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Slashback: Panama, Leeches, Comeuppance
from the thankful-for-my-distant-lucky-star dept.
Excuse me, is this well already poisoned? PHPee writes "Yesterday Slashdot posted an article (only thieves block pop-up ads) regarding anti-leech.com's anti-theft campaign. I happened to be one of many people who sent an email to anti-leech, explaining my disappointment, and I received an auto-responder message today, indicating anti-leech has posted a FAQ regarding its anti-theft campaign."
Wish he'd have been arrested for fraud, instead. MojoT writes "Following up from a previous story, Madison Priest, the so called inventor of a broadband Magic Box, was arrested Friday on drug trafficking charges and possession of a firearm by a felon. He must have been confusing the bit rate of his Magic Box with the number of hits he was getting off his stash."
You mean this stuff is just a kind of data? pelle writes "As a (non Panamanian) geek in Panama, I've been following the UDP story quite heavily. The Panamanian paper La Prensa reports that the Panamanian Supreme court has suspended the infamous order to block UDP's used for VOIP the Enteregulador (the governments regulator of utilities). The suspension was done on a complaint by a company called Net2Net Corp. There has been strong uproar amongst people in Panama about the blocking of the UPD's. So this is seen as a welcome thing. The article quotes Gonzalo Córdoba, the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation as saying "Blocking the ports for accessing voice is a form of censorship". For Spanish readers the article is at: La Prensa Note, my Spanish aint all that yet, so I might have missed out several finer points."
I'll wait out the battle in my hobbit hole, thanks. An anonymous reader writes "First scooped at theonering.net: The official Lord of the Rings site has put up an amazing feature that goes into a lot of detail on the motion-capture techniques and programming that goes into the movies' battle scenes. It is one of the best-designed web features I have seen, very informative with interviews from the people working on it and interactive "design your own army"-type features. This should answer any questions left by the recent Slashdot article, and raise many more... (Requires Flash to view.)"
Don't PanIP Timothy Beere writes "Just a quick update to the Slashdot faithful. I received notice several weeks ago that PanIP was suing me and the PanIP Defense Group for the www.youmaybenext.com web site.
The lawsuit claims trademark infringement, defamation and unfair competition. They obviously see the web site as a big threat to their grand plan of suing the potential thousands of e-commerce sites that they could have targeted.
In a preliminary court hearing last week, a judge resoundingly denied their request for a Temporary Restraining Order against the web site. This is the same judge that will be hearing the patent case. We will soon be filing a motion to have PanIP pay all attorney's fees for the web site case as we feel this was nothing less than a litigation threat meant to restrain our free speech. Apparently PanIP doesn't think we have the right to inform people about what they're are doing. Or maybe they are feeling very uncomfortable with the spotlight shining on them.
One other note. We currently have 16 members in our FightBack Defense Group. The FightBack group will soon be posted on the web site.
On a personal note. I can't say enough about the overwhelming response I got from the original slashdot post. I knew if I could get the word out there that people would be disgusted by what PanIP is doing.
We are in the process of filing our responses for the Group and the case will soon be under way in the court. We are still hunting for good prior art in an effort to have their patents invalidated. We intend to stop PanIP and we need your support!"
"The only way..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If you want people to read your content... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't forget to clear the browser cache and URL history. You don't want her to start typing in www.hotbot.com and seven keystrokes into it do an AutoComplete to a different hot website.
Learn from my mistakes.
Re:If you want people to read your content... (Score:5, Funny)
It is the only way (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly I have *no* problem with Anti-Leech. I think they put it quite eloquently in their faq:
You are the thief! You steal my screen by poping up pop ups
If you don't like pop ups, then use a pop up blocker! But then you are not welcome to Anti-Theft protected websites as you are not ready to give something in return.
If a website wants to use Anti-Leech, *let it* There's no reason it shouldn't.
True, I think that people who say "We should force you to view our ads if you use are service" are missing a key element that people who don't want to view they ads probably aren't going to click on them.. but hey it's their content and their choice to block, charge or whatever with it*
*So long as they don't try to prevent others from providing the same content *cough* siaa *cough*
Re:It is the only way (Score:5, Insightful)
You just touched on the issue generally known as "equal protection"
and it is exactly why the people making all this anti-consumer litigation
noise right now (??AA) should simmer down. Any precedents they establish
might end up creating the very tools with which they are broght down.
