because a good portion (probably the majority) of the ads online are annoying. I had exempted COG from this filter, but since moving to the new computer I haven't exempted any sites. I should go ahead and do that for the ones that I want to support that don't have crazy ads.

Edit - I went ahead and added COG as an exception on this computer. I feel better now. :p

Datul

04-13-2010, 04:10 PM

Kelegacy

04-13-2010, 04:16 PM

Ads pay for sites. Sites are good. Ads are evil.

I realize there's no answer given there, but I chose No - I'm not stealing anything. At one point I had ads, then I found AdBlock. The interwebs are much better now.

Aside: CoG's Amazon link is not blocked by Adblock inherently, so I still have that option. Considering how much I shop at amazon, I should click that button more.

You know what? I never noticed, or realized, that we had that Amazon link there. WTF. And I don't have ads blocked on this site.

I feel so retarded, and I could have been supporting CoG more. From now on I'll be stopping here before purchasing something from Amazon.

Stoke

04-13-2010, 04:25 PM

You don't mind supporting 4chan with ad revenue, but not COG? :eek:

I use an ad blocker because a good portion (probably the majority) of the ads online are annoying. I had exempted COG from this filter, but since moving to the new computer I haven't exempted any sites. I should go ahead and do that for the ones that I want to support that don't have crazy ads.

Edit - I went ahead and added COG as an exception on this computer. I feel better now. :p

I spend an equal amount if not more time there than CoG so I don't see it as the hell hole the rest of the internet does. :p

Plus, as far as I know, CoG is doing alright for revenue. I think I've seen posts from one of the founders mentioning the current revenue from ads completely covers the hosting costs. It might have changed or I might be incorrect but that's the situation as far as I know.

On the other hand the creator of 4chan is deep in debt. 4chan (understandably) has problems finding ad partners willing to "support" the kinds of things that go on there and the ad revenue does not cover the costs of running something so massive and so constantly under attack. So 4chan needs my support more than CoG. Enough that I'm willing to enable the ads for "male masturbation aids" and breast shaped stress balls. :p

iHap

04-13-2010, 04:29 PM

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ciivyc.gif

Banacek

04-13-2010, 04:33 PM

Not stealing. Ads are annoying and I'm already paying for my ISP. Just like skipping through commercials with a Tivo or DVR...I'm already paying for cable.

Wow, you are so wrong. You're joking, right?

Anyway, sites are going to start blocking users with ad blocking turned on. Good for them. Where I come from, people like being paid for their work.

BigJonno

04-13-2010, 04:35 PM

Banacek

04-13-2010, 04:39 PM

Oh, another thing: the IAB should be shot into space for approving Flash ads and animated gifs. I think a lot of users would be ok if ads if they knew they weren't going to get hit with some loud audio or annoying video ad. Small and tasteful goes a long way.

Stoke

04-13-2010, 04:40 PM

I've been thinking about this and I reckon it's about on a level with software piracy. You're not physically taking anything from anyone, but you are knowingly receiving content without compensating the creator for it.

If you want to get down to it it's worse than piracy as with ad blocking you're using the site resources (bandwidth) without paying (in ad views). In piracy you receive content without paying but don't use any of the developers resources to get it.

Hawkzombie

04-13-2010, 04:53 PM

Bad analogy. Cable companies backpay some money to the networks. The medium and content are mixed. Internet access is simply the medium, nothing else. The sites you visit are content. They don't get paid by your ISP, so your logic is completely faulty.

Actually, they just passed stuff in Alberta forcing Cable companies to do just that, and now the cable companies are complaining that they're going to be forced to raise prices to accommodate it. It's BS.

Lemme ask people something: When you watch television, do you sit down for every commercial that comes on your favorite show? Do you wait until a program is going on your favorite channel before changing the channel to another station, so as to avoid missing commercials?

How many people here who record shows do not skip through the commercials as you watch the show? And how many people sit through every single commercial and trailer before a movie in theaters, instead of going to the john quickly, or getting a last minute snack?

How many people can honestly say they do those things 100% of the time whenever they watch television or movies? My guess is zero. Anyone who says any differently is lying. Now how many TV watchers out there said Yes in this argument?

It's the same thing, honestly.

Now, for my viewpoint on it, it's the same as skipping commercials, or heading out to the john during a break, or whatever. Ads aren't a guaranteed form of sales pitch. It's all a crap shoot. You pay a comapny X amount of dollars to run an advertising campaign for X amount of time, and you MIGHT see an increase of sales. most smart advertisers know that word of mouth is more powerful than the actual ad itself, and try and make the ad as memorable as possible so that those who DO see it tell their friends about it. Then their friends are more on the look out for that specific ad, or might hit youtube to find it. That brand gets more awareness through viral means than anything else.

Saying it's a form of stealing, or cheating a company out of potential profits, for blocking ads entirely? I don't buy it. Plus, some ads can be harmful.

I dunno how many here heard about it (or were affected by it) but Alakhazam.com (sp?) a popular WoW info site, which was trusted by many MANY users, had an ad that ran malicious code and keyloggers on people's systems. Bad on them for not double checking the ad itself, but that's just it: People who blocked the ads weren't affected, as it was Java based. Those who did not were at risk.

So I do it for convenience, and for safety.

EDIT: That said, I allow CoG, because the ad is small, unobtrusive, and I love this site. it's one of like three sites that get a free pass from me.

BigJonno

04-13-2010, 04:57 PM

Serapth

04-13-2010, 05:02 PM

But revenue from internet adverts is often connected to views. By blocking the advertisement, you are actively denying the website ad revenue, so the whole "but you go to the loo during TV ads" argument just isn't applicable.

To say nothing of the fact in TV land, if you are using satellite or cable, you already paid for the content to a certain extent, even if you skip the commercials. Not so in internet land.

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 05:04 PM

I can see the sense in the points that everybody has made, but we're talking about paying for content with my mind, my time and attention, which I'm not really comfortable with.

Since law and regulation is subjective anyway, let me make this easy on myself by presently making a decree to the entire internet:

I, the user known here as Vigil80, reserve the right to withhold my very thought energy as a form of payment for any content or service, except where I specifically agree to do so. I shall not be coerced out of my time or attention, especially for commercial enterprise.

Addendum: If you cover your site in a ponderous amount of ads - particularly intrusive objects which interject sound, video, or obscure the content itself - such that I feel compelled to employ a 3rd party blocking method, I shall not be held responsible for lost revenue. That's your own damn fault, you jackasses. You have managed to employ a marketing scheme that does the exact opposite of what you must have intended.

There, now it's clear. Having said that, let me add that CoG's own ad scheme is very reasonable and unobtrusive, and if all sites were so conscientious about it, we wouldn't have need for ad-blocking or this discussion.

Edit:
One more thing. I don't specifically use an ad-blocker, but I do use NoScript, which often has the side effect of disabling advertisements. But in addition to my consciousness, I'm not going to sacrifice protection against malicious scripts and such to be comercially friendly, either.

Widgetcraft

04-13-2010, 05:16 PM

Yes, but I do it anyway. I turn it off on sites that I like, which don't try to choke me with ads. I've never felt the need for ad blocking on CoG, for example.

SilentScreams

04-13-2010, 05:18 PM

Honestly, I've never even thought about this subject before.
I don't block ads anyway, so it's not an issue. With that said, I almost never click on them. I've been using the internet for so long that I barely notice them anymore.

If a site has particularly obnoxious ads, I block them, but CoG is a long long way away from what I'd consider an unacceptable amount of ads.

wyeast

04-13-2010, 05:21 PM

I often have to check out dodgy sites for potentially spamming users on another board, so I run adblock along with the gamut of other screens.

It is a neighborly policy to unhook the screens on reliable sites you frequent. I tend to keep noscript up, tho', because there have been a couple of instances of spam slipping into a banner, unbeknownst to the site you're on. :mad:

Banacek

04-13-2010, 05:30 PM

I think a better question would be 'Are you willing to pay $1-$3 dollars a month to access a site completely free of ads?' Those results would actually be useful ;)

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 05:32 PM

I know people hate ads, but I hope we can at least recognize that they enable content to be much cheaper than it would otherwise be and, in many cases on the internet, completely free. They are not pure evil. They're a necessary evil, one most of us would find preferable to paying out of pocket for every website or paying significantly more for every tv show, magazine, and movie.

I can see the sense in the points that everybody has made, but we're talking about paying for content with my mind, my time and attention, which I'm not really comfortable with.

Really? This makes you actually uncomfortable? Is your mind that vulnerable that you believe it's at risk by a banner ad or television commercial? Is your time so valuable that 22 minutes of entertainment isn't a fair trade for a couple minutes of your attention?

I, the user known here as Vigil80, reserve the right to withhold my very thought energy as a form of payment for any content or service, except where I specifically agree to do so. I shall not be coerced out of my time or attention, especially for commercial enterprise.

Addendum: If you cover your site in a ponderous amount of ads - particularly intrusive objects which interject sound, video, or obscure the content itself - such that I feel compelled to employ a 3rd party blocking method, I shall not be held responsible for lost revenue. That's your own damn fault, you jackasses. You have managed to employ a marketing scheme that does the exact opposite of what you must have intended.

Now this argument sure sounds a lot like ones used by software pirates.

"I reserve the right to withhold my money as a form of payment for any content or service, yet I'll still get to enjoy the product."

"If your game has an overly obstrusive form of copy protection then I shall not be held responsible if I pirate the software to enjoy the content without providing you revenue. That's your own damn fault, you jackasses."

Anyone is free to deny a company revenue if you consider their ads, copy protection, corporate philosophy, or CEO's hairstyle offensive. The tradeoff, however, is that you don't get to enjoy their product. That's the deal. To do otherwise is circumventing the content provider/customer relationship and is akin to piracy.

If you want to adblock, fine, but don't try to make it out to be some noble endeavor. You're enjoying a content provider's content, which costs them money to provide, and more money thanks to your site visit, while denying them their means of recouping those costs. Call a spade a spade.

Vandabo

04-13-2010, 05:53 PM

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 05:57 PM

I consider adblocking a basic part of my security regimen for internet usage. The simple fact is, the vast majority of malware these days is delivered through bogus advertisements running bad Flash and Javascript code, and an ad blocker is an important first line of defense against such exploits.

And frankly, the problem is simply too endemic, and too widespread, for me to trust anyone not to allow unacceptable software through their ad streams. Many forms of spyware and malware come from major ad services, or from compromised sites and services, enough to make the problem so widespread that allowing anyone special dispensation is just too much of a risk.

Even the ads on this very site have caused me stability problems in the past, specifically the GoGamer ad, and as my attempt to bring this to light was largely met with derision and denial, it didn't leave me with any confidence that I could trust it's advertising. For some time, I had to manually block the ad to stop the problem, then at some point someone added GoGamer to the EasyList, now I don't have to, and I have seen no reason to change that.

If a site wants to make money, well, frankly they're in the wrong medium unless they're actually selling a product, that's the bottom line, and has been the case ever since the first Internet bubble burst. Find a better way to make money, because it isn't coming from my ad hits, not when I have to compromise my own security for you to get it.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 05:59 PM

The world would be a better place if everybody used adblock on websites that utilize annoying ads, thus forcing sites to stop using them. Don't hate the people blocking the ads, hate the people making and using annoying ads. What we really need is some sort of program that actively harms sites that uses annoying ads.

Or everyone could just not go to sites that use annoying ads. That would accomplish the same thing.

"The world would be a better place is everyone pirated Assassin's Creed 2, thus forcing Ubisoft to stop using invasive DRM."

How does your hate for someone who uses annoying ads justify you getting to enjoy their content without compensation?

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:02 PM

If a site wants to make money, well, frankly they're in the wrong medium unless they're actually selling a product, that's the bottom line, and has been the case ever since the first Internet bubble burst. Find a better way to make money, because it isn't coming from my ad hits, not when I have to compromise my own security for you to get it.

You do realize, if more and more people develop this attitude, this is exactly what people will do. The entire web will become pay per (page)view or subscription based, that or it will be shit. Services like Gmail will disappear, as they live off ad revenue and thats the only reason why they are free.

The security argument seems horrifically wrong. First off, I am not running adblock and have never had a security issue from errant flash settings. I mean, dont surf the web with full trust and don't click shit you don't trust and you will be fine. There are ways to become safe that have nothing to do with blocking sites.

Now, blocking Flash... that is a different story and is probably a good idea in many ways.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 06:05 PM

Yes, I can understand the argument for NoScript programs, but AdBlockers go far beyond that and block ads that have no way to harm your computer.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 06:09 PM

Vandabo

04-13-2010, 06:10 PM

Or everyone could just not go to sites that use annoying ads. That would accomplish the same thing.

"The world would be a better place is everyone pirated Assassin's Creed 2, thus forcing Ubisoft to stop using invasive DRM."

How does your hate for someone who uses annoying ads justify you getting to enjoy their content without compensation?

You know how you kind of wander around the internet? It's not as if you know whenever you click on a link if the page it goes to will scream "CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE IPOD".

It's like if it was legal to toss landmines around your store in the mall. I'm just walking around and suddenly I detonate one. Sure, I'm not going back, but my leg is already gone.

Instead, if it's discovered that your property has landmines, people come and put you in jail. I want harm to come to people that use bad ads.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:13 PM

So, when I fast forward the DVR through the commercials, is that "stealing"? How about when I hit the mute button and have a short chat with my roommate? Or get up during the break and go get a sandwich or a drink? When I alt-tab during commercials on Hulu and CBS.com?

How about showing up late to the theater, so I don't have to watch the ad reel? Or even skipping the trailers?

Or when I change the station in the car when the commercials come on?

I know what the media industry's opinion is (yes), but what's yours? And how exactly does my decision on the web to not watch ads any different from the many different ways I avoid advertising in my daily life?

If your DVR stripped the commercials out, probably ( note, none do, and there is a very good legal reason ). As it stands, TiVO as a viable business is basically getting condemned because their service is so disruptive to the traditional market and are looking at advertising models. That said, as has been said many times in this thread, part of your cable fee goes to the network content you watch, while 0% of your ISP bills goes to internet content, so these are fundamentally different arguments.

