zentec
join:2002-01-05
Monroe, MI Reviews:
 ·Charter
| Raises More Legal Issues Legal action against ad blocking software manufacturers will not solve anything because someone will create packages and release them into the wild for free. You can certainly try to shut down the distribution of such software, but it's a futile attempt.
What will be a more logical approach is to simply block people who block ads. But the only way to do that is to see who isn't downloading the ads and block them and that isn't going to stop people from downloading the ads, but not rendering them. How are you going to stop things like custom CSS files that download the ads, but snuff them out during rendering?
This is a legal battle that I don't think advertisers have thought out very carefully. It's going to open up, in a court of law, the legality of using cookies for tracking by ad servers who are a third party of the visitor and web site operator. It also will undoubtedly question the legality of the third (and fourth, fifth and sixth on some sites) party running Javascript on my computer without my consent.
Once again, advertisers have abused the very fragile quid pro quo of viewer and advertiser. It is always a trade between the time of the viewer and content. The advertiser has slowly been tipping that trade more and more in their favor; more commercials per hour, more obtrusive advertising and online, obnoxious and annoying ads complete with privacy intrusions and tracking. I invite them to take this to court, I think it'll be an interesting day when these people get a lot less than they bargained for. |
