French Publishers Prepare Lawsuit Against Adblock Plus 699
HughPickens.com writes Frédéric Filloux reports at Monday Note that two groups of French publishers, the GESTE and the French Internet Advertising Bureau, are considering a lawsuit against AdBlockPlus creator Eyeo GmbH on grounds that it represents a major economic threat to their business. According to LesEchos.fr, EYEO, which publishes Adblock Plus, has developed a business model where they offer not to block publishers' advertisements for remuneration as long as the ads are judged non-intrusive (Google Translate, Original here). "Several criteria must be met as well: advertisements must be identified as such, be static and therefore not contain animation, no sound, and should not interfere with the content. A position that some media have likened to extortion."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
According to Filloux the legal action misses the point. By downloading AdBlock Plus (ABP) on a massive scale, users are voting with their mice against the growing invasiveness of digital advertising. Therefore, suing Eyeo, the company that maintains ABP, is like using Aspirin to fight cancer. A different approach is required but very few seem ready to face that fact. "We must admit that Eyeo GmbH is filling a vacuum created by the incompetence and sloppiness of the advertising community's, namely creative agencies, media buyers and organizations that are supposed to coordinate the whole ecosystem," says Filloux. Even Google has begun to realize that the explosion of questionable advertising formats has become a problem and the proof is Google's recent Contributor program that proposes ad-free navigation in exchange for a fee ranging from $1 to $3 per month. "The growing rejection of advertising AdBlock Plus is built upon is indeed a threat to the ecosystem and it needs to be addressed decisively. For example, by bringing at the same table publishers and advertisers to meet and design ways to clean up the ad mess. But the entity and leaders who can do the job have yet to be found."
Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:4, Interesting)
The publishers will eventually win. Right now, it is very trivial to get adblocking working. Fire up the web browser, type in AdBlock in the "get new extensions", and it is in place.
However, with this attack, it may not kill it, but it can force it to the edges. It is trivial to have an Adblock-blocker, or websites can use DRM extensions or just use a Flash wrapper for the site to bypass it.
The ironic thing is that in my experience, the #1 means of attack onto networks are ads that serve malware. So, AdBlock is a security tool. I wish someone could countersue with the fact that the ad slingers either play the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" game with the malware players, or passively don't keep their stuff secured. This forces places to have to block ads since they are such a common attack vector... be it attacking browsers, or browser add-ons like Flash or Java.
This is going to be a battle, and it will absolutely suck for us as a whole, because eventually DRM will won. For example, the latest EA title which hasn't been cracked, or any title on XBox One or PS4 with a piracy/cheat rate of 0%. I'm not looking forward to either eventually having to sit through ads and websites demanding to install their version of Blizzard's warden to see their content... but it is coming. Viva, France!
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This is going to be a battle, and it will absolutely suck for us as a whole, because eventually DRM will won.
I'm not so sure in this case. Most of the web sites I value don't rely on third-party ads for their main or only income. The few that do so are expendable/replaceable. I appreciate having forums like Slashdot to discuss things on-line, but the value of news aggregation/discussion sites is in the consolidation and in the discussions and the communities -- in other words, it all comes from third-party contributions that are given freely, just like my own -- not in the site itself.
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I don't know about you, but I refuse to install flash, and adblock is a requirement for having javascript enabled.
OTOH, there are already a lot of sites I won't visit, so I'm clearly not a large section of their audience.
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Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:4, Informative)
Then don't allow those ads. ABP asks you if you want to allow reasonable ads. If you change your mind, you can un/check that box any time. The fee paid to Eyeo is for checking that the ads abide by the exemption rules (and I guess as a kind of security deposit, so that advertisers don't keep submitting benign ads and switching them out once they get approval).
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:4, Informative)
Or just use another blocker without the potential conflict of interest, such as Adblock Edge, or your hosts file if you're technical.
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Funny)
APK is next on their list (Score:3)
Definition of "conflicted"... trying to figure out which side to support when the French ad agencies sue APK.