Again, not paying attention to, or looking away from ads/trailers/whatever, is fundamentally different than removing them completely.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:16 PM

You know how you kind of wander around the internet? It's not as if you know whenever you click on a link if the page it goes to will scream "CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE IPOD".

It's like if it was legal to toss landmines around your store in the mall. I'm just walking around and suddenly I detonate one. Sure, I'm not going back, but my leg is already gone.

Instead, if it's discovered that your property has landmines, people come and put you in jail. I want harm to come to people that use bad ads.

Again, this is covered by non-ad blocking technology already. I know if in Chrome, Internet Explorer or Firefox, with the right settings enabled, if I go to a site someone "had their leg blown off on", it will warn me about the possible dangers of that site. Hell, I have had Google warn me about visiting Google once...

This is not something you need ad blocking software for. Install Chrome, or a Firefox plug in like Web Of Trust, and you have a better security mechanism.

TheKeck

04-13-2010, 06:21 PM

I said no because I've never thought of it as stealing. That said, I've never used an adblocker. :p

Banacek

04-13-2010, 06:21 PM

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 06:26 PM

I know what the media industry's opinion is (yes), but what's yours? And how exactly does my decision on the web to not watch ads any different from the many different ways I avoid advertising in my daily life?

It's different because in all of the other cases you mention, you're simply diverting your attention. People who buy ad space know that many people are going to do that and they're okay with it, because they know that enough people will pay attention that it's worthwhile.

When you adblock, however, you go beyond simply ignoring an ad to actively detaching it from the product it is sponsoring. It's completely removing the agreed upon X% chance that you'll see/hear/click an ad that advertisers pay for while still giving you all the content.

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 06:28 PM

Really? This makes you actually uncomfortable? Is your mind that vulnerable that you believe it's at risk by a banner ad or television commercial?
You either misunderstand, or are deliberately trying to misdirect. It isn't that I fear the corruption of my mind, just it being shanghaied for advertising like I'm in the prologue of some dystopian sci-fi paperback.

Is your time so valuable that 22 minutes of entertainment isn't a fair trade for a couple minutes of your attention?
Well, in having a monopoly on the allocation of my time, I would be the one to decide the value. ;)

Now this argument sure sounds a lot like ones used by software pirates.
Call a spade a spade.
You first, sir. Things sounding similar don't make them the same. Let's not pretend we're talking about apples and apples. Paying hard currency for a concrete product is much more black and white. This issue is layered in grey areas. By rights, should you have to stop and read every advertisement on the page? If the site is paid by clicks/hits, are you morally obligated to click each and every ad if you read the content? Please.

...entertainment...enjoy the product...
Here's an example of just one of the rubs. In virtually every case outside of the digital frontier that corporations are hurrying to colonize, you have some recourse of seeking a refund if you didn't enjoy the product, or it didn't meet your needs. Until they figure out a way to give me that recourse in situations such as we're discussing here, I am going to be more anal, maybe even unreasonable about how I choose to view this content. Call me what you will.

"If your game has an overly obstrusive form of copy protection then I shall not be held responsible if I pirate the software to enjoy the content without providing you revenue. That's your own damn fault, you jackasses."
I do reserve this right, so to speak, and have exercised it more than once. In all cases however, I had paid for the item which I sought to defeat the protection on. (The protection methods were literally breaking the game.) In those cases, a silly defect in the product was preventing me from accessing what I had paid for in the first place.

Anyone is free to deny a company revenue if you consider their ads, copy protection, corporate philosophy, or CEO's hairstyle offensive. The tradeoff, however, is that you don't get to enjoy their product. That's the deal. To do otherwise is circumventing the content provider/customer relationship and is akin to piracy.
If websites feel it's becoming that much of a problem, then one step they can take is by placing a EULA at the gateway to their site, where it is explicitly stated that use requires viewing ads. I suspect many sites lack such a statement anywhere on their page. If we're going to split hairs, then that's where it would have to start.

If you want to adblock, fine, but don't try to make it out to be some noble endeavor. You're enjoying a content provider's content, which costs them money to provide, and denying them their means of recouping those costs.
If you'd care to agree to be a little less enthusiastic about putting the piracy spin on it, we have an accord.

And again, I don't even run an ad-blocker, really. In all but the most obnoxious cases, I just tune it out. But I'm not going to come down on others, or say it's piracy. The most consumer-friendly marketing is the opt-in variety, and that needs to be kept in mind. As such, I think that the idea of choosing to disable ad-block for favorite sites, as others have been positing, is perfectly respectable.

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?

Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree...

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:29 PM

Serapth, I don't think we're ever going to see eye-to-eye with people who hate ads, just on the sole fact that our livelihood depends on that business model, where their livelihood does not. I would personally love to come up with a better business model, just because that would make me a lot of money :)

J Arcane, saying that you shouldn't try to make a profit on the web is really shortsighted. Your version of the web would just be shopping sites, and that's not an internet that I am interested in.

I actually havent found a way to make a livelihood yet, as no traditional advertising networks really work with emails.... :)

But, I don't have the sense of entitlement so many people seem to have with the internet. So many people expect everything to be free, and then even worse, get offended by the mechanisms that make those things free. I do find it horrifically shortsighted, as really once enough people do start blocking ads, what you described becomes the reality of the web... 100% amateur sites + a bunch of stores and nothing more. The simple reality is, even if all your writers are free, your bandwidth costs money, your hosting costs money, promotion costs money, etc... I think people naively picture the web running on 4.95$/month GoDaddy accounts and therefore thing its virtually free.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 06:30 PM

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 06:33 PM

And how exactly does my decision on the web to not watch ads any different from the many different ways I avoid advertising in my daily life?
I have seen noone effectively answer this. In fairness, there probably isn't an answer that could convince me, anyway.

But, I don't have the sense of entitlement so many people seem to have with the internet...
Let me be clear, I could likely be described as a capitalist. I'm a fan of the system in general, and hope to exploit it to create a vast fortune in the future.

But as the gaming industry is learning, alienating consumers - with intrusive advertising, in this case - is not the way to go. Companies that figure out how to do their marketing without alienating their prospective customers will thrive. Those that don't figure it out will rightfully go under.

It isn't as if people see one humble little banner on a page, fly into a rage, and install an ad-blocker. It's the trashy flotsam that triggers it, the internet counterpart to telemarketing. Consumer behavior is justifiably pressuring such practices toward extinction (hopefully), which is as big a part of capitalism as plastering ads everywhere.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 06:34 PM

It's different because in all of the other cases you mention, you're simply diverting your attention. People who buy ad space know that many people are going to do that and they're okay with it, because they know that enough people will pay attention that it's worthwhile.

When you adblock, however, you go beyond simply ignoring an ad to actively detaching it from the product it is sponsoring. It's completely removing the agreed upon X% chance that you'll see/hear/click an ad that advertisers pay for while still giving you all the content.
Whereas the difference I see is that at least traditional advertising never gave anyone an incurable virus.

Here's a good example about why assuming any given site is trustworthy is a fools' game: http://bit.ly/bxSKHv

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:41 PM

Whereas the difference I see is that at least traditional advertising never gave anyone an incurable virus.

Here's a good example about why assuming any given site is trustworthy is a fools' game: http://bit.ly/bxSKHv

No, the link you showed requires Turbine to have farmed that information from you in the past. Unless you have an idiots security settings and are browsing the internet on full trust with no anti-malware/virus running, no page can automatically get your email address. What you are linking is more a story about how someone you have signed up with can sell you out.

Also, notice how I clicked a bit.ly link you posted as an example of me getting my computer owned, without fear? Thats because with a modern OS, with anti-virus/anti-malware and reasonable settings, not much to fear.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 06:46 PM

But as the gaming industry is learning, alienating consumers - with intrusive advertising, in this case - is not the way to go. Companies that figure out how to do their marketing without alienating their prospective customers will thrive. Those that don't figure it out will rightfully go under.

It isn't as if people see one humble little banner on a page, fly into a rage, and install an ad-blocker. It's the trashy flotsam that triggers it, the internet counterpart to telemarketing. Consumer behavior is justifiably pressuring such practices toward extinction (hopefully), which is as big a part of capitalism as plastering ads everywhere.

See, you are missing the point... adblockers are opt out, not opt in, so the minute you visit one of these annoying sites with audio fullscreen ads and say "Oh fuck it, Im installing an ad blocker", you just blocked every site, including the humble little banner on a page ads.

If the world was truly as altruistic as most people here are describing ( they unblock the good sites, only have adblockers to block the bad/dangerous sites ) then ad blockers would be opt in, with a security black list. Off course, I don't believe a single ad blocker works this way.

I agree with the comment many people in this thread already made. If a site has obstrusive/obnoxious ads, don't go back. The drop in viewership should be enough for them to get the message. Instead people run adblocks, no message is sent to the bad sites and the good sites are punished ( an imho, you are now stealing ).

Hawkzombie

04-13-2010, 06:48 PM

To say nothing of the fact in TV land, if you are using satellite or cable, you already paid for the content to a certain extent, even if you skip the commercials. Not so in internet land.

What about regular channels that you don't pay a fee for? Are those somehow exempt from the argument? :p To me, those were exactly what I was using for my argument. But then again, look at it like this:

You pay a fee for high speed internet.
You pay a fee for cable television.

Cable TV has commercials, except premium channels you can get that are commercial free, except for station identifications, or promos of things coming up on that station.
The Internet has ads, except premium sites which take a fee to remove any and all ads for you, except things pertaining directly to that site.

Basic TV is free. Although you need to pay for electricity and have a television or other receiver to watch it.
Basic Internet, however, is not. There is a small fee, even for dial-up.

To me, they're both basically the same, except in both cases, no matter what, you're paying for the access to Internet.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 06:49 PM

You first, sir. Things sounding similar don't make them the same. Let's not pretend we're talking about apples and apples. Paying hard currency for a concrete product is much more black and white. This issue is layered in grey areas. By rights, should you have to stop and read every advertisement on the page? If the site is paid by clicks/hits, are you morally obligated to click each and every ad if you read the content? Please.

And companies don't buy ad space with the expectation that every single visitor to that site will click or fully read their ad. If they did then they'd pay a whole lot more. They pay for the chance that you will do so, by making it so that your eyes will pass over their ad as you look over the web page and it might catch your interest.

[/quote]Here's an example of just one of the rubs. In virtually every case outside of the digital frontier that corporations are hurrying to colonize, you have some recourse of seeking a refund if you didn't enjoy the product, or it didn't meet your needs. Until they figure out a way to give me that recourse in situations such as we're discussing here, I am going to be more anal, maybe even unreasonable about how I choose to view this content. Call me what you will.

You can try to get a refund, but that isn't a guarantee that you'll get it. So following your argument you should be free to steal a physical product from someplace if they have no return or refund policy if you're unsatisfied?

[quote]If websites feel it's becoming that much of a problem, then one step they can take is by placing a EULA at the gateway to their site, where it is explicitly stated that use requires viewing ads. I suspect many sites lack such a statement anywhere on their page. If we're going to split hairs, then that's where it would have to start.

They shouldn't have to, because a normal web browser would show the ads. A person has to use a third party piece of software to circumvent them.

If you'd care to agree to be a little less enthusiastic about putting the piracy spin on it, we have an acoord.

Don't call it piracy, then, but at least recognize that adblocking is costing a site bandwidth, and getting their content, while withholding expected compensation. It's unilaterally changing the exchange that a content provider has set up without their approval.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 06:51 PM

And if the world was truly altruistic, I wouldn't have to worry about clicking the wrong Google search result and winding up with God knows what.

But the bottom line is, the web is not a trustworthy place, and guilt-tripping me over my decision to avoid one of it's worst vectors isn't going to succeed.

If the bad GoGamer ad, and an entire MMO going malware aren't enough, how about what happened to Siraris' site back when? Don't think that happens to bigger sites? Or what about the simple fact that many of the biggest ad providers on the internet, even precious Google and other search engines, have time and again proven blatantly complicit in such activities?

Yeah, one in maybe 1000 sites get flagged and I get that little warning page. Meanwhile there's half a dozen blatantly obvious, and not so obvious bad sites pouring into the little ticker above my Gmail site ever day, and would be showing up along side my Google results if it weren't for the Devil Adblock.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 06:52 PM

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 06:54 PM

It's possible to block harmful ads without blocking all ads. AdBlockers go far beyond mere security.
And until there's a piece of software that magically intuits each ads intent and code to block only the harmful ones that I can install on my Firefox, I'm gonna keep using Adblock.

Until then, especially considering even Adblock isn't 100% protective these days and more and more sites are finding ways around even it, I'm going to keep using it.

Ravenlock

04-13-2010, 06:56 PM

I think a better question would be 'Are you willing to pay $1-$3 dollars a month to access a site completely free of ads?' Those results would actually be useful ;)

I certainly have done in the past.

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 06:57 PM

I think you may have repeated what I was saying in the first place, Serapth. But, I also think I'm not fully grasping your use of opt in/opt out.

adblockers are opt out, not opt in, so the minute you visit one of these annoying sites with audio fullscreen ads and say "Oh fuck it, Im installing an ad blocker", you just blocked every site, including the humble little banner on a page ads.
Right! So they would probably do well to also put on pressure to increase the faux pas status of such methods.

Instead people run adblocks, no message is sent to the bad sites and the good sites are punished...
Are the bad sites not punished? If the "good sites" are being denied revenue, so are the bad, and technically a message is still being sent. And hence what I said to the above quote.

I don't entirely disagree with you. Good/responsible sites should get their revenue. People who deserve to get paid should absolutely get paid. But this is hardly black and white, and I'm not prepared to call folks criminals for wanting a little less annoyance in their day.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:01 PM

Talanvor

04-13-2010, 07:05 PM

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:08 PM

I whitelist the sites I visit a lot, like CoG. I will throw this out there, if ABP helps people from getting a goddamn virus from clicking on the little smiley face popup or seeing if they won an iPod, it's got to be of some value.

