Prince of Pop-ups 543
Ric writes "From the article lead paragraph: 'If you hate pop-up ads, you might blame Brian Shuster. A long-time figure in the Internet pornography world, Shuster recently received a patent for the ad format and is now looking to make some money off the sites that use it. And that's just the beginning - Shuster has a long list of pending patents, including one for pop-up audio ads that cannot be turned off.'"
Excellent!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course I use mozilla with popup filtering enabled, so it's not really that much of an issue to me. =)
Anyone have this guy's address? (Score:5, Interesting)
Good! (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, I wish somebody had patented spam as well!
Re:Excellent!! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a moment too soon (Score:5, Interesting)
(The popups appear when you click a "next page" or "previous page" link in the article, so Mozilla must be treating it as a requested popup. In addition to a whitelist of sites that are allowed to throw popups, Mozilla needs a blacklist of sites that are never allowed to throw popups.)
As good of place as any (Score:5, Interesting)
But.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not on general popups, but misleading popups only. (Score:5, Interesting)
So he patented misleading people via a web browser...
Intersting.
Re:As good of place as any (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact that many of their MSN.com sites use 'em?
DRM and "Pop-up Audio" (Score:2, Interesting)
I realize the above is an Orwellian outlook on the stangle-hold Microsoft is hoping to foist on us, but DRM is a slippery slope indeed. Who knows how far down one will go once one gets started.
USPO - Mightily Stupid (Score:2, Interesting)
With a HREF you can set a taget window. If that window does not exist it's greated. Popped-up, as it were. You can place any kind of content in that window. Java script allows you to pop this extra target up with a specific size. This is all a given.
At the time this functionality was created there were ads on the web. They were a known type of content. The idea was that they would bring in money. We all know this.
This guys "innovation" is placing an add in new target window? The US Patent Office is grteat pleace. I'm sure it was totally non-obvious.
Patents in the US should be halted, until something can be done. This is causing harm to us all. Not this Patent issued. Issued falsely I'd say. It's the fact that a patent limits the rest of us. It allows an inventor(not in this case) to own an idea for a while.
Owned ideas are bad when they are ebvous, such as this one. To know when is and is not ebvous is way beyond the scope of our government. These are not the simplier times when Patents were penned into being in this country.
Patents should be rolled back, and used only in areas where innovation needs to be stoked. Computer and tech innovation is on a roll, and patens will only halt that trend.
It harms all of us to retard our progress and innovation by allowing a patnet office which cannot see the obvious from the innovaiton.
-- James Dornan
Re:Hooray! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, more telling about where blame for frustrations will lie - is in the quote regarding the popups with sound that you cannot turn off. This is VERY upsetting.
I OWN MY COMPUTER - its fully 100% a resource of MINE and nobody else. I also PAY for my internet access, by the month.
If he wants to force feed me ads - then he better damn well PAY me. And protect himself while walking around in public.
Seriously - this is a major concern of mine and I am sure, many others.
Advertising is getting totally out of hand and something needs to be done. I can understand certain forms of advertising, like on free TV stations - where I am getting the service (TV for free) and in return I am agreeing to being subjected to ads.
However in any service where I actually pay for it - I should be asked, paid or otherwise consulted before being subjected to advertising.
In fact I am in the process of starting an ISP where advertising of ANY kind is absolutely forbidden and technically (as much as possible) prevented. No details on how I am doing this, sorry... but one thing is that for a nominally higher rate you can have an ISP that will not tolerate any sort of advertising to its clients.
Advertising is polluting the world we live in and even our minds with unproductive thoughts - and actually detracts from our quality of life. I hope to change this.
On a related note - would you sign up on this ISP?
Re:I have a problem with this... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is he just patenting malicious code? (Score:2, Interesting)
All you need is the correct algorithm to process the HTML/Java whatever in the right way so that it doesn't bother you with pop-ups, audio or whatever. Has anyone invented or patented a method of blocking malicious code? yes its called a virus scanner (or virus scanner packaged as an ad-filter) and it just so happens that HTML and Java are a hell of allot easier to deal with than _real_ malicious code.
You could say this man is patenting virus methods or something like that, if it was a outlook-express visual basic script i dont think the patent office would see it in quite the same way? If not then let me be the first to invent a method of advertising that involves emailing itself to everyone on your address book.
Counter attack? (Score:1, Interesting)
If we were all wise and slick and such, we'd think up some of the most annoying ways our browers could be perverted into advertisements and then we would patent them.
Then, to discourage the use of said annoying tactic, ask for exceptionally high per-use licensing fees for the patent.
Re:Hooray! (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I have a big moral problem with you trying to start an ISP that doesn't allow ads unless you plan on sending a monthly check to EVERY single website your users visited that would have normally contained an ad.
As much as we all hate it, advertising is a necessary evil if you want internet content to remain more-or-less free.