On a bigger political note, wonder at the enormous power grab that the
Bush administration is making. They are 2, or maybe 6, or maybe 10,
short years away from handing to their political opponents the same power
which they have taken for their own ends in the Executive branch.
By the time the Federal reorganization is really done (probably not even
within 5 years, honestly), there could easily, and likely will be, a party
in power who is not only in opposition to the Republicans, but also, could
very easily have a radically, unpredictably different agenda for how that
power should be used.
I believe that is precisely the reason why no administration prior to
the Bush II has ever made such a sweeping change, positioning the
executive branch to have imbalanced power vis-a-vis the other two
branches. All they are doing is creating specific means for a future
regime to take it a step further. Much further in the direction they
are headed today, and we will have to call it tyranny by Anybody's
standards.
Re:Google (Score:4, Insightful)
hint #2: you don't succeed by creating a business that needs screenfuls of FAQs to justify it's existence.
Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also their "technology" is not really effective at all. The bit where they claim to protect the HTML source of a page is absolutely ridiculous and simple to circumvent. Do they actually sell this crap??
Maybe it's just me, but they seem... well, weird. Kinda like those EARN $5,000,000 IN JUST THREE DAYS BY STUFFING ENVELOPES deals. Dunno. Maybe it's just me.
Oh, and the FAQ page tried to install some Gator scumware on load. I bet they did it because they knew the FAQ was going to get hit, because none of the other pages in the site did that.
Re:Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Interesting)
+1 Insightful! Here's the whois lookup for anti-leech.com:
Registrant:
WakeNet AB
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
Domain Name: ANTI-LEECH.COM
Administrative Contact:
Wennberg, Johan johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
888 888 888 888
Technical Contact:
Wennberg, Johan johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Tanneforsv 17
Stockholm, Enskede S-122 47
SE
888 888 888 888
Looks to be a one-man operation. Too bad ol' Johan here isn't a better programmer. He might have some up with some approach that wasn't so a) easy to rip off and b) easy to work around.
Re:Thank God for Opera. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does anyone else think... (Score:5, Funny)
Where can I learn more about this amazing offer?
Anti-Theft (Score:3, Interesting)
This has already been discussed quite a bit. Is there any compelling legal argument that there is a real contractual obligation, express or implied, to force us to consume the advertising?
Not legal, but perhaps ethical (Score:5, Interesting)
To use TV as an analogy, muting all the commercials is fine, and is anticipated by the advertisers. If anything the mute button has encouraged them to make ads less bombastic and more entertaining. However, it can get stickier, at least if you are recording and if you are using technology to block the ads. Recording is legal as a form of fair use, but I wonder if routine ad-blocking would raise a problem. I've heard this discussed in the context of these personal video recorders, where they could make ad-skipping very easy, but have made it slightly inconvenient to placate the industry. I don't know if this is out of legal concerns or political pressure. Now, ad blocking software might be a similarly suspect technology. But that seems weak, and as a practical matter the software will not be challenged.
However, I do think an ethical argument could be made that you should watch the ads, perhaps just occasionally as a compromise. We now the ads are what keep the lights on, and that the advertisers are asking for a little of our time in return to make their pitch. If they ask you up front, would you be willing to watch a few ads in exchange for your nighttime dose of Stargate? Slashdot or Salon ask us to pay a subscription to suppress ads; surely it's implied that they'd rather you didn't do it on your own, thus evading both their revenue streams and being at least a bit of a leech. You're not subscribing for the convenience of having them block the ads, you're paying to block the ads, period.
But this is perhaps just a lot of handwringing. Certainly ad-blocking is not a crime, but we have to acknowledge that in many cases, as with TV, we prefer ad-sponsorship over other models, such as paying. I used to use ad-blocking software and got tired of managing it. I now glance at the ads occasionally, or at least don't treat them like the Medusa, where a mere glance might be lethal. And, significantly, I avoid ad-choked sites altogether, denying myself the content while making the point that theirs is not a site to which I will give a "hit." If enough people do this, ad revenue drops and the site has to improve its scheme or perish.
Vote with your feet. Boycott sites you don't like, and respect the sites that you do visit by suffering the content the webmaster has to include not to die. If you don't like it, walk, and if you care enough, send the webmaster a note explaining why.
