ISPs Inserting Ads Into Your Pages 434
TheWoozle writes "Some ISPs are resorting to a new tactic to increase revenue: inserting advertisements into web pages requested by their end users. They use a transparent web proxy (such as this one) to insert javascript and/or HTML with the ads into pages returned to users. Neither the content providers nor the end-users have been notified that this is taking place, and I'm sure that they weren't asked for permission either."
Re:Suprise! (Score:1, Insightful)
On the one hand... (Score:4, Insightful)
And on the third hand... isn't this going to break a whole bunch of websites? I'm having a hard time imagining how they could do it without major side effects.
(* I'd be wanting to stuff a few ads up their HTTP stream, I can tell you)
Copyright Bonanza (Score:5, Insightful)
If my ISP copies it for any other purpose, like inserting ads, or copies it into (or as) some other context, like an ad page, it's violating my copyright.
Every copyright violation - every page - makes them liable for a fine. That can really stack up, and costs a lot more than each page view generates in ad revenue.
Unless I've signed away my copyright in some contract with the ISP. Which I personally haven't. Nor should you.
If you have retained your copyright, and your ISP violates it, you should look forward to them handing over their business ownership to pay the damages. Email your lawyer from your other account and get the ball rolling. Why should corporate copyright holders have all the fun?
There should be legal questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Content providers who earn income from their own web activity should be among the first to file suit against these ISPs. I imagine network TV companies would be VERY offended if advertisments were inserted over, in or around their own presented material and web based business should be expected to have the same offense taken.
Re:Suprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'm more pissed as a content provider then I am as a consumer. How dare they! If I wanted advertising on my content, I'd put it there, and get paid for it. For me, this is totally stealing from content providers and not just annoying to consumers. I mean, isn't that like making money off of other peoples content? Wouldn't that be more like a telephone company forcing you to listen to an add before you place or receive a call? Imagine....
Phone rings and you pick up....
(You) - Hello? (Automated Hell) - Hello, this is A-T-And T, we have a call for you, but first, we'd like you to enjoy a message from our sponsors...
(You) - Click!
Fuck that! Stealing content...bullshit.
Re:On the one hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Profit. It's a great motive.
Re:ISP comparisons need to note this (Score:4, Insightful)
I may not often agree with Gordon Brown: but him objecting to Sarkozy's attempt to remove 'competition' as a basic tenet of the EU was 100% correct. Protectionism, in the long term, hurts all consumers.
Re:I've known about this for a while... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a content provider, I didn't give them any licence to create derivative works. Creating versions of my pages with ads, is clearly creation of a derivative work.
But of course, it's much more important for copyright law to prevent me from copying a CD for a friend, then to prevent some large ISP from violating my moral rights [wikipedia.org] by whoring out my content.
Absolutely insightfull.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've known about this for a while... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you're not familiar with CALEA. They not only log your traffic, they store all the packets so the courts can request them later.
Um, how? Even a 10Mbit pipe is 108GB / day. So how much bandwidth does a typical ISP use, and where do they get enough storage to remember it all?
Re:Go Somewhere Else? (Score:1, Insightful)
Because what they're doing is illegal and it should not be tolerated just because alternatives are available.
The reason legal action is justified is not because they're providing poor service (which they are), it's because they're ripping off content providers.
Re:Actually, It Will (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Copyright Bonanza (Score:3, Insightful)
Nitpicking, anything between the end user and you is a system of relays. The law already has provisions for this, going back things like radio, where the transmissions have to be rebroadcast over many hops.
The "unlicensed derivative work" angle is interesting; I could see how that argument, if made, could get traction in a court.
C//
Re:Absolutely insightfull.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about code validation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is also oblivious to XHTML 1.1's existence, which means you'll be turning away the majority of your visitors (assuming typical demographics).
Re:Actually, It Will (Score:1, Insightful)
What's the problem? If people didn't want to see that kind of thing, the networks wouldn't show it. No regulation necessary - let the market decide!
Re:Suprise! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not quite. The cert also needs to contain the name of the host that you're connected to, otherwise your browser is going to complain. Is your ISP going to be able to get a cert issued to them with the hostname "www.bankofamerica.com"? Unlikely.
However, what the ISP could do is just strip the SSL protection. The SSL channel would be in effect between the remote server and the ISP's proxy server, but the data would be unencrypted between the proxy server and your computer.
I can't see anyone actually doing that, though, so I suspect that HTTPS traffic is and will be safe from this ad-insertion crap.
Re:Suprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
What GeoCities does is OK. The content provider has to agree.
What some ISPs do in return for free internet is OK too (add popups or whatever) - at least that what used to happen. In this case customers KNOW that the popups are from the ISP. But popups *must* be separate from the webpage, not in it.
