Sacre block! French publishers to sue Adblock maker – report French publishers are reportedly planning to sue Eyeo, the makers of AdBlock Plus, over the upstart's practice of charging money to allow online adverts to pass through its filter software. According to L'Echos, the lawsuit is being considered by the French Internet Advertising Bureau and GESTE, a French publishers and content …
If web sites had to charge for use they, and we, would find out how much consumers really value what they publish. Many of those annoying add pushing sites would surely fail.
Rupert is a bit less than forthcoming about how much his various news sites actually get in subscriptions and news is pretty popular. Others may well fare worse.
If all the sites which are supported by ads, go down, you'll come to know their value as a collective.
Concerning the article, it's just the snooping habits of the tech behind these ads that people are scared of. And if ad blockers are adapting "Pay for Play", they are breaching our trust and open source ethics. Let your algorithm decide the fittest for a reasonable playing field for the publishers.
@ solo. No, it's not "just the snooping habits" that I object to. A large chunk of my ire is directed at the balal ads, the intrusive and downright rude animated ads (no better than little johnny leaping up and down, yelling, to get noticed and, sadly even served up on El Reg, for shame. ). Its the mindless crap from Amazon (you bought a widget. Here's a targetted ad for another one). Its the lying gits saying things like "you have a new message". Its the special offers that are anything but. Its the popup/over/under ads. Its the relentless celebrity drivel inspired ads.
Attention French Ad pushers (and anyone else embarking on an ad campaign). You don't like people's reaction to the crass, the dumb, the stupid and the rude? Stop doing it. It seems to escape some people's realisation that, if you serve up shit, you get treated like you serve shit. Grow up and start acting like you care instead of going for the lowest common demominator. Simples.
All that is aside from the obvious security weakness of a compromised ad server as has, I understand, been recently slightly in the news.
I do, however, agree with your point that "if ad blockers are adapting "Pay for Play", they are breaching our trust and open source ethics". Quite. With control of what AdBlock allows passing out of our hands, it is in danger of becoming itself just as guilty.
@inventor of....
Yes Yes Yes, I have no problem with static ads. I even click on some of them from time to time, to pay my "dues".
But I don't get advertising that turns a web page into a swamp of flashing lights, sliding banners, unfeasable offers and so forth. It just makes the sites unusable. So Adblock Edge it is.
I assume there must be a tribe of idiots that spend money based on this sh*t. But even they can't really think they're the 10,000th person to look at that banner every time they see it. Can they?
And how often do they really feel tempted to see their friends naked? ( especially since I doubt very much that they will).
I just don't understand how the bastards that spawn this stuff make their money. Or who from.
"...And how often do they really feel tempted to see their friends naked?.."
As a 65-yr old whose circle of friends is generally aged roughly the same, just the thought was enough to put me off my cocoa & chocolate hob-nob.
Earlier warning of such suggestions would be in order...
> I do, however, agree with your point that "if ad blockers are adapting "Pay for Play", they are breaching our trust and open source ethics".
I noticed ages ago that there was an option in ABP to deny/allow "certain unintrusive ads"
Being a cantakerous bastard I immediately set it to deny. Others may not have, but the option is still there.
ABP and others need to get revenue from somewhere if only to keep the lights on and software users are notorious for not wanting to toss a few pesos in the developer's direction.
"Being a cantakerous bastard I immediately set it to deny. Others may not have, but the option is still there."
FWIW, I left that option ticked to "allow some unintrusive advertising" and I can't say I've noticed any flashing, bouncing, things happening. Whether that means they allow some paid ads through or have some way of allowing plain and simple ads through I can't say, but it does seem to be a reasonable balance between blocking all ads and allowing all ads. Of course, I also have flashblock running too.
Unfortunately for El Reg, I don't recall seeing any ads other than a couple of weeks ago when I visited with a new install without protection and got my eyes and ears blasted with pop-up, full-on live video stream ads and all sorts of other crap which, on a Linux install of Firefox managed to hide the article in a way that it was actually impossible to read the article.
>mindless crap from Amazon (you bought a widget. Here's a targetted ad for another one)
I recently bought a long handled pop riveter and indeed when logged in get told people who bought such and such a pop riveter also bought these different ones. What a load of baloney, if not downright lies. How many pop riveters does a man need? Hey, it's not as if they're pliers.
If web sites had to charge for use they, and we, would find out how much consumers really value what they publish. Many of those annoying add pushing sites would surely fail.
One of the biggest frustrations about the internet these days for me is I'll find a few links to articles that sound interesting and right up my street I'll load them and it'll be a webpage plastered with adverts and the name of the article then click next to see the next bit of the article and it is just one big slideshow with annoying adverts on every page.