Sorry my prose rambles -- I'm still mulling this over.
Kinda says something about the US attitude... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article headline:
"Inventor arrested on drug charges"
In the article, it says he had a pound of marajuana, and two assault rifles. The article then goes on about drugs, drugs, drugs, more drugs.
Excuse me? The pound of dope was more of a threat (well, more newsworthy) than ASSAULT RIFLES?
*shakes head*
Not meant to be a troll, though I'm sure it'll be moderated as such. Just boggles my mind.
Re:Kinda says something about the US attitude... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kinda says something about the US attitude... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kinda says something about the US attitude... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it gives more punch when the assault rifles are listed second. Most people don't think pot is that bad, so it needs to be reinforced with something evil.
Putting the more-important-thing first often comes out with the opposite effect: "They seized assault rifles and a pound of marijuana." See how flat that sounds?
People are also more likely to remember the last thing in a list, so it has the most power.
On that note: someone I knew, a kind gentle man, was arrested for growing pot (several plants, but not large-scale). This guy wouldn't, and didn't, ever threaten anyone with guns. But he had some in the house.
The guns were reported in the paper. I was surprised at just how evil and dangerous it made him sound, and realized that I had passed similar judgement against people I didn't know just for reading in they paper that their guns were seized.
Different than the story in question, I know, but just beware when you see things like that printed. You probably know people who own assault rifles.
Kinda says something about Slashdotters (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears most people who replied read this:
Excuse me? The pound of dope was more of a threat (well, more newsworthy) than ASSAULT RIFLES?
and promptly went into Gun Defense mode.
A few people pointed out the legality of guns vs. the illegality of weed. That's not what he asked. He asked which was more of a threat.
A few other people pointed out the media's and authority's tendency to exaggerate the nature of weapons found during raids. "Assault rifles" could be, well, anything. However, a person firing a bullet from a rifle is more likely to threaten a person's life than a person lighting up a fatty, which is what RollingThunder was trying to get at.
If there weren't an insane War on (Some) Drugs that turns people who grow plants and brew chemicals to trade with others for personal use into criminals, this raid would never have happened.
I'm disappointed. A lot of people completely failed to answer his (possibly rhetorical) question regarding which is a greater threat to human life, instead falling back on the law or media/police exaggerations to dodge the issue at the root of this.
You can support a person's right to own weaponry and still acknowledge that the availability of weapons poses a greater threat to peace and life than the availability of a plant.
This is too funny... (Score:5, Funny)
That's all I'm going to say... this is too funny.
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
La Corte Suprema de Justicia ordenó suspender los efectos de la orden del Ente Regulador de los Servicios Públicos (ERSP) que bloqueó los puertos de acceso de voz sobre Protocolo de Internet al admitir una acción de amparo de garantías constitucionales.
The supreme court ordered the directive to block ports to be suspended based on a [claim] of constitutional guarantees.
El amparo fue presentado por la firma Infante, Garrido & Garrido a nombre de la compañía Net2net Corp., en contra la resolución de la junta directiva del Ente No. JD-3576, del 25 de octubre del 2002.
This law firm submitted the request to suspend the blockage on Oct. 25.
Mediante una nota firmada por el magistrado sustanciador, Winston Spadafora, la Corte solicitó al Ente el envío de un informe acerca de los hechos sobre el caso y se ordenó la suspensión inmediata de los efectos de la mencionada resolución.
Essentially what I assume is the federal prosecutor requested the company that would have been doing the blocking an explanation about the action, which was then given to the Supreme Court, who in turn stopped the order.
Para el presidente del Ente Regulador, Alex Anel Arroyo, las llamadas a larga distancia internacional a través de internet son ilegales.
The dude Alex Anel Arroyo thinks international long distance calls over the internet are illegal, yadda. I assume he's the one that initiated all this. Send him some email =)
La orden del Ente fue dirigida a unas 50 empresas concesionarias del servicio 211 o servicio de internet para uso público, para que bloqueen 24 puertos de acceso User Datagram Protocol (UDP), que eran utilizados para transmisión de voz, incluso por algunas empresas que daban el servicio al público.
The blocking order was originally sent to about 50 internet providers to block 24 UDP ports used for voice transmission.
Esas empresas proveedoras de servicio de internet han presentado varias solicitudes de reconsideración ante el ERSP.