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The lists are already there -- that's what those "filter subscriptions" you set up when configuring ABP are all about. I don't know whether there are any competing plugins that don't have any direct association with anyone maintaining a list, but even if there aren't it's not exactly rocket science to develop a new one.
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Insightful)
That was my first thought too. It would be trivial to write a script that fetches and parses the existing lists used by adblock into a nice little hosts file where everything points to 127.0.0.1.
I don't care whose business model it wrecks, I won't expose myself to any more advertising than I have to.
On the other hand, it may be time for me to donate to Adblock.
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Insightful)
I started to care when they were large fixed images, and then multiple variations of the same image on the screen at once, and then flashing or blinking or animated. They they started using Javascript and Java and Flash to pop-up, pop-under, open new windows, play sounds or videos automatically, and otherwise manipulate the browser itself, and that's when I installed ad-blocking software, and later I installed flash-blocking software and script-blocking software.
So yes, in some ways I still browse the web like it's 1995. On the other hand, back in 1995 most of the web was text, and much of that text was actual useful content, and what few graphics there were contributed to the text as relevant content. Now most of what's retrieved is crap, so I'm happy to ignore the crap to get at the actual content again.
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, ad-heavy sites takes forever to load because the infrastructure supplying the ads sucks. On top of that the ad-agencies are using quite invasive tracking coupled with all the social network connectors that now are more or less standard on every site.
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:4, Insightful)
So much agreed here. And they LOVE to code the site so that it fucking stops loading to wait on that TRS-80 ad server that handles all of the western hemisphere from a dialup link.
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That's why you should block the javascript responsible for loading the ads too. Usually this is accomplished by blocking all requests to the ad-agencies servers which stops the page from sideloading the scripts.
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I started to care when they were large fixed images, and then multiple variations of the same image on the screen at once, and then flashing or blinking or animated. They they started using Javascript and Java and Flash to pop-up, pop-under, open new windows, play sounds or videos automatically, and otherwise manipulate the browser itself, and that's when I installed ad-blocking software, and later I installed flash-blocking software and script-blocking software.
It was the flashing and blinking and traveling ads that made me install AdBlock Plus (now use AB Edge). They were doing everything possible to distract your eye from the content.
And like the author of the MondayNote article said, another reason that drove me to install it as standard kit on every computer I use was the CPU utilization of all of these animations and ads and crap. The CAD engineers get the souped up graphics and CPUs -- us project managers get aging, crippled POSes... it's not until you get
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that's a giant list, so you'd instead need a GIANT HOSTS FILE
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that's a giant list, so you'd instead need a GIANT HOSTS FILE
One of the keys to the ABP filters is that it isn't just a list of hosts, but rather a list of regexes that describe ads. This allows you to display actual content from a site without displaying the ads.
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yes I use ABP, noscript, flashblock and user-agent spoof. 8D The Giant Host File is just a stupid meme that keeps popping up anytime someone mentions DNS-related issues, couldn't resist
Re:Doesn't matter even if the publishers win... (Score:5, Informative)
I know a lot of companies that block most of the ad-sites because of the attack vector ads represent.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
They can go bite a donkey (Score:4, Insightful)
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Spot On.
How many times have you tried to load a page only to have to wait for all the Ads to load or load a page only to have it start blasting sound while you are reading it?
I especially like the ads that cover the whole page or cause the page to scroll the text randomly up and down while you are trying read the content, which is actually the only reason I'm at the site to begin with.
Re:They can go bite a donkey (Score:4, Insightful)
Bah, the content is secondary ... the purpose of the site is to sell advertising.
They just can't figure out how to get you there without some content.
And web sites which start playing music? That's been annoying for as long as it's been possible, and something I've had disabled for a long time.
God, I remember the horror of terrible fscking midi songs playing on websites. Sorry, no, you deserve a kick in the head if you think your website should start playing music.
Re:They can go bite a donkey (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems you understand how the internet works.
As such, I'll remind you that they don't use your bandwidth without your permission. In fact, you must request all the pages from the internet that you'd like to see. It's the primary technical argument for blocking ads -- in that you're free to do with the data you receive as you please.
Re:They can go bite a donkey (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you have any idea of how hard it is to know all of the requests a web site is making?