Oh no, I didn't have to clean out a laptop crawling with malware recently, for the third time. I'm not bitter or anything.
Yup, been there several times. My solution is to always remove administrator access from their account but show them how to install as administrator. I also remove all links to, and if possible depending on Win OS level, remove IE all together and replace it either with FireFox or Opera. Then I set their firewall up to use OpenDNS and finally set a nice hosts file up on their machine. :)

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 07:09 PM

And companies don't buy ad space with the expectation that every single visitor to that site will click or fully read their ad. If they did then they'd pay a whole lot more. They pay for the chance that you will do so, by making it so that your eyes will pass over their ad as you look over the web page and it might catch your interest.
Well if all they're paying for is a chance, there's a chance the user might decide to disable his ad-block for that site. There's a chance the ad may not be blocked in the first place. There's a chance...

You can try to get a refund, but that isn't a guarantee that you'll get it. So following your argument you should be free to steal a physical product from someplace if they have no return or refund policy if you're unsatisfied?
I feel that's a bit of an unnatural extrapolation, but I'll entertain it. Most reputable places would have up front notice of no return/no refund. That brings us back to the website EULA again.

They shouldn't have to (incorporate a EULA), because a normal web browser would show the ads. A person has to use a third party piece of software to circumvent them.
Uh, not anymore...
Today marked the release of Opera Mini, which has AdBlock built in...
The advertising arms-race continues, I suppose.

Don't call it piracy, then, but at least recognize that adblocking is costing a site bandwidth, and getting their content, while withholding expected compensation. It's unilaterally changing the exchange that a content provider has set up without their approval.
I never gave my approval to pay for anything with my mindshare. I have yet to really be asked by any sites I visit.

But yes, I recognize that it's good netiquette not to go out of your way to deny a site's compensation. And I give my word that if a site respects me, I'll respect it. And if I share that mutual respect with a site, I might even participate in their advertising, just as I sometimes click CoG's banner, or opt-in to Newegg's email marketing, etcetera.

Ink Asylum

04-13-2010, 07:10 PM

Are the bad sites not punished? If the "good sites" are being denied revenue, so are the bad, and technically a message is still being sent. And hence what I said to the above quote.

You're sending a message, though, but still enjoying the content such sites provide. You can send a message by refusing to visit a site altogether, instead of using their bandwidth and content without compensation.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:11 PM

I think you may have repeated what I was saying in the first place, Serapth. But, I also think I'm not fully grasping your use of opt in/opt out.

Right! So they would probably do well to also put on pressure to increase the faux pas status of such methods.

Are the bad sites not punished? If the "good sites" are being denied revenue, so are the bad, and technically a message is still being sent. And hence what I said to the above quote.

I don't entirely disagree with you. Good/responsible sites should get their revenue. People who deserve to get paid should absolutely get paid. But this is hardly black and white, and I'm not prepared to call folks criminals for wanting a little less annoyance in their day.

No, when you run an ad block, you effectively don't exist as a web visitor. So, bad sites don't actually realize that they are losing traffic because of their horrific ads. No lessons learned. At the same time, your traffic will never show up on the sites that are well behaved, because you blocked all traffic.

Make sense?

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:13 PM

An Ad driven finance model has to have built in the knowledge that people that do not pay attention, skip or block you ad all together is not a loss of a sale. Ads on any medium are entirely focused on those groups that regularly have a positive response to the Ad or Ads in general.

When you run a website it must be accepted that there will be people that will no pay attention, skip or block your Ads all together. At the same time, there will be visitors that are attracted to the Ads on your site and will regularly use them. To drive those numbers up it is best to use Ads that have relevance to the content of your site.

I don't consider people that visit a free to visit site but don't use the Ads there to be stealing. I do, though, definitely consider people that use content from other sites on their own site and then use Ads on said site to be among the worst of internet content thieves. It is amazing the # of sites that will auto-post content from RSS feeds and then have the nerve to post Ads up as well...

Actually a big chunk of advertising works on the concept of getting in front of your eyeballs and nothing more. Its often a matter of promoting a brand, and that doesnt actually require you to click the ad, or even pay attention to it. Your subliminal brain is just as effective to most advertisers ( which is why some advertising is pay per impression instead of click and why product placements are so valuable ).

Karak

04-13-2010, 07:14 PM

An Ad driven finance model has to have built in the knowledge that people that do not pay attention, skip or block you ad all together is not a loss of a sale. Ads on any medium are entirely focused on those groups that regularly have a positive response to the Ad or Ads in general.

When you run a website it must be accepted that there will be people that will no pay attention, skip or block your Ads all together. At the same time, there will be visitors that are attracted to the Ads on your site and will regularly use them. To drive those numbers up it is best to use Ads that have relevance to the content of your site.

I don't consider people that visit a free to visit site but don't use the Ads there to be stealing. I do, though, definitely consider people that use content from other sites on their own site and then use Ads on said site to be among the worst of internet content thieves. It is amazing the # of sites that will auto-post content from RSS feeds and then have the nerve to post Ads up as well...

You have described me in a nutshell. I have blocked since the day the first true ad blockers came. Not because I felt threatened or bothered but because many ads are so fucking annoying I didn't want them any more. I pay no attention to why they are there, as some, most actually, of my favorite websites do not have ads. But some others that I go to daily have HORRID ones that are intrusive and bothersome. I just didn't take the time to care why they were there, just that they were and made browsing the INTERNET I pay for far less enjoyable.

Thank you for the food for thought. I really never gave them any mind.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:15 PM

By the way, what browsers/OS/settings are you people surfing with that clicking a popup can infect your machine?!?!?!

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 07:17 PM

You're sending a message, though, but still enjoying the content such sites provide. You can send a message by refusing to visit a site altogether, instead of using their bandwidth and content without compensation.
Which brings us to another one of the grey areas. I don't know until after I have visited the site and accessed the content that I find the ads offending. So now it looks like I may have automatically and against my intentions become a thief, depending on whether or not I immediately close the browser window, leave the page sitting open with the content bare to prying eyes, etcetera. Neat.

That EULA gateway idea is making more sense all the time.

No, when you run an ad block, you effectively don't exist as a web visitor. So, bad sites don't actually realize that they are losing traffic because of their horrific ads. No lessons learned. At the same time, your traffic will never show up on the sites that are well behaved, because you blocked all traffic.

Make sense?
I get what you're saying, but I'm not convinced that (all) ad-blocking plugins prevent you from even registering as a hit on that site at all. At the bare minimum, there would be record of packets being downloaded, right?

Even so, if I choose not to visit the site at all, fulfilling my internet user's code of honor, I'm definitely not showing up as a web visitor, and I'm still not sending any messages since it's impossible to get useful data, if any data at all, from non-users. In other words, whether an ad-blocker is in use or not becomes almost moot, particularly if I choose to add the good site to the white list.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 07:20 PM

By the way, what browsers/OS/settings are you people surfing with that clicking a popup can infect your machine?!?!?!
It's called the Internet. If you actually believe you are "safe" even WITH all the standard countermeasures in place, you're being hopelessly naive.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:22 PM

Actually a big chunk of advertising works on the concept of getting in front of your eyeballs and nothing more. Its often a matter of promoting a brand, and that doesnt actually require you to click the ad, or even pay attention to it. Your subliminal brain is just as effective to most advertisers ( which is why some advertising is pay per impression instead of click and why product placements are so valuable ).
It isn't a big chunk anymore. Modern advertisers are targeting their audience extremely well to maximize their ROI. Many advertisement groups still use the model of repetitive suggestion but there are few now that use that as their main or major Ad revenue generator.

Take, for instance, the most successful Ad campaign ever launched. It was extremely simple but targeted a very specific audience and ignored those that they didn't cater to whilst having a line so simplistic yet powerful that it would come to mind anytime you'd get hungry and were their target...

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/7492/webi27mlovinitmcdsprint.jpg

It certainly had the advantage of being the company line for a good long while, easy phrase to remember and probably repeated by people to each other on their way to get sugar filled food. There is a subliminal impact of it, certainly, but the targeting (the major component) was extremely specific and Godzilla successful.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:22 PM

Which brings us to another one of the grey areas. I don't know until after I have visited the site and accessed the content, so now it looks like I've automatically and against my intentions become a thief. Neat.

That EULA gateway idea is making more sense all the time.

What you will see is sites installing AdBlocker detection scripts and rejecting anyone that is running an adblocker. Some people/sites have already talked about doing this.

Your other option, is to nest your login ( or something similarly key ) in what appears to be an ad and all people running ad blockers are foiled.

If you keep seeing the likes of Opera shipping by default, you will see this behavior more and more. The fact a site like ArsTechnica is coming down on the anti-adblock side of the equation, its not just the greedy Rupert Murdocks of the world out to squeeze more pennies!

MagGnome

04-13-2010, 07:23 PM

*annoying image often favored by you-know-who

I wish I could install a Firefox extension to ban just this one damn image so that I never have to see it again.

I spend an equal amount if not more time there than CoG so I don't see it as the hell hole the rest of the internet does. :p

I've only been to 4chan when I accidentally click on a link that redirects to the site. It's always a horrifying experience. I guess you beg to differ. :p

Wow, you are so wrong. You're joking, right?

Anyway, sites are going to start blocking users with ad blocking turned on. Good for them. Where I come from, people like being paid for their work.

I'll definitely be going to fewer sites then, because I absolutely refuse to view the crappy flash ads or the ones with audio. They are obnoxious.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 07:24 PM

What you will see is sites installing AdBlocker detection scripts and rejecting anyone that is running an adblocker. Some people/sites have already talked about doing this.

Some sites already do. Problem is, they don't work.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:26 PM

It's called the Internet. If you actually believe you are "safe" even WITH all the standard countermeasures in place, you're being hopelessly naive.

I run a safe firewall, enable Windows Update, have current antivirus, have middling settings for script permissibility, do not run ad blocking software and don't mindlessly click "YES" to all dialogs that pop up in front of me, and I have never had a single infection on a personal computer i've owned. This world of killer ads is simply unknown to me.

I mean, the closest I can think of are those popups that say "YOUR COMPUTER HAS A VIRUS!!!" click here to download a cure, are as close as ive seen, and even then they require the user to initiate the process, assuming they haven't done something stupid like click "Always download EXE's" or something like that.

MagGnome

04-13-2010, 07:29 PM

The world would be a better place if everybody used adblock on websites that utilize annoying ads, thus forcing sites to stop using them. Don't hate the people blocking the ads, hate the people making and using annoying ads. What we really need is some sort of program that actively harms sites that uses annoying ads.

This is the truth. Remember when nearly every site had those awful pop up (or even worse, pop under!) ads? I remember when clicking on a link often resulted in three or more of those things popping up all over the screen.

If so many websites hadn't pushed people to the limit with obnoxious ads, then adblocking software wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:30 PM

If you keep seeing the likes of Opera shipping by default, you will see this behavior more and more. The fact a site like ArsTechnica is coming down on the anti-adblock side of the equation, its not just the greedy Rupert Murdocks of the world out to squeeze more pennies!
In these cases, what will they do about someone that doesn't install Flash and also blocks Ads via DNS entries?

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:32 PM

In these cases, what will they do about someone that doesn't install Flash and also blocks Ads via DNS entries?

Serve ads via a local redirect/loopback ( Aka, the webserver does the DNS lookup to the ad server and serves the ad locally ). A DNS block isn't that hard to get around.

Karak

04-13-2010, 07:33 PM

In these cases, what will they do about someone that doesn't install Flash and also blocks Ads via DNS entries?

Or chose not to show images. Wouldn't that work for some spots.

Banacek

04-13-2010, 07:36 PM

The other option is for companies to data mine everything that you do and sell it to the highest bidder (aka the Google model).

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:37 PM

Serve ads via a local redirect/loopback ( Aka, the webserver does the DNS lookup to the ad server and serves the ad locally ). A DNS block isn't that hard to get around.
That'll certainly work for visual Ads but click-through Ads... Suggestions?

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:41 PM

That'll certainly work for visual Ads but click-through Ads... Suggestions?

Same technique really. But that would require a certain bit of reworking from the ad providers.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:41 PM

Ironically I think many people, even those that are blocking ads, see that most likely things will get much worse as a result, no?

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 07:42 PM

What you will see is sites installing AdBlocker detection scripts and rejecting anyone that is running an adblocker. Some people/sites have already talked about doing this.
First, I edited my post, so the quote you took looks a little different. I apologize, I need to make better use of the "preview" button. Proofreading after posting is a bad habit.

Trying to reject visitors running such a block is certainly an option open to them to try. I doubt it will do much to generate goodwill with the userbase, both current and prospective, but they're free to try it.

If so many websites hadn't pushed people to the limit with obnoxious ads, then adblocking software wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.
We're on the same page with this. If adblocking really is that much of a problem, it's one that many sites have brought upon themselves.

Serve ads via a local redirect/loopback ( Aka, the webserver does the DNS lookup to the ad server and serves the ad locally ). A DNS block isn't that hard to get around.
This sort of highlights what I have been getting at. If a site has to implement special technical methods to shove their ads in users' faces, they're already doing it wrong.

Ironically I think many people, even those that are blocking ads, see that most likely things will get much worse as a result, no?
Some members of the gaming industry again provide a good example. You can either implement more and more draconic methods of trying (and failing) to browbeat users and defeat the offending process in question, all while pissing off the people you want to pay you (Ubisoft, anyone?), or you can start coming up with ways to make them want to behave in the desired fashion.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:44 PM

This sort of highlights what I have been getting at. If a site has to implement special technical methods to shove their ads in users' faces, they're already doing it wrong.

Say huh? Normally now what 99% of them do is insert a single line of script from Google ( Adsense is basically a monopoly and for the record, doesn't serve evil attack ads, but is still blocked by all ad blockers ) and thats it. What causes sites to look for work arounds is simply the presence of ad blockers.

Where your gaming analogies fall on your face is, games are trying to prevent piracy but frankly, got your money up front.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:47 PM

Ironically I think many people, even those that are blocking ads, see that most likely things will get much worse as a result, no?
I disagree. When a new 'problem' appears, most often (especially on the internet) a 'solution' will respond. When sites start to check to see if Ads are being displayed or not, I do not doubt we will see Ad Blockers appear that will trick the website into thinking that the Ad was displayed properly.

The solution isn't to force Ads onto people, the solution (which TV Ads have been very successful at) is to target those people that will use/notice/read the Ad while ignoring everyone else.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:50 PM

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 07:51 PM

Say huh? Normally now what 99% of them do is insert a single line of script from Google ( Adsense is basically a monopoly and for the record, doesn't serve evil attack ads, but is still blocked by all ad blockers ) and thats it. What causes sites to look for work arounds is simply the presence of ad blockers.