The companies have in fact requested the order be examinated further.
Entre los proveedores de internet que hicieron la petición de reconsideración se encuentran Intered, Ayayai.com, BellSouth Internet, Cable & Wireless Internet, Cable Onda, Compu Service Communications, GBNet A CCI Network, Inter.net, PanNet, Net2Net y Senacyt.
List of ISPs that requested the order be reconsidered.
La Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Senacyt) criticó la resolución a través de su director, Gonzalo Córdoba, quien afirmó que el bloqueo de los puertos de acceso de voz "constituye una forma inusitada de censura".
The government technology agency criticized the attempt to block the ports, etc.
A la posición de los proveedores de internet se suma la de muchos usuarios que se verán afectados con el bloqueo de los puertos de acceso, conocidos como User Datagram Protocols.
Not to mention individual users who would find themselves screwed (my emphasis) by the UDP blockage. Duh.
Doubleclick? More like doublespeak. (Score:5, Funny)
OK, so I load up the "anti-leech" FAQ, and what do I get? A doubleclick add for....: anti-popup software [omegacs.net]
ROFL!
I'm a really bad person (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only do I use a browser that blocks pop-ups, I also have added a variety of advertiser URLs to my "hosts" file. While the pop-ups are annoying no matter what, I generally will let banner ads, etc. download in peace... as long as the ad gets successfully served. The only advertisers in my host file are those who have consistently managed to effectively block the content that I was interested in by not being able to serve the ads they contracted to serve for those sites. If you're going to hit me with an ad, at least do it correctly.
rant mode off
Back to "anti-leach"... I guess I'm also supposed to read all the ads in free newspapers and not take a biology breaks or grab a beer when there's a commercial on TV and its a high crime if I hit the mute button. Maybe that's why I'd rather just read a book.
The war of words... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm frankly amazed at the degree to which people go to redefine words to try to change the tenor and direction of debate. A good example is the anti-leech trying to redefine your desire to not read their advertising as theft. To use the word theft to describe such actions is to belittle the meaning of the word theft, making it useless to describe actual property crimes.
Anti-leech would have you believe that you are under some obligation to make their particular business model (which is apparently to gain money by annoying people with popups) or else you are stealing from them. They admit that in a legal sense, it is of course incorrect to call it theft, but in a moral sense such a label is justified.
They are, well, full of it.
It isn't the responsibility of consumers to make a particular broken business model profitable: that is the responsibility of business owners. If you can't figure out a way to make money on the Internet, then you can't, but it seems pretty silly to bitch at your target audience for that problem. When your viewers decide to employ pop-up blocking or ad-filtering software, they are sending you as their content provider a message: this stuff is not of value to me, I don't want to waste even a single brain cell dealing with it. It is true that eventually your advertisers will likely notice that the response rate from web based advertisements are ridiculously low and will stop spending money on click-throughs and the like, and that will (at least according to anti-leech) spell an end to many websites.
Which would of course be a hideous tragedy, because who doesn't want to read through more advertising.
Businesses should learn a new lesson: intrusive pop up advertising doesn't work. Spam doesn't work. Stop paying for it. Be creative, and try to make information about your product visible to those who actually want it, don't cast it scattergun style in front of millions of people for whom it just represents an annoyance. Browsers such as Mozilla now have pop-up blocking because users want it, and that means that the users don't want to read your add for X-10 cameras or you've won a free prize while trying to access their bank accounts. Listen to your customers, and develop a business based upon respecting them, not on blanketing them with crap everytime they log in.
Oh, the irony @ cdcovers.cc (Score:4, Funny)
Expect My Bill (Score:5, Insightful)
"A website cost time and money to run. Every time you visit a website you will cost the webmaster behind that website money as they have to pay for the bandwidth you use when downloading images, information etc. Most websites depend completely on revenue from advertising through banners and pop ups. If you start trying to block that income you will still cost the webmaster the same amount of money as before, but the webmaster won't earn any money from advertsing to cover the expence. The result is obvious as this get more and more common today. In the end this can mean that the website has to shut down!"
Whoa. Chill out there, spanky.
The internet is not your (or anyone elses) personal toll booth. You don't get to plop your ass down and start demanding fees. Nobody forced you to put up a website. Nobody forced you to put up content and expend effort making that content. Hell, I don't even care if you deny me your content if I don't jump through your hoops. That isn't the issue.