Your average user certainly doesn't know how, and you don't "request" the pages, because you usually have no way of knowing they're even involved.
That embedded crap from scorecard research and all of those other analytics companies? Unless you're running a lot of privacy extensions you can't even know they're getting invoked.
Just because the people who own a website include a license that says "by visiting this page you consent to all of the shady, underhanded crap we have embedded in our pages" means you're required to allow it.
Until browsers by default give the ability to block advertising and third party stuff, it takes a fairly savvy user to know that stuff is there and to block it.
And I don't mean the incompetently implemented blocking of 3rd party cookies in Safari which doesn't do anything. I mean real, user controllable blocking which lets the user know there's 20+ external parties who are getting told when you visit a website.
Since I've been running things like Ghostery, Request Policy, or HTTP Switchboard ... even I am surprised at the sheer amount of tracking and other crap which is embedded in the average web page.
But your average user? They have no frigging idea any of this stuff is there, and haven't been asked if they agree.
Re:They can go bite a donkey (Score:5, Interesting)
Since I've been running things like Ghostery, Request Policy, or HTTP Switchboard ... even I am surprised at the sheer amount of tracking and other crap which is embedded in the average web page.
What's really sad is how many sites completely fail to work even once you enable all the stuff you ought to be enabling. There's been six or seven products I decided not to buy in the past year because the forums don't work if you have that stuff turned on.
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There's been six or seven products I decided not to buy in the past year because the forums don't work if you have that stuff turned on.
Good for you. Just remember that for every one of you -- an exceptionally awkward customer who is probably more trouble than you are worth from a business perspective -- these companies are gaining useful business insights from those tools that will ultimately make them far more money then you would ever be worth to them in a lifetime. You're perfectly entitled to block things and not use their forums and decide not to buy from them, but they are just as perfectly entitled not to care.
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And adblock is just me declining to make the requests they were hoping I would make.
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They use my bandwidth (without permission) to peddle me ads for things I don't want and they think the courts should force me to look at their ads by removing my choice?
If the content provider chooses to include ads in the stream, you are free to not use that content. The notion that making an http request implies some kind of business arrangement that carries with it certain obligations ("You must look at my ads") is absurd. Content providers are often in it for the money, so we shouldn't begrudge them their attempts at monetizing that content, but creating legislation that forces us to accept that model is, at best, misguided.
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I think the problem that you're failing to recognize which the OP stated was that yes, I pointed my browser at a website. What I did not point my browser at is the 14 IFRAME ads and analytics hosted by 15 other 3rd party providers. If a site wants to serve ads, then they should do like I did when I was running a largish (over 1M unique users a day) website. Sell your own ad space. Ad networks who host obtrusive ads need to go away. Unobtrusive stuff like text ads or static stuff I don't really have a p
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Legal Opinion, Please? (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, so I'd like a tort guru to enlighten us on exactly how creation and distribution of a product (AdBlock) that that gives consumers an informed choice over another product (advertising bullshit) is an actionable case. It sounds like a water utility company suing faucet makers for making a device that restricts flow of billable water, or the electric company suing light switch manufacturers.
Re:Legal Opinion, Please? (Score:4, Funny)
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OK, let's say you make a car that has some sort of device that limits the amount of air that goes into the engine. Let's call this, for lack of a better term, an 'air restrictor'. Then the evil gasoline manufacturers sue the air restrictor maker for limiting the amount of gas that is consumed. The aristocrats.
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It may be something about being in France that allows "messes with my business plan" to be actionable, sort of like how in the UK truth can still be defamation.
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I don't think this has anything to do with France's laws. But since anyone can sue just by filing some papers, such suits will happen. While anyone can sue not everyone can win. These publishers have not even sued yet, they're just "preparing a lawsuit", which is an attempt to get the upperhand in negotiations.
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First option. Web site is free to use and there are no ads. Person visiting the site is happy, but the person hosting
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If you can't implement #2 with technical measures, you have no legal expectation of anything but #1.
If you do #3, it doesn't mean people will accept seeing ads, or that we'd have given you revenue anyway. We might still block your damned ads.