Where your gaming analogies fall on your face is, games are trying to prevent piracy but frankly, got your money up front.
Say huh, indeed. I get that you were trying to refute me, but I don't see where that actually takes place. Call me dense.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 07:51 PM

Actually I think the answer will be much easier... force disable AdBlock to access content, or something similar.
Hmm... I think you skipped the first part. If sites start to do that, we will see Ad Blockers that will trick the site into believing that the Ads were not blocked. That is inevitable.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 07:57 PM

Hmm... I think you skipped the first part. If sites start to do that, we will see Ad Blockers that will trick the site into believing that the Ads were not blocked. That is inevitable.

No doubt, there will always be an Ad Blocker/Ad arms race, I think we both realize that.

Well, that or the net becomes a giant geocities + pay to play cesspit, which is equally likely. I mean really ( and so many people refused to acknowledge this ), but if you took all the traditional publishers off the net ( various magazines, newspapers, top tier blogs ), it basically becomes a very very very empty place. You can argue against this, but a quick trip to look at the top 200 or so sites on Alexa proves it wrong.

Hawkzombie

04-13-2010, 08:10 PM

I think Serapth is being WAY too pessimistic over the results of what happens when ads are blocked.

Voodoo has a great point: effective advertising targets the people most likely to respond to an advertisement, and ignores all others.

And sure, remove the top 200 from Alexa and what happens?

Others take their place. The internet isn't some unwieldy beast that NEEDS these sites to continue on. When one goes under, 10 more are chomping at the bit to try and take its place. it's an ever evolving thing. Removing ad revenue won't change that either.

I still stand by my TV analogy. If you skip commercials in any way, it's 'just as bad' as ad blocking IMO if you want to look at it as a bad thing.

Even without adblocking, I never ONCE clicked on an ad I saw online. That's 12+ years of surfing the net, and not one single click-through from me. Am I a bad consumer because I visit these sites without any click-through?

And we're assuming that sites still use a 'view' model instead of a click through. A lot of sites charge for click through, because views mean next to nothing and those paying for the ad slot want to see results for their advertisements, not just 'well, it was viewed 16,000 times, with 2 clicks in a 1 hour period. That'll be 350 dollars.' Most advertisers demand a click through method because it actually shows hard results of the advertisement.

If I visit sites that only charge for click throughs, but never click, am I stealing just as much as ad-blocking? Given the reasoning here, I'd think so, just from others opinions on the matter. Same as I'm stealing television by skipping commercials.

Voodoo

04-13-2010, 08:11 PM

No doubt, there will always be an Ad Blocker/Ad arms race, I think we both realize that.

Well, that or the net becomes a giant geocities + pay to play cesspit, which is equally likely. I mean really ( and so many people refused to acknowledge this ), but if you took all the traditional publishers off the net ( various magazines, newspapers, top tier blogs ), it basically becomes a very very very empty place. You can argue against this, but a quick trip to look at the top 200 or so sites on Alexa proves it wrong.
It is a question of targeting. Any publisher (magazine, newspaper, top tier blogs) that remove themselves by years end despite having positive return of investment of their site is performing a foolish act. Publishers that are removed from the internet because they can't generate Ad revenue must find another form of income or falter within the same period. Publishers that are well into the black yet get as aggressive as you suggest with their Ads will find their visitors going to other sites not doing such things.

In two decades there will be very little separation of the internet from any type of media. Poor models of revenue will cause certain business to falter while proper models of revenue will pave much success for those that care for their targeted audience. Competition has never been higher as it is right now on the 'net and it will only continue to get worse. Effectively punishing the entire collection of visitors to your site over those that would not have generated revenue for you anyways will cause said visitors to say such things as...
...sites will do those horrific "entry" ads like IGN and their ilk do......It isn't like the information at IGN and their ilk is unique.

Serapth

04-13-2010, 08:25 PM

I pray you are wrong voodoo, as if the internet becomes like all other media, that means everyone will be paying more, as part of our ISP costs will go to the content producers, just as cable services do now. So instead of simply paying nothing and not clicking ads, you will pay regardless and probably still receive ads!

People should be rejoicing at the Internet model and be doing everything to make it work, as the existing cable model still has ads AND bills you to see them!

AbinSur

04-13-2010, 08:33 PM

I disagree. When a new 'problem' appears, most often (especially on the internet) a 'solution' will respond. When sites start to check to see if Ads are being displayed or not, I do not doubt we will see Ad Blockers appear that will trick the website into thinking that the Ad was displayed properly.
I think this is actually where I would draw the line between stealing and not stealing.

The content provider has an agreement with his customers (his REAL customers, the advertisers) to deliver ads along with content to the site consumers. Once the content is delivered, what the user does with it is entirely out of the hands of the content provider.

This is where ad blockers cause a problem. They prevent the content provider from ever delivering the ads he has contracted to deliver. Not only that, the advertiser can tell from the numbers that this is happening.

If instead, the ad blocker went ahead and downloaded the ad, but allowed to user to simply hide it, then there wouldn't be as much of a problem for the content provider. After all, the ad was delivered.

Now, it could be argued that this is just transferring the crime from stealing from a content provider to stealing from an advertiser, but I don't think so. It makes the situation much more analogous to the DVR scenario. The user can FF through ads, but the ads are still there, delivered along with the show. It's up to the advertiser to determine if this delivery method is cost effective. It's not up to the content provider (or cable channel) to have to worry about enforcement of ad delivery.

Wraith

04-13-2010, 08:40 PM

Today marked the release of Opera Mini, which has AdBlock built in, which is brutally ironic given Operas business model.
Opera Mini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini) has been around for years. Just not for iPhone/Touch. I've been using it on my BlackBerry for the better part of a year.

Does Opera Mini (or at least the iPhone version) really have AdBlock (or AdBlock-like features) built in? I hadn't heard of it, and haven't really found much, with a quick google search.

If you mean popup blocking, that's a whole different discussion.

Banacek

04-13-2010, 08:48 PM

If instead, the ad blocker went ahead and downloaded the ad, but allowed to user to simply hide it, then there wouldn't be as much of a problem for the content provider. After all, the ad was delivered.

I believe that there is an Ad Blocker solution that does this (Ad Sweep (http://adsweep.org/), maybe?). If you are going to ad block, could you guys at least use that? :)

04-13-2010, 08:55 PM

[list=a]
Opera Mini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini) has been around for years. Just not for iPhone/Touch. I've been using it on my BlackBerry for the better part of a year.
Thank you for saving me the effort of pointing this out. Cast off your shackles, Apple-serfs!

I voted 'no,' but having read through Ink's arguments, I must say I find them very persuasive. Which leaves me in a bit of a pickle: my work computer has some pretty vigorous adblocking installed (instead I get a very stern warning about how Internet use is RESTRICTED and FOR WORK PURPOSES ONLY, which initially made me nervous but now I realize is totally winked at [although this raises another stealing question, albeit parenthetically to this already overly-long parenthetical comment]). I can't turn it off. I suppose this means I have to stop screwing around in the office.

This, in particular, is a good line (although really all of Ink's posts in this thread deserve praise):
It's unilaterally changing the exchange that a content provider has set up without their approval.
That kind of makes it a moral issue. Call it what you want, but you're telling the content owner that she's not allowed to set the terms of the deal. It's a little Darth Vader: "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

Okay, that's enough agreeing with Ink for one year. I'm going to go back to thinking he's a commie now.

Stmfuller

04-13-2010, 09:03 PM

I record TV shows to skip through the ads and watch the content at my leisure, I change the channel when commercials are on on the radio, and I adblock website.
I just hate ads.

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 09:06 PM

I record TV shows to skip through the ads and watch the content at my leisure, I change the channel when commercials are on on the radio, and I adblock website.
I just hate ads.
Mostly, this describes me pretty well. It's only the internet where I have such a zero tolerance policy, because of the aforementioned security issues.

JayK47

04-13-2010, 09:06 PM

No. Ads steal my time. I want it back.

Hawkzombie

04-13-2010, 09:17 PM

No. Ads steal my time. I want it back.

XGNW5ltWowA

wyeast

04-13-2010, 09:53 PM

I mean, the closest I can think of are those popups that say "YOUR COMPUTER HAS A VIRUS!!!" click here to download a cure, are as close as ive seen, and even then they require the user to initiate the process, assuming they haven't done something stupid like click "Always download EXE's" or something like that.
That simply means you haven't run across the dodgy ones where the apparent means to close the popup (i.e. the "Close" button or the "x" in the corner) is coded to mean YES and hilarity ensues.

Or the ones that drop literally dozens of popups at you, hoping you'll accidentally click something trying to close them all. (admittedly, these have become far less frequent in the past 5 years)

Just means you were lucky, I guess. Or you don't frequent high-risk internet activities. (read as: Porn, MP3s, etc)

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 09:56 PM

Call it what you want, but you're telling the content owner that she's not allowed to set the terms of the deal. It's a little Darth Vader: "I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."
This statement alone has made me begin to view ad-blocking as awesome. :D

Edit:
So you voted "no," Ox. What is it that makes up your mind about it?

J Arcane

04-13-2010, 09:59 PM

That simply means you haven't run across the dodgy ones where the apparent means to close the popup (i.e. the "Close" button or the "x" in the corner) is coded to mean YES and hilarity ensues.

Or the ones that drop literally dozens of popups at you, hoping you'll accidentally click something trying to close them all. (admittedly, these have become far less frequent in the past 5 years)

Just means you were lucky, I guess. Or you don't frequent high-risk internet activities. (read as: Porn, MP3s, etc)
IME, Google Image Search is the single biggest channel for malware on earth. So many dodgy sites with bogus GIS links that often don't lead to a picture at all, andyet Google's supposedly brilliant algorithms continue to fail to notice.

04-13-2010, 10:03 PM

Or the ones that drop literally dozens of popups at you, hoping you'll accidentally click something trying to close them all. (admittedly, these have become far less frequent in the past 5 years)
This happened to a colleague of mine at work, years ago. Several of us were shooting the breeze in her office, she said, "Hey guys, check this out." At that instant, her face turned from amusement to horror. She had the Unstoppable Cascade of Porno Popups, and she had no idea what was happening. She was frantically trying to close the popups while we stood behind her and said we didn't want to judge her, but she was a married woman and none of us were comfortable with her calling us over to look at her apparently extensive collection of horse porn. Also, we were pretty sure this violated the office's Internet policy.

So you see, even popup clusterbombs aren't all bad.

04-13-2010, 10:26 PM

So you voted "no," Ox. What is it that makes up your mind about it?
Damn it, I said I was all done with agreeing with Ink for 2010. But I find his analogy to piracy to be pretty effective, and the key thing is the nature of the content provider/consumer contract.

In essence, the content provider creates something of value with his labor (the content). This creation is the provider's property, in a more pure form than even physical property. Physical property, after all, includes physical matter that pre-existed the creator, so to a certain extent some of the value (if not the majority of the value) of physical property is merely appropriated from the presumably commonly-held universe antedating human civilization.* But content does not require physical matter and is created entirely within the creator's mind, so it is entirely the result of his labor and consequently purely his property.

The content provider is entitled not to share it with anyone, or to share it only under such rules as he provides (or at the very least, to share it under the rules he provides as modified by law). So the provider offers to let me view his content on the condition that I also sit through a few messages from these sponsors. Well, that may or may not be a fair deal, or a deal I like, but it's not unconscionable or illegal. If I view his content without complying with his offer -- especially if I falsely claim to have accepted his offer, as in adblocking software that falsely reports I have seen the ad -- I've done nothing less than declare that the content provider doesn't get a say in who gets to view his content. I don't know if you want to call that "stealing," but it's close enough.

* Some of you may recognize this as the Lockean theory of property.

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 10:40 PM

If we assume the content to have the same value with or without the internet - which I think slightly throws off the Lockean bit, as I view plenty of internet content that I wouldn't intake in any other form - and if that is really the color and shape of the situation, then EULAs and explicit gateways really do need to be utilized, so I immediately know to simply ignore the site and move on, else I make some kind of intellectual shoplifter out of myself.

I continue to question the nature of the "provider's offer"/acceptance of the "offer," as very few sites have any kind of specific offer or agreement to accept that I have noticed. That is unless we're going to say it's all implicit in simply using the internet, which I can only utterly condemn outright.

Based on my observation, rather than the ads being the information highway's toll booths, they are implemented more like billboards at the side of the road, there to be viewed or not. If that implementation is not serving their intention, I hardly consider that the user's problem.

Edit:
And yes, I know that there isn't an ad-blocker to physically heave billboards out of the ground as I drive by, and that brings us back to the fast-forwarding/ignoring paradox. Is there a difference? Who the heck knows? But rest assured, I could undoubtedly find someone to sit in my passenger's seat and hold up a sheet to block billboards from my view. ;)

04-13-2010, 10:45 PM

I continue to question the nature of the "provider's offer"/acceptance of the "offer," as very few sites have any kind of specific offer or agreement to accept that I have noticed.
An implicit contract is still a contract.
Based on my observation, rather than the ads being the information highway's tollbooths, they are implemented more like billboards at the side of the road, there to be viewed or not. If that implementation is not serving their intention, I hardly consider that the user's problem.
Eh, it's not my problem if you leave your front door unlocked. It's obviously your problem, and you'd be well-advised to lock your door in the future. But morality is what you do when it's someone else's problem. What you do when it's your problem is known as "acting in your own best interests."

Vigil80

04-13-2010, 10:58 PM

An implicit contract is still a contract.
I edited in a comment addressing that idea. Sorry about that.
That is unless we're going to say it's all implicit in simply using the internet, which I can only utterly condemn outright.

Out of curiosity, how well do implicit contracts comparatively hold up in litigation?

Eh, it's not my problem if you leave your front door unlocked. It's obviously your problem, and you'd be well-advised to lock your door in the future. But morality is what you do when it's someone else's problem. What you do when it's your problem is known as "acting in your own best interests."
That analogy seems like a stretch, but I don't have a response that wouldn't be simply repeating myself. Point taken.