But if you come along and *insert* ads on my pages and thus benefit from my work, I have no choice but to sue. That is copyright violation. Period. They are costing the content provider money.
Re:Suprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
Things used to be much worse. Advertisers would have their logos splashed all over TV shows and movies. On TV news they would be on the anchor desks, in the backgrounds, even on the clothes the anchors would wear.
There's a great exhibit in the Old Louisiana State Capitol [glasssteelandstone.com] that is an old TV news set from the 50's. The news was called something like "The Esso Seven O'Clock News" and there's a big Esso logo on the front of the desk, and I think one on the microphone as well as other places.
Quite an eye-opener. At least modern product placement is subtle. I think we're just getting more sensitive to it.
DNS hijacking does allow defeat of SSL (Score:4, Insightful)
Give this man a cookie, or at least a mod point.
Once they manage to get your browser loaded up with a CA they control it is game over. Imagine, you type www.chase.com into your browser. Remember, THEY also operate your DNS. They resolve www.chase.com to an address they control and generate a certificate linking www.chase.com to that IP. Meanwhile their proxy server connects to the real https://www.chase.com/ [chase.com] and retrieves the homepage. Then their faked out server reencrypts the content and their inserted ad and sends it on to your browser which displays it with the lock intact.
This is what the various secure DNS proposals are intended to address. DNS hijacking allows almost any abuse in the higher layers.
As a website owner.... (Score:2, Insightful)
But what really worries me is what else are they doing with this technology? Could they programmatically swap out my Adsense Publisher ID with theirs? Could they change the links on my homepage to point to their spam sites? Could they put words in my mouth e.g. my readers suddenly find me favorably reviewing "Male Enhancement" products on my homepage?
Re:The free market is not magic (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad that is mostly a myth in the US. Our rich don't tend to be inherited wealth, somebody earns it (usually by merit) and their desendents piss it away in a generation or two. And the poor don't get poorer, our standard of living is increasing in all social classes. Is it even fair to use the word 'poor' to describe teh less well off in the US when the #1 health problem for the 'poor' is obesiety? Go to the third world and get back to me once you see what poverty looks like.
You are making a common mistake, assuming people are 'poor' because they don't have much money. More often than not they don't have any money because they are poor. 'Poor' is a state of mind. Poor people don't value education, fail to plan for their future, manage money poorly, have expensive and destructive vices (drugs, booze, tobacco, gambling) that leave them unable to save/invest and other traits that lead to them occupying the lower positions on the social ladder. If you took a hundred people from all social strata and tossed them on an island with exactly equal resources, within a year the existing pecking order would re-emerge virtually unchanged. A couple of frat boy trust funders would be unable to reattain their old position and a couple of the less well off might react well to the stress and rise. But overall the majority would stay unchanged.
Yes it is offtopic but this sort of economic illiteracy is rampant on slashdot so every once in awhile I try to correct one of you government educated types.
> The market fails to allocate resources efficiently in the case of natural monopoly, imbalance of information, and externalities.
There are only a few 'natural monopolies' most ultimatly being trackable to government action. But yes, even the great free market economists agree that it is proper role of a legitimate government to protect against monopoly. Imbalance of information tends to sorrect itself, especially with this new fangled Internet thingie. And yes, externalities can be a proper role for the government of a Free People to regulate, within reason.
> There is a reason all countries gave up laissez faire: it didn't work, and led to horrible, horrible abuses.
Yes, 'all right thinking people' around the turn of the century fell into the delusion that socialism was the future. We still haven't counted all of the bodies resulting from that madness. Name one socialist country that, at a minimum, didn't turn into an economic basket case? Most ended up with mass graves and eventually a tyrant being deposed from his iron throne. Do I really need to enumerate the list? Even Europe is finally waking up and smelling the marketplace. A Free market is like a Representitive form of government, pretty much the worst system you can think of....with the exception of every other system tried.
That is until you actually understand them, then they are both beautiful. And inseperable. Eliminate one and the other will surely wither and die. Let one become well established and the other will follow. The Soviets learned this, China will soon enough. Free Markets are the only way for a Free People to deal with one another.
A hundred years ago, when we had a more Newtonian mechanical view of the universe it was at least a defensible position to argue for a planned economy, safe in the delusion that a system as complex as a modern economy could be comprehended by any group of 'experts' well enough to make all of the decisions in an enlightened and efficient way. Hyack pretty much demolished all that back in the 1950's. And since his work we have learned a lot more about emergent systems, chaos theory, general economic theory, such that an educated, enlightened person can no more believe in socialsm than they can believe in the tooth fairy. That and the millions of bodies that resulted from every attempt at a planned economy should be enough to convince even the less mentally adept. Pretty simple actually, Socialism == mass graves, poverty and guards shooting people trying to flee tyranny. Liberty and Free Markets == prosperity, happiness and people trying to get INTO your country.