Most things which fall into #4 do that, AND have a crap ton of ads.
How the site generates income isn't my problem. Your business model doesn't mean that I'm obligated to care.
That most ads are served by 3rd party analytics companies who want to know everything you do
Re:Legal Opinion, Please? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they're claiming it's extortion, since you can pay to be removed from the block list. That might actually work (depending on how French law is), but might also be a good thing since it would mean adblockers just block everything (which would still presumably be legal).
Next ... (Score:3)
I predict these companies will try to make it illegal for users to use any form of ad blocking.
Good luck with that.
Greedy bastards seem to think their desire to get paid means we're legally obligated to do so.
If your site wants to display ads, host them yourselves. But if you think I'm going to allow 3rd party trackers to support your business model, you're horribly mistaken.
AdBlock is doing something right (Score:2)
AdBlock is clearly doing something right, and for every google action there will be equal and opposite reaction.
If internet is called an ecosystem, then we, the small fish, have every right to the cloak of invisibility.
The big fish forgot that the the right to spy should be consented. Of course, there are certain type of fish that does not give a damn and use all kind fishing tools, starting from targeted baits, evolving to infections and ending to the 100% filtering.
If AdBlock will be drifted to playing bo
The day I can't block ads... (Score:3)
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A decade of not using and now I have to. (Score:2)
I browsed the internet with ads for so many years, they didn't really bother me and the flash was blocked (but available) with flashblock.
I finally had to give in and install Adblock Plus everywhere (even on throwaway firefox profiles) because friends rely too much on youtube for music. Then I realized that we're in the days of needing multiple gigabytes of memory for browsing, and bandwith isn't getting better (maxed out DSL lines) or even going backwards (using a wifi hotspot). The web content is huge and
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I consider AdBlock a form of antivirus, in that ad positions are an attack vector (for random third party code injected into the page from behind some stack of brokers).
For the same reason, I don't install free phone apps if they're ad-supported.
This is a good thing. (Score:2)
Adblock is doing something right (Score:2)
My ad block counter says it has blocked 3.7M ads. My head would have exploded if I had actually looked at 3.7M ads. Maybe there are teensie bit too many ads? So at three seconds viewing time per ad, that would be about a year's worth of full time ad viewing.
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I use AdBlock and here's why... (Score:3)
I use AdBlock not because I believe no one with a website shouldn't have the opportunity to make money via advertising, but because of the METHOD of advertising.
Flashing ads, quick movements, anything with Flash that can crash and stall my use of my browser, or any ad of more than 600 KB in size is intrusive. I don't mind being advertised at, but if you DEMAND my attention via tactics instead of attempting to CONVINCE me to buy a service or product with the facts of that service or product, then I will turn off and walk away.
Example of good Slashdot-based advertising for me: "Newegg - 15% off orders $25 - $100. December 8 ONLY. We know there's a couple things you've been meaning to buy. Be smart about it and buy them now. CLICK HERE to apply coupon." The coupon could take effect only via clicking in from Slashdot.
Also, I pay for my bandwidth and if you want to advertise to me, cool. Just don't take liberties with the size of your advertisement. Keep it small. Maybe a 2-3 frame gif changing every 20 seconds.
Lastly, I don't like the tracker cookies. I know some people say that tracking one's surfing habits enables more relevant ads to be used, but I don't like being tracked at all. Why not just use advertisements relevant to the site content? It's Slashdot -- post tech stuff. Slashdot builder? Then push 3D printer filaments.
As a result of some really BADvertisers, no one gets to put advertisements in front of my web-surfing eyes. I don't even know if a site has changed to less-obtrusive ads unless they tell me. (And if they do, I turn off AdBlock.) It's as simple as that.
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Also significant: of the last three virus infections I've had, all originated from malicious ads, two of them on sites that I considered trustworthy (one I had specifically exempted from Adblock).