04-14-2010, 12:06 AM

I edited in a comment addressing that idea. Sorry about that.
Ah. Here's a problem with your billboard analogy: the person renting the billboard provides you with nothing. There's no contract because you receive no benefit from the billboard lessee; in contract terms, there is no "consideration."

Out of curiosity, how well do implicit contracts comparatively hold up in litigation?
Generally, implicit contracts are just as binding as explicit ones. I sometimes go to a restaurant where there are no prices on the menu. I order my food and drink, but I am well aware that the restaurant expects to be paid for it -- and that the price is not subject to negotiation. When the bill comes, I cannot argue that I didn't agree to pay for my meal or that I want to haggle over the check.

The exception is where fraud concerns have given rise to laws requiring a writing "evidencing the contract." Real estate transactions tend to be an example of contracts that require a writing to evidence the transaction. Even there, however, the contracts are often (if not always) implicit about some or all of their terms. For example, many such contract-evidence laws (known as statutes of frauds) don't even require the price to be stated explicitly.

Of course, implicit contracts tend to be harder to prove than explicit contracts. Thus, many people prefer explicit contracts, especially for agreements where specific terms need to be hammered out or where the fear of litigation is great.

Vigil80

04-14-2010, 12:22 AM

Ah. Here's a problem with your billboard analogy: the person renting the billboard provides you with nothing. There's no contract because you receive no benefit from the billboard lessee; in contract terms, there is no "consideration."
Neither has the person paying for the space provided me with anything in this case. However, I can guess what you might say next. A provides to B, and B provides to me, right? I can see the logic in that. But my role in the agreement between A and B is limited to say the least.

Your explanation of implicit contracts is interesting. But restaurants have years, even centuries of precedent to support the implicit agreement; all parties can reasonably be expected to understand the arrangement. That is, as I understand, an important part of the definition of implicit contracts. Can the same be said about the supposed contract between every web content provider and user, particularly where site ads are concerned? Arguable, I think.

In all examples people provide, there is currency exchanged for concrete product. You may be able to "pay" attention, but it isn't a currency. There's no exchange rate. You can't hit someone up for damages if you haven't been paid enough attention. There's no benchmark at which I know I have been attentive enough, and may now browse guilt-free. That's what I was getting at earlier. Most of the factors in the discussion are in imagination land. The only tangible point of contention is over pay-per-view or pay-per-click schemes, the finer points of which are also murky.

I could go on, but I think I'm already far afield of the bottom line.

So what are we left with? It's up to you whether you ad-block or not. There will essentially never be personal consequences, at least in a legal sense. However, some folks agree that if you don't summarily block ads, it makes you a swell person. On the other side of things, sites/providers will hopefully cultivate the good sense to be consumer friendly with their advertising, and not behave like complete tools, inciting people to ad-block and/or avoid their site.

04-14-2010, 12:56 AM

But my role in the agreement between A and B is limited to say the least.
True. But I think that's a non sequitur.

But restaurants have years, even centuries of precedent to support the implicit agreement; all parties can reasonably be expected to understand the arrangement. That is, as I understand, an important part of the definition of implicit contracts. Can the same be said about the supposed contract between every web content provider and user, particularly where site ads are concerned? Arguable, I think.
Well, let's make it more specific. You now understand the arrangement.

In all examples people provide, there is currency exchanged for concrete product. You may be able to "pay" attention, but it isn't a currency. There's no exchange rate.
All true, although there's no requirement that consideration involve money; that's just a common form of consideration. If I agree to pay for my psychotherapy by bartering my legal advice, that's an equally valid contract. You can't hit someone up for damages if you haven't been paid enough attention.
Sure you can, if paying attention is a duty under the contract. I'm not necessarily saying that it is a duty under the contract, mind you; that's your assertion. I do think it's a duty not to block the ad, but I'm less certain that paying attention is a duty.

What would the damages be? The principle in contract law is that damages should put the injured party where he would be if the contract had been performed. Here, that would mean whatever is the fair market value of one (1) attentive viewer of the ad. Tough to estimate that, of course, but $0.00005 is maybe not completely insane. Maybe more. It's not a lot. Whether the amount affects the morality is a separate question, but I agree we've reached the limits of the discussion.
There will essentially never be personal consequences, at least in a legal sense. However, some folks agree that if you don't summarily block ads, it makes you a swell person. On the other side of things, sites/providers will hopefully cultivate the good sense to be consumer friendly with their advertising, and not behave like complete tools, inciting people to ad-block and/or avoid their site.
I prefer the phrase, "somewhat less of a horrible, terrible person who ought to be fried in his own juices," but yes, I agree. ;)

muddi900

04-14-2010, 01:59 AM

You know what? I never noticed, or realized, that we had that Amazon link there. WTF. And I don't have ads blocked on this site.

I feel so retarded, and I could have been supporting CoG more. From now on I'll be stopping here before purchasing something from Amazon.

If you are on Firefox or Opera, you can create a custom keyword search after clicking on the amazon banner. So every time you search from your address bar using the keyword it will go to the cog reference page, and COG will get a cut from the purchases. or just bookmark the URL.

Bone

04-14-2010, 02:12 AM

Just like I skip the commercials in TV, I skip ads I don't like on the web. This means I use Adblock to get rid of stupid Flash ads that overlay news sites, etc.

Wolvie

04-14-2010, 02:20 AM

I got a half and half answer. I don't block ads, but I don't view ad blocking as theft. So I'm not guilty of the act, yet don't view the act as bad... I know that's confusing.

Whunpo

04-14-2010, 02:42 AM

I don't think it's wrong to block ads, but I certainly don't think it's a good idea. I think ads are a great, relatively painless way of keeping sites like this free. I could go on a long rant about freedoms and stuff but it's not worth it.

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 04:39 AM

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 06:49 AM

It's called the Internet. If you actually believe you are "safe" even WITH all the standard countermeasures in place, you're being hopelessly naive.

Nobody on this forum should be idiotic enough to fall for Malware tricks. As long as you using a modern browser it's going to take significant user interaction to actually enable some piece of malware.

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 07:11 AM

So as someone who is on the other side of this equation, trying to actually keep a website profitable and maintain a happy staff I thought I'd throw out some numbers an "open the books" on Co-Optimus.

Please I ask you keep stuff in this thread, but to get an idea of what it costs to run a website like Co-Optimus.

Costs
1) $169 a month for a dedicated server
2) $100-$120 a month to compensate staff of 7 (with games)
3) I try to pay for 2 trips a year - including hotel and flight for myself, and hotel for the other staff. (IE PAX East cost the site about $600, E3 will cost us about $1100)
4) Misc yearly costs - Domain Registration, Business License, etc. Probably Another $100

Income
Income comes from three sources - Casale Advertising Network, Google Adsense and Amazon referrals (which are shared with CoG).

Casale has currently banked about $80 in Ad Revenue
Google has currently banked about $40 in Ad Revenue
Amazon has currently banked about $140 in Referral Fees ($24 of which is CoG)

Stats
Currently April has 563,609 Page Views for Co-Optimus
Currently Casale has registered 303,442 Ad Impressions
Currently Google has registered 526,039 Ad Impressions

Ad Background
We serve at least 3 ads on a page (1 728x90, and 2 300x250) and on some pages there are 4 if you include the Google link list (near tags on articles)
On the front page we have a 4th block of referral links for Commission Junction - if I'm lucky this will bring in another $100 A YEAR. But there's extra space in that column so it doesn't hurt to have em.
We use Amazon referral links whenever possible, but these are hit an miss depending on what's out, coming out.

So even with everyone blocking ads, and I do tend to believe our audience has a lot of people that block ads (about 75% use Firefox/Chrome/Safari) - we're profitable. Though this is the first year that we are comfortable. We're about halfway through the month and just about covered are existing expenses and can bank the rest for the trips for the rest of the year.

I do think what Serapth said is true, that ad block on a site should be opt in, not default to all. I also do not believe it should be bundled in and enabled by default.

Do I consider blocking ads stealing? No, not really. But I consider it a dick move.

I'm putting at least 40 hours or more into Co-Optimus a week, between managing the team, coming up with content, writing articles, talking to PR, planning trips, and engaging the community. I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it. But if I had to keep shelling out of my pocket to cover the costs, I'm not sure I would keep doing it.

Regarding using other methods to subsidize - subscription models or whatever - while they work, they are also A LOT more work on the publisher side. Because now you aren't just responsible for content, you are responsible for subscriber content in which there is entitlement to. It's part of the reason there's no user donations on CoG - back at EvAv subscribers felt that entitlement and it caused issues.

Again, I'm not complaining - I understand it's part of the game. Voodoo said it best a few posts back, you simply have to take it into consideration. What's worrying is when ad blocking starts to become a standard for everyone.

Banacek

04-14-2010, 08:50 AM

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 08:53 AM

Thanks for the write up. Who is your hosting company? I'm using Slicehost (http://www.slicehost.com/) now and I'm a big fan. You get a bare VPS, which means you have to set everything up yourself, but you don't have to pay for all the extras that you do use.

I'm using Liquid Web (http://www.liquidweb.com).

They include CPanel with their Linux builds which makes things so much easier for me. Sure I don't have to have it and save some money, but in the long run it saves me a bunch of time.

Banacek

04-14-2010, 08:57 AM

I'm using Liquid Web (http://www.liquidweb.com).

They include CPanel with their Linux builds which makes things so much easier for me. Sure I don't have to have it and save some money, but in the long run it saves me a bunch of time.

Right. I needed a Subversion server as much as a web server, and a lot of hosting companies wanted more money to let me do what I want on the server. I definitely understand going with something else if you have no desire creating a web server from a bare linux install :)

Bone

04-14-2010, 09:07 AM

I don't like repeating myself, but I'm going to say it again because so many people don't seem to realise/understand this. Many sites get their ad revenue on a per view basis. By using an ad blocker, you are intentionally, directly denying them compensation for content that you receive for free.

You're not taking money from their pockets, but you're actively stopping someone else from putting some in.
Explain away, it still doesn't mean I have to put eyeballs on an irritating ad. Getting a free page view from me by using Flash, audio, or other annoying methods is something I should have the right to block.

When sites pay attention to and care about their own advertising programs they generally avoid annoying ads. Sites that I frequent are usually in this list so they retain their ad views by respecting my eyeballs. This is how some websites will fail to generate revenue while others will not- you can't whore your site out completely and expect people to sit through ads that crash their browser or are just plain aggravating.

wyeast

04-14-2010, 09:14 AM

Nobody on this forum should be idiotic enough to fall for Malware tricks. As long as you using a modern browser it's going to take significant user interaction to actually enable some piece of malware.
The big thing here (which makes CoG I consider a relatively low-to-moderate risk) is there isn't a constant flow of links posted to send people anywhere. The one exception is News Sources, but on this site that's through a moderated channel, so it's relatively safe to assume they're vetted.

On other types of sites, where people are constantly clicking thumbnails to look at pics, or clicking to download some file from a host, the risks are much higher. I've seen dodgy imagehosts hiding behind clean thumbnail postings, deceptive filehost linking, even one instance of mass account hijacking on an automotive message board (but that required a critical flaw in how the board was set up at the time).

We like to think we're all smart enough to not fall for their tricks, but at the same time, they're constantly trying to come up with new ones.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 09:14 AM

I was hoping Nick would weigh in on this, because I wanted to include more info than I felt allowed to divulge. I'm in complete agreement: it's not stealing, but it's a [John McClane]jerkoff[/John McClane] thing to do.

TrackZero

04-14-2010, 09:20 AM

I was probably annoyed at going to elections for the seventh time in 4 months.... :D Actually, Ill probably be moving in your backyard within a couple months, although then I suppose we will refer to you being in my front yard, no? :D

Nice. I'm sure we can work out some kind of back/front yard arrangement.

Vigil80

04-14-2010, 09:21 AM

When sites pay attention to and care about their own advertising programs they generally avoid annoying ads. Sites that I frequent are usually in this list so they retain their ad views by respecting my eyeballs. This is how some websites will fail to generate revenue while others will not- you can't whore your site out completely and expect people to sit through ads that crash their browser or are just plain aggravating.
This is where it's at, mutual respect. Like I said, folks should get paid that deserve it. And I don't think sites that are smart need to worry in the long term.

TrackZero

04-14-2010, 09:21 AM

Hawkzombie

04-14-2010, 09:24 AM

Bizzare, I've yet to encounter an audio ad anywhere on the internet (besides movie trailer ones that I have to click on to enable the audio).

I've hit one or two in my travels. At first I had no idea wtf was going on. Thankfully, they are very very rare.

Commissar Rob

04-14-2010, 09:25 AM

I feel good about myself as a human being and a lurker on this site, because I can see the Super Street Fighter IV ad (nee the Ezio ad) and the Amazon link...so I must be helping. As someone who falls on the "casual" side of just about everything we discuss on this site, I was wondering if there's a way on Amazon to set up a default partner...so anytime I buy something via Amazon, CoG would get the benefits whether or not I used the link. Is that possible? If so, how? If not, whine.

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 09:25 AM

The big thing here (which makes CoG I consider a relatively low-to-moderate risk) is there isn't a constant flow of links posted to send people anywhere. The one exception is News Sources, but on this site that's through a moderated channel, so it's relatively safe to assume they're vetted.

On other types of sites, where people are constantly clicking thumbnails to look at pics, or clicking to download some file from a host, the risks are much higher. I've seen dodgy imagehosts hiding behind clean thumbnail postings, deceptive filehost linking, even one instance of mass account hijacking on an automotive message board (but that required a critical flaw in how the board was set up at the time).

We like to think we're all smart enough to not fall for their tricks, but at the same time, they're constantly trying to come up with new ones.

You're still going to have to do something beyond actually clicking the link. There's still something to either run, executable wise, a prompt to install a plugin, or another "link" to click which is really just a masqueraded confirmation.

If you click something and something else pops up you don't expect, you shouldn't click it.

TrackZero

04-14-2010, 09:26 AM

Plus, as far as I know, CoG is doing alright for revenue. I think I've seen posts from one of the founders mentioning the current revenue from ads completely covers the hosting costs. It might have changed or I might be incorrect but that's the situation as far as I know.