The issue here is simple; your branding of those who do not enthusiastically play your game as 'thieves.' On your front page [anti-leech.com] there is a graphic [anti-leech.com] which states, "15% of your visitors are thieves."
This is a little bit like having a store and thrusting pamphlets into the hands of people who enter the store, then calling them thieves if they refuse the material. Does it make sense to say that by refusing the pamphlet they are denying you a revenue stream? Do you think you would be kicked or merely laughed out of court with this argument?
Your argument that you've paid for content and people are stealing it is a bit like painting a picture, displaying it on the street and then charging people who look at it, calling those who refuse "thieves." It doesn't have any real-world analogue whatsoever and you're a fool if you think that the internet is your sandbox to do with as you please. Doubly so if you plan on trying to enforce it.
And while I'm here, what the hell makes you think you have the right, the right to control how my browser -- and my computer by extension -- acts?
Heck. I think I'm going to send you a bill right now for the time it took to write this content. I imagine you'll be happy to pay it, it's entirely consistent with your argument...
Bill Anti-leech, They're All For It! (Score:5, Funny)
I realize, of course, that the owner of anti-leech.com did not request the content in question, but this fact seems largely irrelevant to Mr. Wennberg. After all, much like the "thieves" who "steal" from his clients, he did not actually ask that I compose a reply, but I did and it did cost me bandwidth to post, time to create, etc., and as such I expect Mr. Wennberg to pay for the resources that have been expended.
It is in this vein that I have billed Mr. Wennberg for my rebuttal (content) on a net-30 basis and fully intend to collect. I really hope that Mr. Wennberg is consistent with his application of fairness. After all, I did spend a lot of time putting together my response and if he does not pay my bill, it might very well cause me to go out of business altogether.
---------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 19:42:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Jason Desjardins <jason@macross.com>
To: johan.wennberg@swipnet.se
Bcc: Jason Desjardins <jason@macross.com>
Subject: Crashspace: Invoice #0001
Anti-leech.com,
Thank you for your recent content purchase! Here is your order confirmation.
Invoice: 0001
Content:
----[%begin]----
From the FAQ [anti-leech.com]:
"A website cost time and money to run. Every time you visit a website you will cost the webmaster behind that website money as they have to pay for the bandwidth you use when downloading images, information etc. Most websites depend completely on revenue from advertising through banners and pop ups. If you start trying to block that income you will still cost the webmaster the same amount of money as before, but the webmaster won't earn any money from advertsing to cover the expence. The result is obvious as this get more and more common today. In the end this can mean that the website has to shut down!"
Whoa. Chill out there, spanky.
The internet is not your (or anyone elses) personal toll booth. You don't get to plop your ass down and start demanding fees. Nobody forced you to put up a website. Nobody forced you to put up content and expend effort making that content. Hell, I don't even care if you deny me your content if I don't jump through your hoops. That isn't the issue.
The issue here is simple; your branding of those who do not enthusiastically play your game as 'thieves.' On your front page [anti-leech.com] there is a graphic [anti-leech.com] which states, "15% of your visitors are thieves."
This is a little bit like having a store and thrusting pamphlets into the hands of people who enter the store, then calling them thieves if they refuse the material. Does it make sense to say that by refusing the pamphlet they are denying you a revenue stream? Do you think you would be kicked or merely laughed out of court with this argument?
Your argument that you've paid for content and people are stealing it is a bit like painting a picture, displaying it on the street and then charging people who look at it, calling those who refuse "thieves." It doesn't have any real-world analogue whatsoever and you're a fool if you think that the internet is your sandbox to do with as you please. Doubly so if you plan on trying to enforce it.
And while I'm here, what the hell makes you think you have the right, the right to control how my browser -- and my computer by extension -- acts?
Heck. I think I'm going to send you a bill right now for the time it took to write this content. I imagine you'll be happy to pay it, it's entirely consistent with your argument...
My
Limekiller
----[%end ]----
Total Charge: $90.00 USD
We bill on a net-30 basis. Past due accounts are charged an additional 18% annual APR fee, accrued every 30 days (1.5%).
Again, thank you for using Crashspace content!
Regards,
Jason
--
----
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." - Charles V
Re:Bill Anti-leech, They're All For It! (Score:5, Funny)