Ads can stay, as long as they behave (Score:5, Insightful)
There's really no other rational choice than to block most/all ads, in a world where ads can do just about anything they want. The annoyance and performance slowdown are trivial issues compared to the real problems. The same openness that allows Web-based ads to track you using cookies, launch plugins and pop-up windows, and prevent you from viewing content until you watch a video or wait some time, also (fortunately) allows users to fight back as a natural defense mechanism against these predatory tactics. For the advertisers to abuse this openness for their own personal monetary gain, while presuming to control what *I* run on *my* computer, while being appalled at my choice of doing the same, is ridiculous and contradictory.
Far and away the gravest problem with ads today is that the vast majority of them pose *serious* security and/or privacy issues. Most ad networks do very little to prevent bad actors from embedding malicious content that tries to exploit browser zero-days, steal cookies, track your behavior, or trick you into visiting malicious websites. Until website owners and ad networks decide to completely purge all the security and privacy risks, advertising is essentially synonymous with an opportunistic attack on each user who visits an ad-infested site.
On the open web, the only way advertisers are going to get any revenue is through earning the trust and goodwill of their customers. And we ARE customers -- customers who are currently being treated like shit. How would you like it if a car salesman walked up to you and started giving you a tattoo on the arm with the manufacturer's logo, seconds after you get out of your car and step foot on the lot? That kind of intrusive behavior should not be tolerated. And it isn't: users are doing exactly what the advertisers should expect them to do, given how they are being treated.
Ad networks should start by having a manual screening process for each entity that wants to submit ads through their network. The integrity, ownership, and status of each entity should be scrutinized to ensure that they are a legitimate business and are registered with the proper authorities. Additionally, the network should perform constant random sampling of their current ads being run, and employ experienced security auditors or penetration testers to examine the source code and other dynamic behavior of the advertisement payload on various popular browsers, to determine if it is tracking the user or malicious in any way. If it is, all further business with that partner should be stopped immediately, and the advertisement removed from the network. Website owners and users should not be the ones having to push the ad networks to remove these abusers.
The open Web is not going away. Users are in control of what displays in the web browser. Advertisers must either learn to work within a system of reasonable rules that do not attack users' systems or try to compromise their privacy, OR just keep fighting until their revenue stream is slowly strangled to death by their own despicable policies.
Cry me a river, advertisers and marketers! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I *work* for a communications marketing company, and still, I think the whining and gnashing of teeth over plug-ins like ABP is misplaced!
You can't realistically expect to stop people from blocking your ads with software any more than you can stop people from pressing "mute", channel change buttons, or just the "on/off" switch on the television when commercials come on!
The truth is, ad banners, pop-ups, pop-unders, animated page overlays and the rest of it are just distractions. If you create one that's minimal enough so most people can't be bothered to actively use a tool like ABP to filter it? Then you've probably just made an ineffective advertisement that people aren't even paying attention to in the first place. Advertisers who "get" this and have worked hard to build more effective ads are prompting people to "fight back" with these blocking tools. The takeaway we probably all SHOULD be getting from this is that this form of marketing isn't a very good one.
The fact that many site operators out there can barely make enough revenue to cover their costs of hosting means there's a strong interest in keeping the current business model in place and pretending it works. But truthfully, I think things would work out far better if marketers would agree to sponsor web sites likely to have an audience interested in one of their products. Just flat out pay their hosting for them, in exchange for the site making it clear your company is doing that for them. THEN you'd win the respect of the userbase and generate good P.R. and sales.
Brought to you by... (Score:3)
Dice. And Bennet Haselton.
Lawsuit will solve it for sure. (Score:2)
IMO, win or lose they won't survive any longer for it.
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It has apparently never occurred to publishers to band together and fund the creation of a system for buying content at dirt cheap prices using something like ACH transfers to keep the transaction costs low. How about a one-click purchase model where you pay $0.50/article or $3 for all content published that day?
It's been tried. Nobody bought. Except for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, no news outlet adds enough value that people will pay for it.
See what Google Ads you've clicked on (Score:2)
I run all my desktop browsers with ABP. I thought I never click on Google Ads, however recently I checked the history of my primary Google account and was very surprised to find that I had, and not just a few times, many times, and on things I had been interested in.