I said that. But if people block the ad, that can always change. *shrug*

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 09:27 AM

Kelegacy

04-14-2010, 09:27 AM

I usually have my speakers off while on the net, but I also use my PC speakers for 360 gaming, so I forgot they were cranked up after a session. I was surfing one time and I nearly jumped out of my skin as an ad came on saying I was a winner or something. I don't remember the site, but it has happened to me a few times. Scares me each time.

Goronmon

04-14-2010, 09:34 AM

This is where it's at, mutual respect. Like I said, folks should get paid that deserve it. And I don't think sites that are smart need to worry in the long term.I think sites have plenty to worry about. Most people are completely against ads in general as well as being completely unwilling to pay for content. If more and more people learn to use ad-blockers that could cause a big change in how content on the internet works.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 09:39 AM

Explain away, it still doesn't mean I have to put eyeballs on an irritating ad. Getting a free page view from me by using Flash, audio, or other annoying methods is something I should have the right to block.

When sites pay attention to and care about their own advertising programs they generally avoid annoying ads. Sites that I frequent are usually in this list so they retain their ad views by respecting my eyeballs. This is how some websites will fail to generate revenue while others will not- you can't whore your site out completely and expect people to sit through ads that crash their browser or are just plain aggravating.

If the price a site is asking you to pay for their content, in this case to have an annoying ad in front of your eyeballs for a few seconds, is not to your liking, the only defensible choices are paying that price or not enjoying their content. I don't see how you can defend the third option, enjoying the content while completely subverting their revenue stream, in any way.

Feel free to do it, but don't try to defend it as noble, justified, or sending a message. It's the same logic, if not the same severity, as pirating software, music, etc. because you don't like the price, DRM, or whatever else.

I watch TV shows on unofficial (ie. pirated) websites when they aren't posted on official ones like Hulu. While I have reasons for doing such (I'm not available when the show airs on TV, I like being at my computer when I watch TV shows, I don't have DVR), I don't try to hide that what I'm doing is enjoying content without compensation or defend it as anything proper or noble. If you're going to do something like that, at least own up to it.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 09:44 AM

Also, I apparently have both Ox and txshurricane agreeing with me. All we need is for Johan to make an appearance on my side of the debate and this thread will collapse into a singularity that will destroy the entire site.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 10:11 AM

If the price a site is asking you to pay for their content, in this case to have an annoying ad in front of your eyeballs for a few seconds, is not to your liking, the only defensible choices are paying that price or not enjoying their content. I don't see how you can defend the third option, enjoying the content while completely subverting their revenue stream, in any way.

Feel free to do it, but don't try to defend it as noble, justified, or sending a message. It's the same logic, if not the same severity, as pirating software, music, etc. because you don't like the price, DRM, or whatever else.

I watch TV shows on unofficial (ie. pirated) websites when they aren't posted on official ones like Hulu. While I have reasons for doing such (I'm not available when the show airs on TV, I like being at my computer when I watch TV shows, I don't have DVR), I don't try to hide that what I'm doing is enjoying content without compensation or defend it as anything proper or noble. If you're going to do something like that, at least own up to it.

Also, I apparently have both Ox and txshurricane agreeing with me. All we need is for Johan to make an appearance on my side of the debate and this thread will collapse into a singularity that will destroy the entire site.

Almost! Almost.

Where I would disagree with you - slightly - is when you consider ad blocking to be unethical to a degree. I don't think that the fault for a website dying goes to the readers that blocked ads - it goes to the webmaster(s) for not having a contingency. It's no easy task for them, I know.

It actually makes me wince to say all of that - because I have an inkling of how much work Nick and Mike put into the technical side and management of Co-Optimus - but as far as ethics go, I just can't view ad-blocking internet users as the guilty party. When an ad-supported radio station's ratings are affected because people are flipping channels during the ads, it's not the listeners' fault; not as long as there is competition and free access.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 10:30 AM

Bone

04-14-2010, 10:31 AM

Feel free to do it, but don't try to defend it as noble, justified, or sending a message. It's the same logic, if not the same severity, as pirating software, music, etc. because you don't like the price, DRM, or whatever else.
Luckily we are all free to define our moral boundaries and I simply don't see it the way you do. I skip TV ads all the time, and ostensibly they help pay for that content. We've been raised with advertising in our face and I will always reserve the option to turn it off when it becomes intrusive. Call me a dick if you like.

A "page view" as a way to make money is ridiculous anyway. Click-throughs make sense to me, but since my mind ignores most ads in the first place, I don't see how simply serving a graphic should translate to money. It's a flawed concept. I've never clicked on an ad to see where it goes.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 10:46 AM

A "page view" as a way to make money is ridiculous anyway. Click-throughs make sense to me, but since my mind ignores most ads in the first place, I don't see how simply serving a graphic should translate to money. It's a flawed concept. I've never clicked on an ad to see where it goes.

A page view is no more ridiculous than a TV ad, billboard, magazine or radio ad. I suppose you could challenge the entire idea of visual marketing, if you think there's no value to having someone view an ad if they don't instantly click through or go out and buy the product, but I think most marketing companies would disagree, to the tune of billions spent on such ads. In fact, such passive ads make up the vast majority of all marketing. If they didn't translate to real money I doubt they would have survived the past hundred years.

Panthera

04-14-2010, 10:51 AM

The difference between a radio station and a web site is that a radio station incurs no extra cost if people tune in but don't listen to ads while a web site pays for bandwidth even if a user has ad-blocking software. Site visitors that block ads are an active detriment to a web site's finances, while radio listeners that skip ads aren't.

Just a slight nitpick here. On a website that's primarily social, the value provided by the website is increased by the number of users. That value may or may not translate to more readers and therefore more ad viewers. I don't think this place would be as continually successful if 70% of its readers disappeared.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 10:56 AM

The difference between a radio station and a web site is that a radio station incurs no extra cost if people tune in but don't listen to ads while a web site pays for bandwidth even if a user has ad-blocking software. Site visitors that block ads are an active detriment to a web site's finances, while radio listeners that skip ads aren't.
Not necessarily true. The same way that a certain amount of bandwidth is paid for up front by a web admin, a radio station has to pay licensing fees and create physical access (broadcast towers) to reach more listeners. If people are tuning out, the Arbitron ratings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitron) can be affected and advertiser rates drop. That's my limited understanding, anyway.

wyeast

04-14-2010, 10:57 AM

You're still going to have to do something beyond actually clicking the link. There's still something to either run, executable wise, a prompt to install a plugin, or another "link" to click which is really just a masqueraded confirmation.
Every once in a while, I get a webroot alert that something got blocked after visiting a dodgy imagehost site (this is how I usually encounter them). Usually it's some kind of trojan scripting or something that's being headed off. It's possible that if allowed to continue, it would have required additional steps, but I don't let it get that far to find out. ;) By that point I've already gone back to ban the jackass and warn other users. :mad:

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 10:59 AM

Just a slight nitpick here. On a website that's primarily social, the value provided by the website is increased by the number of users. That value may or may not translate to more readers and therefore more ad viewers. I don't think this place would be as continually successful if 70% of its readers disappeared.
There was a great quote from Ebert yesterday, about the addition of ads to Twitter:

Congratulations, twits. We are now all unpaid content providers. (http://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/12126881855)

What everyone seems to leave out of all this entitlement complex nonsense about "stealing" is the other side of the equation, the social contribution of the userbase.

Where's my cut? If it's stealing to not allow ads, then surely it's also stealing to be profiting from user contributions without them getting a share.

Someone complained upthread about sites that repost news stories or RSS feeds and have ads running, because somehow that's the owners making money off another sites' work, but where's the outrage over how much they rake in from the sheer presence of a userbase like this one for example, and the content and leads they contribute that make people want to go to the site in the first place?

It seems to me the model of interaction being assumed here is completely passive, like TV or film, when that's not the case.

wyeast

04-14-2010, 10:59 AM

I will say this - having total control of what ads display is a lot of work as well. I default to my networks to letting all ads in, and if I see one that's intrusive, plays audio, or a lot of video crap I go in and disable it.

Of course, those are the ads that pay the most, but for me, that's not worth it.

It seems like it's gotten a little better nowadays. For a while it was really getting outta hand with a obnoxious animations and trying to divert your attention by any means possible.

Those sorts of ads I've been seeing less of lately.

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 11:07 AM

I'd like to see this poll rerun as "Do you think running AdBlock is wrong?" as I think the question itself is skewing the results. I think piracy is wrong, but I don't believe that it's stealing.

Bone

04-14-2010, 11:07 AM

I need to reiterate that I rarely have to use adblock because most sites I visit treat me, the reader, with respect. The ones that don't (but may occasionally have information I want to see) generally have sold the top, left, right, and bottom of their sites in addition to the Flash layer ad that I end up blocking. I don't care what they do with the rest of the page ads as long as they aren't playing music.

Question: do all of you who consider ad-blocking to be theft also disable the built-in pop-up blockers that come standard on IE, Firefox, and Opera? Because it seems to me there is ad revenue there that you are choosing to steal from. I guess that's a dick way to put it, but I can't help but feel the moral superiority coming off of some of these posts.

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 11:15 AM

Guilty as charged. I feel that I'm morally superior. I think that enjoying content for free while deliberately denying the creator financial compensation for it is wrong. If I feel that the advertising on a site is preventing me from enjoying the content of that site, I stop visiting it. If I ever felt strongly enough about it, I'd contact the site owner to let them know I wouldn't be visiting the site any more because of the shitty ads.

Bone

04-14-2010, 11:15 AM

So to answer my question while on your high horse: have you re-enabled pop-ups in all your web browsers?

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 11:31 AM

So to answer my question while on your high horse: have you re-enabled pop-ups in all your web browsers?

Nope, but I don't try to argue that doing so isn't in some way wrong. Just like I recognize that it's wrong for me to watch TV shows on a pirate web site as opposed to sitting on my couch at the network's assigned time.

In those small ways, I'm being a dick, but at least I can own up to it. I don't try to use twisted logic to justify my actions.

Bone

04-14-2010, 11:39 AM

Panthera

04-14-2010, 11:40 AM

Oh, how about autopager? Is that morally wrong?

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 11:43 AM

Sometimes I turn off image loading on my G1 when I'm on a slow connection. And it doesn't load Flash at all because it's not supported.

Is that "wrong" and "stealing"? Does that make me a "dick"?

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 11:54 AM

What about mobile viewing? Most mobile phones have browsers these days, but no Flash support. :D

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 11:55 AM

I don't see twisted logic on my part. I see holes in your own logic that have failed to convince me I'm doing anything wrong when I occasionally block an ad.

To wit: how many of you use RSS aggregators and skip page views altogether? Aren't you stealing the content?

RSS feeds are opt-in by the content provider, so anyone that provides an RSS feed is signaling that they're ok with people accessing their content that way, even if it means their ads aren't seen. Sites don't opt-in to having their ads blocked, and often can't opt-out.

In additon, there are google ads attached to much of the content that shows up in my RSS feed, and a lot of the feeds provide only an excerpt of the full content, requiring that I click the link to the main site, and view their ads, if I want the full article or post.

As for mobile browsing, you as a user of the phone aren't actively doing the blocking, the mobile phone manufacturer is by not providing a web browser that shows a site as the provider intends. The mobile phone provider is the one being the dick, as many do accuse Apple of doing for blocking flash.

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 11:57 AM

I still don't see anyone answering why I'm not paid for my content.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 11:57 AM

In additon, there are google ads attached to much of the content that shows up in my RSS feed, and a lot of the feeds provide only an excerpt of the full content, requiring that I click the link to the main site, and view their ads, if I want the full article or post.
I thought feeds were generally hosted by a third party, like Google Reader or Feedburner...? Unless I'm totally missing the concept of syndicated feeds, wouldn't RSS ad revenue go to the host, rather than the site being extracted from?

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 11:59 AM

So to answer my question while on your high horse: have you re-enabled pop-ups in all your web browsers?

Honestly, no, but none of the sites that I frequent use pop-ups and if I did get the message coming up informing me of a pop-up, I wouldn't go to that site any more.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 12:04 PM

Honestly, no, but none of the sites that I frequent use pop-ups and if I did get the message coming up informing me of a pop-up, I wouldn't go to that site any more.

After the damage is done! :p

Hawkzombie

04-14-2010, 12:08 PM

So, it's not cool to use an ad blocker, but it's ok to use a pop up blocker?

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 12:13 PM

I still don't see anyone answering why I'm not paid for my content.

Because anyone can act like a self righteous dick on the internet.

See, I went there. ;)

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 12:14 PM

So, it's not cool to use an ad blocker, but it's ok to use a pop up blocker?

This is probably worse for my standing around here than admitting to having an intentional double-standard, but I don't think I've changed a single option on any web-browser I've ever used, ever. I'd not even thought about built-in pop-up blockers until Bone brought it up. I can say with complete honesty that if a site that I frequented did rely on pop-up ads for income, I'd happily enable them. I don't think glancing at an ad and then closing a window is a high price to pay for someone else's work.

In fact, I'm going to turn the pop-up blocker off for a few days and see if anything comes up.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:17 PM

So to answer my question while on your high horse: have you re-enabled pop-ups in all your web browsers?

Actually, you have missed an obvious alternative. I leave 99% of sites that have pop ups immediately.

Therefore, I am not running adblock but can morally justify my running a popup blocker. And I am not lying, popup/popunder windows is a sure sign of a site I don't want to visit, especially if I want to avoid all that malware so many people in this thread seem to be constantly battling.

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 12:19 PM

Actually, you have missed an obvious alternative. I leave 99% of sites that have pop ups immediately.

Therefore, I am not running adblock but can morally justify my running a popup blocker. And I am not lying, popup/popunder windows is a sure sign of a site I don't want to visit, especially if I want to avoid all that malware so many people in this thread seem to be constantly battling.

The problem is these popups are useless. They are for emoticons and mouse cursors and shit like that. I just don't understand the point.

Now if a popup was an interactive game promoting some upcoming product or something, it makes more sense.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:25 PM

So, it's not cool to use an ad blocker, but it's ok to use a pop up blocker?

A popup blocker isn't specifically targeted at removing ads, its a change in how your browser works. Its more akin to muting the volume or disabling Flash or images. The web page should be able to tell that popups have been disabled and advertise in a less invasive manner.

An AdBlocker specifically removes ads by blocking the server addresses of various common ad providers and serves no other purpose than to disable ads.