You can see your own history through Google's History site: Google History for Ads [google.com]. It's pretty interesting. I don't know how they're getting me, but I assume it's on my phone. In any case, it's been so subtle (and useful) that I am in no way up
ABP is really a necessity in today's web (Score:2)
There's a local (well, national) newspaper that I read frequently. They implemented a paywall (five free articles / month) few years ago - it's trivial to bypass, naturally, clearing out cookies or using "porn mode" does the trick, but why bother, a simple ABP rule works. However, in doing so the comments are hidden as well. Most of the time this is entirely positive, but I guess I have some masochistic tendencies; when there's a really controversial (or bound to wake up the retards) topic, I sometimes like
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1.) Secure you vs. known malicious sites/servers (beyond malicious adbanners - see 2 thru 6 below next)
2.) Secure you vs. downed DNS servers aiding reliability
I run my own DNS server.
3.) Secure you vs. DNS redirect poisoned dns servers
See the answer to 2 above
4.) Protect you vs. fastflux using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their C&C servers
Yup. Don't install shit from unknown sources.
5.) Protect you vs. dynamic dns using botnet attacks and stop their communications back to their
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So if you hit a site that has 5-10 of your "blocked" sites, you have to parse that file each time, for each query. Talk about a waste of resources.
Also, my DNS box is doing more than just serving up dns requests. You still haven't shown me any kind of benchmark. Only your made up numbers and statistics.
Come on... Step up. Show me a single study that compares a million+ line host file against a single dns query for the same item.
As for adding complexity... Yah, I guess it does add some. Things that some
It's a different web without it (Score:3)
It's a different web without adblock, and it's not pretty one. It does more than just hide advertisements, it also reduces bandwidth usage considerably. I've been using adblock since I was stuck on dialup. It was critical to me back then to make pages load faster. Then I was on satellite and adblock helped keep me under my data allotment. On the rare occasion that I have to use a computer without it, I'm always taken back by how bad the web is with all the ads. According to some estimates, we're exposed to over 3000 marketing messages every day, on average. I'm all for anything that reduces that number, whatever it actually is. Every person that I show Adblock to, has been very, very happy with the results.
Adblock Plus selling advertising access to users (Score:4, Informative)
And the first piece of defense evidence? (Score:3)
A buggy whip.
Simply because a product threatens your business doesn't mean you are entitled to get it legislated out of existence.
AdBlock puts out a product that saves people bandwidth and filters out all sorts of noxious, potentially dangerous content.
However, there ARE ways around AdBlock. At the root of it, your ads simply CANNOT utilize any of the aforementioned noxious, potentially dangerous means to FORCE views.
If this breaks your business model?
Get a better fucking business model, as the one you're using now sucks.
Also, end users VOLUNTARILY install AdBlock. It isn't a default install anywhere. So these are people who have made a choice NOT to accept traffic from your crappy ad network. AdBlock didn't FORCE their product on ANYONE. Again, you don't have a right to force people to view your content.
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:5, Informative)
In reality, the French fought hard for 45 days and suffered over 350,000 casualties. France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell because Germany gained superiority in the air and through the use of highly mobile armored divisions.
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:5, Funny)
In reality, the French fought hard for 45 days and suffered over 350,000 casualties.
Was that a whole 45 days, including weekends and holidays?
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The United States suffered less than 1% of those casualties on Sept. 11th and more or less surrendered its freedom on the spot. Fuck off.
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You gest, but during WWI they actually had a Christmas truce in 1914 where the troops came out to play football [chroniclelive.co.uk]. No, the kind played with your feet. The commanders in chief were not amused. In WWII the Germans overran the trenches with armor, so there was no time for that sort of thing. The actual people in the trenches were pretty much the same, called to war because your country asks you to. Cannon fodder meats cannon fodder.
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:5, Funny)
That was quick. An article about ads devolved faster than anticipated. On /. We strive for excellence.
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. Then a large fraction of the government capitulated, formed a puppet government, and did the Nazis' bidding, including rounding up people for shipment to concentration camps. And in some cases, like in North Africa, fought (weakly) against the allies.
At the same time, the parts of the government and military that were caught in or escaped to England made themselves royal pains in the ass to the allies, posturing and playing politics to try to claim they were in charge of the government in abstentia, This greatly complicated the invasion planning and led to poor tactical decisions based on maintain the pride of strutting martinets like DeGaulle. This allowed the Germans to escape through the Falaise gap, for example, when they were otherwise going to be caught. This probably extended the war another 6 months.
The ultimate was in the 60s. DeGaulle demanded that all American tropps be removed from French soil. Lyndon Johnson asked him "does that include the 65000 that died lliberarting it*.
That's why we hate the French.
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I don't hate the french; I just find them amusing. I find the antics of De Gaulle during WWII absolutely hilarious, as in, Monty Python-esque funny. He would march down the Champs Elysees when he did virtually nothing in the immediate aftermath of D-Day to help liberate his own country. Even Montgomery, who himself was insufferable, found De Gualle insufferable.
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- Contrary to what you seem to think, as far as we're concerned you didn't really have to come save us, the war was already won by the Russians. (Although I do thank you for protecting us from them).
- Historically, French military fares rather well. I'm not even proud of it, it's just a fact.
- A lot could be said about the reasons for the rapidity of the German invasion in WWII, but cowardness of the soldiers wasn't such an important factor.
- This page should be about the future of ad-blocking, using it to
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:4, Insightful)
There was another huge contributor to The Fall of France. The french doctrine relied heavily of fortifications in the form of the Maginot Line [wikipedia.org]. It was an impressive installation and would have stopped the German army except for one major flaw; The main fortifications stopped at the Luxembourg border. The French Government did not want to isolate Luxembourg and Belgium. The German forces easily out flanked the static heavy defences.
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The French poured buckets of money into the Maginot line. The Germans just went around it. The Germans had tried the same end around in WW-I (though failed), so the lack of defense at the BeNeLux border was a costly strategic mistake. Hitler had it in for France because of the Treaty of Versailles, and even went so far to track down the rail car that the Treaty in Versailles was signed in, to rub Gallic noses into. Even the new tactics could be seen on their doorstep in the Spanish Civil War. The French s
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France had a population of only 40 million at the time, so I think it would be rather difficult to have that many casualties.
Re:Have the Germans threaten to invade (Score:5, Insightful)
A whole 45 days? 350,000 casualties?
Such effort.
The Soviet Union fought the Germans for more than four fucking years, suffering somewhere between 20 and 40 million casualties [wikipedia.org].
The Soviets were very proud of the fact that, having executed all of their competent commanders, they relied on brute-force meat-grinding in place of actual strategy. Make no mistake, it wasn't the Germans that killed all those Soviets; it was their generals and kommissars, sending them into needless suicide. And at the end of the day, they ended up killing as many Jews and enslaving half of Europe in place of the Nazi's.
Fuck the Soviets. It's their own fault. Next time don't trade oil for land to Nazis.
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As well as a complete and utter disdain for the lives of their own troops and civilians.
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german had a very good air and tank superiority
You are half right. Many of the French tanks were much better than the German Tanks and Allied tanks outnumbered the Germans 3 to 2. Many captured tanks were used in the German army. Here are a few factors that decreased their usefulness.
1. Organization. Though there were four of armoured divisions (Germany had 10) most French tanks were parcelled out to infantry divisions as support. This caused them to be spread out and unable to react to breakthroughs.
2. Too few radios. Only one in 5 French tanks had rad
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Read the "Liberation Trilogy" by Rich Atkinson. Brilliant work. The Americans had some good commanders and terrible ones. The Brits were hit or miss, but their men loved them in a way the yanks never could. The French generals hated everyone and each other, constantly vying for prestige and insulting the men whose help they needed. Even in defeat, they could not swallow their pride. But then, there were a number of British and American generals of whom the same could be said. Only the diplomatic genius of E
The anti-French jokes are on you (Score:5, Insightful)
The Anti-French sentiment stems from lingering inadequacy on the part of the Americans. France did not give the US the Statue of Liberty just because they thought the US was a bunch of really nice guys.