BigJonno

04-14-2010, 12:27 PM

I still don't see anyone answering why I'm not paid for my content.

For the same reason that when you go to a bar with friends, you don't get paid for entertaining them.

Bone

04-14-2010, 12:30 PM

In fact, I'm going to turn the pop-up blocker off for a few days and see if anything comes up.I respect the consistency of your beliefs. See the rest of you in hell :)

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:32 PM

The problem is these popups are useless. They are for emoticons and mouse cursors and shit like that. I just don't understand the point.

Now if a popup was an interactive game promoting some upcoming product or something, it makes more sense.

Even worse, most of these ad blockers could easily block "blacklisted" ads, such as pop overs, malware, etc... or even present an opportunity for the user to pick which ad networks to block. The vast majority of websites use Google, Amazon or perhaps 3 or 4 other well behaved ad providers but ad blockers block those ads as well. I think the ad blocker providers are as much to blame, as all of them are designed specifically to evade all ads, effectively turning their users into parasites.

I really can't believe, with all of the people that say they whitewash sites they want to support, that a more site friendly ad blocker doesn't exist. Thats probably because the vast majority of people DO want to block 100% of sites.

Hmmmm, just realized I really think the word parasite is about perfectly sums up people running ad blockers. Not the most complementary term, but it is more accurate than to call them thieves or jerks.

Hawkzombie

04-14-2010, 12:34 PM

Pop ups are ads. If a site only uses pop ups for their ad revenue, those of you who don't use ad blockers (and who decry against them) should allow those pop ups as well.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 12:35 PM

Hmmmm, just realized I really think the [phrase] symbiotic parasite is about perfectly sums up people running ad blockers and the hosts that benefit from page visits.
Enhanced that for you. *shrug* It's true.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:37 PM

Pop ups are ads. If a site only uses pop ups for their ad revenue, those of you who don't use ad blockers (and who decry against them) should allow those pop ups as well.

Think I covered this already. If a site deploys pop ups for ads, I don't visit that site. Since I don't visit that site, I don't consume its content and therefore, I don't have an obligation to view its ads.

That said, I don't think I have encountered a site with popups in probably a year. Then again, I don't much surf for cracks, porn, mp3s, torrents, etc...

Hawkzombie

04-14-2010, 12:40 PM

Think I covered this already. If a site deploys pop ups for ads, I don't visit that site. Since I don't visit that site, I don't consume its content and therefore, I don't have an obligation to view its ads.

That said, I don't think I have encountered a site with popups in probably a year. Then again, I don't much surf for cracks, porn, mp3s, torrents, etc...

You'd be surprised the normal sites that use pop-ups. And some are simply because of the ads themselves (I think I encountered one on Kongregate about 3 months ago). Or the ads that take up the whole screen simply because you moused over the ad on accident. To me those are just as bad as pop-ups.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:40 PM

Enhanced that for you. *shrug* It's true.

Your correction makes sense if the person viewing the site contributes something to the community. That said, if the site doesn't have a community aspect or you are merely a lurker, parasite is more valid.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:44 PM

You'd be surprised the normal sites that use pop-ups. And some are simply because of the ads themselves (I think I encountered one on Kongregate about 3 months ago). Or the ads that take up the whole screen simply because you moused over the ad on accident. To me those are just as bad as pop-ups.

Again, if I got to a site where the advertising is obnoxious or it employees pop ups ( except for login prompts, upload forms, etc... ), I don't go back. This actually does send a message to the site that there advertising is annoying too, as pretty much every site under the sun runs some form of analytics and you can map bounce rate against ad campaigns, so me leaving WILL actually register as a lost visitor. That said, an ad blocker will not register correctly register in these reports, so no message is sent to the site owner and their annoying ways continue.

TrackZero

04-14-2010, 12:48 PM

Where's my cut? If it's stealing to not allow ads, then surely it's also stealing to be profiting from user contributions without them getting a share.

Someone complained upthread about sites that repost news stories or RSS feeds and have ads running, because somehow that's the owners making money off another sites' work, but where's the outrage over how much they rake in from the sheer presence of a userbase like this one for example, and the content and leads they contribute that make people want to go to the site in the first place?

It seems to me the model of interaction being assumed here is completely passive, like TV or film, when that's not the case.

Quite true. However there's no need (implied or otherwise) for you as an entity to provide content to keep people happy. However for the site staff, there is. Otherwise the "customers" could just go to another place with the same functionality to receive that additional content. Not saying that both sides don't have an investment in content creation, but on a person to person comparison, it's certainly not on par.

Or in more direct speech, speaking for myself, I put way more work into CoG in my own time and money than I ever did as a forum poster (that's not an insult). Certainly the relationship is symbiotic, but the question that your above thoughts lead to is "To what degree?". Interesting stuff to mull over.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 12:48 PM

Your correction makes sense if the person viewing the site contributes something to the community. That said, if the site doesn't have a community aspect or you are merely a lurker, parasite is more valid.
Who's to say that an ad blocker user doesn't donate? How many friends are they telling about the site? Are they spreading links on Twitter? Are they "fans" of the site on Facebook?

You can't make a blanket statement about someone's tangible value based on one avenue of their whole internet experience.

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 12:51 PM

I still don't see anyone answering why I'm not paid for my content.

For the same reason that when you go to a bar with friends, you don't get paid for entertaining them.

The bar is selling me drinks, that's how it makes its money, and why I'm going there.

As best I can tell from the arguments laid out here, sites like this, or Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever, are selling me the priveledge of providing them content for free. Blog news sites are relying on people like me to dramatically pad their pageviews for more ad money, on the backs of users who receive little to no real product in return, since they so often rely on very little original reporting.

The barman isn't collecting millions of dollars for the simple act of my presence and conversation. The social environment stems from a hard product he's selling to me and my friends, without which he would have no business and I would have no reason to visit.

It seems to me there's a sense of entitlement here on the part of site owners who expect the cash to come rolling in just because.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:51 PM

Who's to say that an ad blocker user doesn't donate? How many friends are they telling about the site? Are they spreading links on Twitter? Are they "fans" of the site on Facebook?

You can't make a blanket statement about someone based on one avenue of their whole internet experience.

No, but the flipside is also true. There is no way to assume that they are promoting the site or donating in any form. In these cases, there is nothing symbiotic about that relationship. We are really splitting hairs and moving into a semantic argument though.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 12:57 PM

No, but the flipside is also true. There is no way to assume that they are promoting the site or donating in any form. In these cases, there is nothing symbiotic about that relationship.
There's also no way to assume that using an ad blocker constitutes a malicious intent. Could be a work computer. Could be a kid following house rules. Could be a bad user experience with ads in the past.

We are really splitting hairs and moving into a semantic argument though.
True enough. When aren't we? :D

Serapth

04-14-2010, 12:59 PM

It seems to me there's a sense of entitlement here on the part of site owners who expect the cash to come rolling in just because.

OMG, people wanting some form of remuneration for providing a service. What a concept! Nice to completely dismiss the possibly hundreds or thousands of hours in development time, maintenance time, hosting costs to say nothing of the work invested in providing content or maintaining a community... thats all "Just because". Frankly, I think Bap summed you up pretty accurately earlier in the thread.

The worst part is, if people adhere to your attitude, the web will become one giant pay to play service. The only reason it hasn't is because you are riding on the coatbacks of people that do enable advertising and do click the links. As that group gets smaller and smaller, you will see either lower quality sites, shittier quality hosting or more and more subscriptions.

The world of spend now and find a business model later fostered this stupid web only culture that everything should be free and that really has screwed things up now that the bubble(s) have burst. It will be interesting to see what happens with Twitter for example now that they are going to try to actually make money, instead of losing 10s of millions a month in venture capital.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 01:02 PM

There's also no way to assume that using an ad blocker constitutes a malicious intent. Could be a work computer. Could be a kid following house rules. Could be a bad user experience with ads in the past.

This doesn't really change anything though, it just changes who was responsible. So instead of being the worker that has the malicious ( perhaps too strong of a word, but lets go with it ) intent, but the employer or parent.

True enough. When aren't we? :D

This, I suppose, is far too true. :D

Bone

04-14-2010, 01:10 PM

No, but the flipside is also true. There is no way to assume that they are promoting the site or donating in any form. In these cases, there is nothing symbiotic about that relationship. We are really splitting hairs and moving into a semantic argument though.It's only semantics if you don't think it applies. There are lots of ways sites make money. I donate and volunteer time to sites that I read often. I view (or "allow") ad images for people to make money for basically nothing, if you think about it. Page views are a broken business model. RSS feeds, manual news aggregators (blogs!), and apps like Tapatalk all break the rules you guys are painting as black and white.

I just take issue with blanket statements of piracy or theft when we're talking about (or I am at least) using an adblocker as a tool to prevent annoyances precisely the way pop-up blockers are used. Actually, used with more precision because the pop-up blockers are on by default.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 01:16 PM

OMG, people wanting some form of remuneration for providing a service. What a concept! Nice to completely dismiss the possibly hundreds or thousands of hours in development time, maintenance time, hosting costs to say nothing of the work invested in providing content or maintaining a community... thats all "Just because".
From a capitalist's point of view: too bad, so sad. If the site isn't properly managed, it may very well fail, regardless of ad blockers. I know that's much easier said than done, and I applaud any site that can operate in the current conditions of the internet...but I don't see ad blockers as unethical.

Frankly, I think Bap summed you up pretty accurately earlier in the thread.
I see what you did there, and I think that crossed the line a little. I'm not going to report your post, but I'm pretty sure that a report would bring down the staff on it. Aiming Bap's words at someone with clear intent of insulting them is not a good move, in my opinion.

The worst part is, if people adhere to your attitude, the web will become one giant pay to play service. The only reason it hasn't is because you are riding on the coatbacks of people that do enable advertising and do click the links. As that group gets smaller and smaller, you will see either lower quality sites, shittier quality hosting or more and more subscriptions.
I don't know if I believe that, but I'll bite. In which case: viewers are hurting themselves, not necessarily the sites.

This doesn't really change anything though, it just changes who was responsible. So instead of being the worker that has the malicious ( perhaps too strong of a word, but lets go with it ) intent, but the employer or parent.
Who is responsible is the whole argument. Calling someone a "parasite" or "leech" indicates that they are shirking some sort of implied responsibility to the internet. I'm sorry, I just can't get on board with your description.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 01:17 PM

It's only semantics if you don't think it applies. There are lots of ways sites make money. I donate and volunteer time to sites that I read often. I view (or "allow") ad images for people to make money for basically nothing, if you think about it. Page views are a broken business model. RSS feeds, manual news aggregators (blogs!), and apps like Tapatalk all break the rules you guys are painting as black and white.

I just take issue with blanket statements of piracy or theft when we're talking about (or I am at least) using an adblocker as a tool to prevent annoyances precisely the way pop-up blockers are used. Actually, used with more precision because the pop-up blockers are on by default.

Hey, poll making is an inexact art. Had I created the poll now after reading the thread I would have probably worded things different and there would probably be an option "No/Yes, but I contribute in other ways". Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

And as I acknowledged to tsx, there are ways to contribute that are or can be symbiotic, but there are also a great many people who simply consume. So all I am saying to tsx is, that description of symbiotic does not apply to all users.

Banacek

04-14-2010, 01:18 PM

It seems to me there's a sense of entitlement here on the part of site owners who expect the cash to come rolling in just because.

People want to get paid for their work, how stupid of them :eek:

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 01:22 PM

So all I am saying to tsx is, that description of symbiotic does not apply to all users.
And all I'm saying back is: neither does the description "parasites". :)

People want to get paid for their work, how stupid of them :eek:
That's circumstantial. The amount of money return is not necessarily proportionate to the work involved when it's all based on page views. A one-page site that never/rarely gets updated can get thousands of views depending on the subject of its content.

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 01:24 PM

People want to get paid for their work, how stupid of them :eek:

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 01:28 PM

From a capitalist's point of view: too bad, so sad. If the site isn't properly managed, it may very well fail, regardless of ad blockers. I know that's much easier said than done, and I applaud any site that can operate in the current conditions of the internet...but I don't see ad blockers as unethical.

This is why I sometimes hate threaded conversations on the internet. I was responding directly to the comment:
It seems to me there's a sense of entitlement here on the part of site owners who expect the cash to come rolling in just because.
This wasn't a comment directly in regards to the topic of adblock in generally any longer, but the flabbergasting idea that trying to make money is somehow wrong, while at the same time trivializing the effort behind many of these sites.

I see what you did there, and I think that crossed the line a little. I'm not going to report your post, but I'm pretty sure that a report would bring down the staff on it. Aiming Bap's words at someone with clear intent of insulting them is not a good move, in my opinion.

Report it. Frankly I think Baps words were aptly chosen and very applicable. If echoing someones sentiments is grounds for moderation, I will be interested to see.

I don't know if I believe that, but I'll bite. In which case: viewers are hurting themselves, not necessarily the sites.

Actually, they are hurting themselves by hurting the sites. Bap clearly demonstrated the costs of running a site against the revenues it takes. If the revenue goes down, he wont be able to afford paying those costs out of pocket and eventually the site with either close or have to go to inferior hosting, or perhaps a donation model and we all know how well that worked at EvAv...

Who is responsible is the whole argument. Calling someone a "parasite" or "leech" indicates that they are shirking some sort of implied responsibility to the internet. I'm sorry, I just can't get on board with your description.

Thankfully, we are allowed to have differing opinions.

Banacek

04-14-2010, 01:31 PM

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

I think this overvalues message forums. Most high profile sites have turned off user comments, just because it cost too much to have to pay someone to sit there and babysit all the users coming in. Other, community driven sites (like COG) aren't run as a business per say. The ads help them break even when it comes to operational costs. That's when it's especially dick to block ads. Whether or not they get impressions from you, they still have to pay everyone else to get that content out there.

Hey, you are going to do want you want. Go ahead and block ads. Just get off your cross about it.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 01:31 PM

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

Please explain?

Banacek

04-14-2010, 01:36 PM

Please explain?

He thinks he should be paid for adding content to a site by posting in the site's forums. Please correct me if I am wrong.

bapenguin

04-14-2010, 01:43 PM

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

You also aren't incurring any personal cost by posting here, other than the effect on your self esteem and stress level.