The American Revolution was a proxy war, by France against Britain. It was very similar in many respects to the Soviet-Afghan War, where the United States funneled arms and billions of dollars to the Afghanis. The French involvement in the American war was of a vastly greater scale.
The French supplied almost all of the gunpowder used through at least the first half of the war, almost all the cannon used throughout the war, tens of thousands of muskets, an army about the size of the Continental Army, military advisors, and vast amounts of money. In total they spent about a billion livres [wikipedia.org] and increased their national debt by a third. The ante-climactic battle [wikipedia.org] of the war involved a massive fleet engagement of French and British vessels and forced Gen. Cornwallis' surrender to the American forces. The Americans had no naval force worth mentioning (the description of a sixth-rate frigate as being "rough equivalent of half of a 64-gun ship of the line" [wikipedia.org] is hilarious), and it is difficult to overstate either the power of a massed group of warships or their impact on warfare. Considered from an objective perspective, the American Revolution was an important but not decisive campaign in what should be known as the Second Hundred Years' War [wikipedia.org].
Why did Americans turn against the French after the war? It's simple: they wanted to promote their own heroes, and the idea that they had won the war all by themselves. It's really embarrassing to have to teach your children that your country wouldn't exist except that it happened to be a bone of contention in someone else's scheme. Similarly, I spent quite a bit of time down in Panama this last year, and I met very few people who had any idea of the US involvement in the creation of that country. They make anti-gringo jokes pretty often too, and they're funny for the same reason that anti-French jokes are in the US, but in both cases the joke is on the one telling it.
Re:The anti-French jokes are on you (Score:4, Interesting)
Why did Americans turn against the French after the war? It's simple: they wanted to promote their own heroes, and the idea that they had won the war all by themselves. It's really embarrassing to have to teach your children that your country wouldn't exist except that it happened to be a bone of contention in someone else's scheme.
Since infancy, my schooling on the American War of Independence has stressed the important of American heroes such as de Lafayette and von Steuben, and their nationalities were by no means omitted. The American government may have turned against the French after the XYZ affair, but the French as a people remained an important cultural ally all the way up until the 60's. Being left holding the bag in French Indochina hurt a lot. Open mockery of France didn't really start until the first Gulf War, when it seemed like we were fighting a lot of French military equipment that Saddam wasn't supposed to have.
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Open mockery of France didn't really start until the first Gulf War
Rather earlier than that. Open mockery of the French has been an American thing since at least my parents' generation, probably longer. I remember it being common as a kid myself, before the Gulf War. You can see the baguette and cheese tropes in old silent films, even. It's true that the sentiment wasn't quite as negative as it was for Germans, though: French were at least considered civilized, unlike the Hun.
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Phobia? _Nobody_ is afraid of the french.
The frogs earned their mockery with their performance in WWII. That is all.
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Fat, stupid, the only culture they know is bacterial, always getting caught up in stupid wars.
Well, we put a fat, stupid flag on the moon with an overgrown firework and a slide rule, and even did a redneck repair on a fender with duct tape while we were there. Neener neener neener.
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France was the largest, richest, most populous, and most powerful country in Europe from about the 9th century to the 19th century.
Gustavus Adolphus and a whole line of dead Hapsburgs are rolling around in their grave right now.
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The HRE was not a country per se it was a confederation. Plus guess who helped break up the Habsburg dynasty. The Habsburgs had at one point the throne of Spain and today the rulers of Spain are from the Royal House of Bourbon. Guess where that dynasty comes from...
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Please make and publish software that can block your fucking posts?
Re: can't you just get working on something else (Score:2, Insightful)
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APK's posts aren't moderated down because people don't want others to know about the magic of hosts files. They're moderated down because they are spam.
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You visited their website without their prior consent, too.
Re:Well thankfully it's a French lawsuit... (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember not that long back...early to mid 90's when you rarely ever saw an advertisement.
People need to be reminded that the internet is supposed to basically be a large network, where anyone can connect and set up a peer computer/server and trade information. I wasn't set up for making $$. While business is extremely valid on the internet, that is not the primary reason for its creation, and hopefully...not for its continuance nor regulation.