J Arcane

04-14-2010, 01:50 PM

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

Please explain?
explain to me how a site like this one, or Evil Avatar, or Kotaku, or Twitter, even exists without a constant stream of user generated content?

I just think this whole attitude smacks of biting the hand that feeds you. Not everyone adblocks, but everyone on a site like that benefits from their contributions.

Jackel

04-14-2010, 01:51 PM

You also aren't incurring any personal cost by posting here, other than the effect on your self esteem and stress level.

I disagree. When in Alaska....my bandwidth costs are sky high. and posting here costs me about 5 cents per day just to view the ads.

Respond vile Mod!

Doctor Setebos

04-14-2010, 01:53 PM

As best I can tell from the arguments laid out here, sites like this, or Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever, are selling me the priveledge of providing them content for free.That's a really bad argument. You make it sound like the only thing users on Facebook and Twitter are doing is simple data entry for those sites to be able to use to their advantage. That couldn't be any farther from the truth.

The fact is, social sites like Facebook and Twitter provide a platform for me to interact with my friends online. The fact that those sites end up utilizing the content I provide is completely secondary to the fact that I would be putting that content on there anyway, because that content is the sum total of my interactions with my friends.

If Facebook or Twitter didn't exist, I would be communicating with my friends via some other method. But they DO exist, and they're free, therefore I'm using them in the manner in which they were intended. And I'm perfectly fine with the advertising existing to help them pay for providing me a free service.

TrackZero

04-14-2010, 01:56 PM

explain to me how a site like this one, or Evil Avatar Retarded Giant, or Kotaku, or Twitter, even exists without a constant stream of user generated content?

Comparing a vB site that does features and news along with the forums to twitter or facebook is a bad analogy. Twitter and Facebook don't provide content themselves, only the "forum" framework. Pick one or the other, but you can't use both as an example to your argument, it doesn't fit.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 01:56 PM

explain to me how a site like this one, or Evil Avatar, or Kotaku, or Twitter, even exists without a constant stream of user generated content?

I just think this whole attitude smacks of biting the hand that feeds you. Not everyone adblocks, but everyone on a site like that benefits from their contributions.

I discussed this with Tsx in a different thread, where there are multiple ways where people can contribute to a see, be it as a regular ad viewer, a participant, a donor, a promoter and yes, as a parasite.

Now, lets say you run an ad blocker and go to a site like Ars or Lifehacker, where you read the news, but don't donate, participate in the forums or aren't any other way involved. Don't you view yourself as being morally in the wrong?

Serapth

04-14-2010, 02:04 PM

Comparing a vB site that does features and news along with the forums to twitter or facebook is a bad analogy. Twitter and Facebook don't provide content themselves, only the "forum" framework. Pick one or the other, but you can't use both as an example to your argument, it doesn't fit.

Twitter is a really weird case, mostly because the business model is so horrifically flawed.

The cost to run Twitter is horrendous, but the actual value to end users is almost nothing, so if Twitter started charging to use the service, a replacement would pop up overnight and it would be dead. Twitter as a site is really nothing special and what makes Twitter successful is the infrastructure, not the portal, so they really can't make money from advertising. The value of community really isn't that great, as people will readily leave if it changes too much. Really, in the end, the only value of Twitter is the data it contains and even that is only really valuable to a handful of companies like Google, who frankly get it for free now. Twitter really should have taken one of the giant buyouts they were offered. I am curious to send how there advertising scheme works out but I have low expectations.

Facebook is also an anomaly as well, as Ad Blockers wont really work on Facebook. They are big enough to sell their own ads, so traditional ad blocking techniques wont work against them, as in order to block ads, you would end up blocking Facebook itself. If it is not like this now, it could easily be in the future.

But yes, these services are not like the others. Twitter is an infrastructure company, Facebook is a community tool which is rapidly becoming a platform itself, while CoG, Kotaku, etc... are content providers/communities.

Serapth

04-14-2010, 02:05 PM

I disagree. When in Alaska....my bandwidth costs are sky high. and posting here costs me about 5 cents per day just to view the ads.

Respond vile Mod!

Stop watching Deliverance and move somewhere with running water, hydro and no Sarah Palin.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 02:06 PM

So long as they don't have to pay for anyone else's, of course.

Your posting on CoG may generate CoG some small amount of money, but it also costs them a small amount of money in terms of hosting, etc, plus they provide you with various forms of content and a platform upon which to post.

If you were to break it down you'd realize that you're getting a better value from what CoG provides you then CoG does from what you provide them. Hence ads, which ask for a little bit of attention, even passive attention, from you, which typically brings the exchange of services to even, with perhaps a slight bit more going to CoG, though that's rarely guaranteed with a community site like this, which is often in the red.

muddi900

04-14-2010, 02:41 PM

Even worse, most of these ad blockers could easily block "blacklisted" ads, such as pop overs, malware, etc... or even present an opportunity for the user to pick which ad networks to block. The vast majority of websites use Google, Amazon or perhaps 3 or 4 other well behaved ad providers but ad blockers block those ads as well.

You have never used adblockers, I presume. If that is your issue with adblockers, well then Adblockplus for firefox allows you to not only choose the blocking directory, but make a custom one but blocking the type of ads or the ad hosting service. OF course, I am just a parasite, what do I know?

EDIT: There is some wildly inconsistent logic in this thread based on fallacies. IF providing content in terms of forum posts/comments is not deserving of monetary reward, and it isn't, then how about linking the site. I link to websites I like all the time, I retweet them on twitter, I share links on facebook, I derive traffic to them, which generates revenue. I don't think I am entitled to any of that revenue, but how does that make me a parasite? How am I taking anything away from any of these websites?

Karak

04-14-2010, 02:42 PM

Serapth

04-14-2010, 02:55 PM

You have never used adblockers, I presume. If that is your issue with adblockers, well then Adblockplus for firefox allows you to not only choose the blocking directory, but make a custom one but blocking the type of ads or the ad hosting service. OF course, I am just a parasite, what do I know?

EDIT: There is some wildly inconsistent logic in this thread based on fallacies. IF providing content in terms of forum posts/comments is not deserving of monetary reward, and it isn't, then how about linking the site. I link to websites I like all the time, I retweet them on twitter, I share links on facebook, I derive traffic to them, which generates revenue. I don't think I am entitled to any of that revenue, but how does that make me a parasite? How am I taking anything away from any of these websites?

Have you read any of the last 8 or 9 posts between TSX and I, or are you too busy being offended by a label that doesn't necessarily apply to you?

Serapth

04-14-2010, 02:59 PM

Perhaps we are the wrong group to discuss it rationally. We all know computers. But when I see and hear people at every single store who sells computers tell every single user to download a software firewall(or buy one) and install an ad blocker to be safe. I mean, millions of users have no fucking idea that they might be stopping money from going anywhere. Or they go to news sites(some of the worst offenders lately) and get a fucking dancing nasty chick as a popup(yes this is a real and legit ad) and find out how to block it.

These people 100% are not parasites, a disgusting use of a word especially for what we are discussing, and are just worried that the trojans and virus's talked about every day don't get to them. Are they using the proper tools? Who knows, but the for fuck sakes sure aren't doing anything more than feeling that they paid for the Internet and want to block some ads.
Sometimes they...are just blocking ads and there is no evil scheming malice involved.

So, they are confused, have no malice behind their actions and yes, they are parasites or leeches. I mean, its pretty simple really, if you take but don't contribute anything in return, you are a parasite or leech. This is where the expression leech sites comes from, as you didn't have to upload in order to be able to download.

You know what, everyone might be right, the fundamental economics of the web might be shot and running things off advertising just doesn't work, especially in a world where every single store is telling users to install an ad-blocker and some browsers are shipping with blockers by default, this could rapidly become a reality. I don't think many of you are going to like the results though, as the most likely end result is less free services, more of a push towards the cable style, where your ISPs charge more and distribute money to the content producers who will probably still have ads anyways. Even worse large institutions like tv broadcasters and MP/RIAA members will probably receive the lions share of the pie, like they do with radio fees. There has already been a lot of talk of trying to move to such a system already. I for one think not running ad blockers and putting up with the minor annoyance of ads is a much better scenario.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 03:02 PM

I mean, its pretty simple really, if you take but don't contribute anything in return, you are a parasite or leech. This is where the expression leech sites comes from, as you didn't have to upload in order to be able to download.
It can be argued - and is, very consistently - that these very posts are uploads. In fact, most community sites have a Terms of Service that you agree that any original content herein is the site's copyrighted property.

Back to the leeches comment: what do you consider yourself when you listen to the radio? How about when you watch a parade? A free-to-take classified ad newspaper?

Serapth

04-14-2010, 03:14 PM

It can be argued - and is, very consistently - that these very posts are uploads. In fact, most community sites have a Terms of Service that you agree that any original content herein is the site's copyrighted property.

Back to the leeches comment: what do you consider yourself when you listen to the radio? How about when you watch a parade? A free-to-take classified ad newspaper?

When I listen to the radio, it has commercials which I listen to or is on my satellite, which I pay a subscription fee for. A parade is generally paid for via donations is put on by a certain organization and is often host to advertising of a sorts ( sponsored floats ). As to a free to take classified ad they often make the money from the advertisers and frankly are 100% advertising in the first place. In no case am I attempting to violate the terms of service of these services. Now if I was reading a cloned version of the free to take classified with all the paid adverts removed, I would be being a bit of a parasite, but worse, the person who made the copy would actually be breaking the law.

Banacek

04-14-2010, 03:15 PM

Back to the leeches comment: what do you consider yourself when you listen to the radio? How about when you watch a parade? A free-to-take classified ad newspaper?

Listening to the radio IS listening to ads. The songs are advertisements for the record labels. Every second you hear over the airwaves is an ad in some way, shape, or form.

Ink Asylum

04-14-2010, 03:16 PM

what do you consider yourself when you listen to the radio?

A listening customer whose existence the station can use to get better ad rates.

How about when you watch a parade?

Someone being advertised to by all those floats and banners with the names of organizations on them.

A free-to-take classified ad newspaper?

That newspaper is usually packed with ads that your eyes will pass over when reading the classifieds.

Karak

04-14-2010, 03:19 PM

So, they are confused, have no malice behind their actions and yes, they are parasites or leeches. I mean, its pretty simple really, if you take but don't contribute anything in return, you are a parasite or leech. This is where the expression leech sites comes from, as you didn't have to upload in order to be able to download.

Wait what? By your very definition...everything in the universe is a parasite. Though I enjoy that jaded way of life, it is not fact.

Some are indeed confused, others are doing what even we here know to be true things that can keep the safety of your system at it's highest, blocking possibly virus content(as the recent jpeg virus's that were even on legit sites had), but also blocking offensive content, blocking annoying content.
I can't fathom how some people here have not heard"CONGRATULATIONS you just won a Wii" piped through their speakers at least 4 times a day.

You are making it sound like they owe the website creator something. But they have already contributed. They paid their ISP to get to the Internet which they got to. Further contributions should be up to the owner of the computer for the services. Though I adore those that make good websites, I do not owe them anything for making their site available unless they ask. And if they do that is well within their right.
But some strange nebulous expectation that people click/watch ads, could really only be one of good faith or donating spirit, and removes any possibility of them being parasites.

Unless your into bloodletting...then leeches are cool!

muddi900

04-14-2010, 03:20 PM

Have you read any of the last 8 or 9 posts between TSX and I, or are you too busy being offended by a label that doesn't necessarily apply to you?

Yes and that's why I am saying the logic is inconsistent. What about users who use Tapatalk, a functionality just added to COG. It does not show forum ads. Are the users who use the app leeches. Are they stealing content? When I access this site via cell phone, the flash banner does not render, and sometimes neither do gif banners? Am I stealing?

You also have no idea about how adblockers work, and basing your whole argument on the fallacy that they block all ads indiscriminately. You can block the types, provider and website according to your preferences.

And people tend to be offended when you make blanket statements.

A free-to-take classified ad newspaper?

This is too ironic.

Edit: Seriously man, I can't get over this unintentional bit of self-deprecation!

Banacek

04-14-2010, 03:22 PM

I wish people realized that the internet and cable do not work the same way. At all.

txshurricane

04-14-2010, 03:25 PM

A listening customer whose existence the station can use to get better ad rates.
If you're not an Arbitron (U.S.) participant, you are not part of the measurable quantity. So, no, that's not true.

Someone being advertised to by all those floats and banners with the names of organizations on them.
I've never seen ads in a parade. Granted, it's been a long time... What about the photos I took? Did I steal or leech those if there aren't any ads visible?

That newspaper is usually packed with ads that your eyes will pass over when reading the classifieds.
But the main revenue is the people paying to place the classifieds. Has nothing to do with how many people read, copy, throw away, or wipe their butts with them.

My point is: in each of these scenarios, you have benefited from the service without being part of a measurable audience. In other words: you have not contributed anything except the mere possibility that you might, just maybe see or hear an advertisement there somewhere. Has nothing to do with whether or not you actually do.

So are you a parasite for enjoying the radio station? Is your kid a leech for watching the parade without buying a Coke or shopping at Macy's?

This is too ironic.

Edit: Seriously man, I can't get over this unintentional bit of self-deprecation!
I must be really missing something here. Did I fart?

Karak

04-14-2010, 03:28 PM

If you're not an Arbitron (U.S.) participant, you are not part of the measurable quantity. So, no, that's not true.

[QUOTE=Ink Asylum;536430]Someone being advertised to by all those floats and banners with the names of organizations on them.[/qupte]
I've never seen ads in a parade. Granted, it's been a long time... What about the photos I took? Did I steal or leech those if there aren't any ads visible?

But the main revenue is the people paying to place the classifieds. Has nothing to do with how many people read, copy, throw away, or wipe their butts with them.

My point is: in each of these scenarios, you have benefited from the service without being part of a measurable audience. In other words: you have not contributed anything except the mere possibility that you might, just maybe see or hear an advertisement there somewhere. Has nothing to do with whether or not you actually do.

So are you a parasite for enjoying the radio station? Is your kid a leech for watching the parade without buying a Coke or shopping at Macy's?

One use novels are on the way:) Read it once, pass it to a pal and it lights him and the book on fire.

Wait that actually sounds awesome.
*runs off to invent 1 use book*