I don't mind adverts I understand websites need them to survive, but when 75% of the content on a page is trying to track my movements and plaster adverts in my face and only 25% is content and I have to go through a gauntlet to read all the content I clicked on the article for it is really annoying. Sadly though more and more websites seem to be following this formula. Ironic that our computers and internet connections are fast enough to have a lot of rich content all on one page, so what do they do? carve it up and put flash adverts everywhere.. Now where did I put that hosts file.
https://ie.microsoft.com is untrusted so I clicked 'get me out of here'
The certificate is only valid for the following names: *.azurewebsites.net, *.scm.azurewebsites.net, *.azure-mobile.net, *.scm.azure-mobile.net
For the company they proclaim to be or at least once were, its a joke they cant even do that properly.
How does it work exactly anyway?
Ads on websites annoy me. I associate the service/product they are selling with annoyance and dislike and I am unlikely to ever want to buy it.
Some websites have ads that force you to watch them by imposing them over the top of the web page content. I don't use those sites anymore.
Like watching a TV Program and the adverts are not left until commercial breaks, instead they are played over the top of the programme while its on air!
Ye Gods, even been caught out a couple of times from SOURCEFORGE! Got a toolbar when I wanted a nifty bit of s/w. Who'd a thunk it...(I think we've all been there at least once...)
HEY! Cunning Plan! A competition by El-Reg.
1) take a 'sacrificial' computer. Use that thus:
2) everytime you're offered another free toolbar, ACCEPT it.
Winner is the first commentard who can display a screenshot of a browser so full of toolbars, it's impossible to see *any* content on a page....
(I'd have spruced up this post a bit, but <marquee> isn't in the allowed HTML....
It's the familiar tale of the golden rule. In this case, gold = key.
(At least most all of those pesky ads get blocked. Or many of them ... well, at least some of them ... ?)
Perhaps a golden idea for the Adblock maker would be a "Gold Edition" of AdBlock Plus ... which is a subscription version that does block all those pesky ads, regardless.
Bidding war, anyone? They'll counter the Gold Edition subscription fee base, and pay a premium so their ad content punches through ... oh, drat! AdBlock PLATINUM appears in the offing!
@Gray: version that does block all those pesky ads, regardless.
There is a checkbox in AdBlock Plus that is labelled "Allow some unobtrusive ads" or some such. I presume it is related to those paying advertisers. IIRC, it is checked by default. I always uncheck it. Between AB+ and Ghostery (and a long /etc/hosts) I never see 3rd party ads on the internet.
That sound like a badly written BBC call to the resistance c. 1943.
Pour ceux qui parle Francais:
http://www.lesechos.fr/tech-medias/medias/0203983694287-les-editeurs-francais-prets-a-poursuivre-en-justice-les-bloqueurs-de-publicite-1070602.php
Apparently moves are afoot in Germany to do the same thing so the French appear to be following up:
My regimental motto in France was;
"Cry ribbet and let slip the frogs of war" a quote from the well known French writer Guillaume Tremblerlance .
@Neoc: Yes, indeed, it should. But the general standard of French in the sub-headlines on this august site is, um, not as high as it could be (see yesterday's howler: "Vous etes ayant un rire, n'est-ce pas?", a word-for-word-ism of "you're having a laugh" plus the standard French tag-question finisher "n'est-ce pas", but complete gibberish in French. It should, of course be something like "Vous déconnez, n'est-ce pas?" or maybe "Vous plaisantez, n'est-ce pas?" if you want to be less casual.)
(Spending nearly six years in France tends to make English-to-French literalisms extremely hard to read...)
'French publishers are reportedly planning to sue Eyeo, the makers of AdBlock Plus, over the upstart's practice of charging money to allow online adverts to pass through its filter software.'
I didn't know ABP did this and I have to say it surprises and saddens me that what I thought was a useful and clever utility is taking the money route. I want an ad-blocker to block ads, especially from multinational advertisers who can afford to throw money around with abandon (Google, for instance). An ad-blocker that doesn't block all ads is something else entirely.
I agree, this is the first I've heard of this practice as well. Anyone know of a competing Ad Blocker? Probably time for a change. Just how at first everyone viewed Google as way to escape from the evil Microsoft, now more and more of us are pushing Google further and further away because of their evil.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised, the makers of Ad Block Plus want to get paid and the idea was probably too tempting to resist, but it is disappointing nonetheless. I'd rather they hit everyone up for a buck or two - I have no problem paying for something I find value in, but I insist on a transparent transaction. Enough with the "free" stuff that isn't free except to people who don't value their privacy.
Good Lord - maybe this is Google's long term strategy; fragment AdBlock until you wind up with AdBlock plus, AdBlock Edge, AdBlock Pure, AdBlock Super ad infinitum and no one knows which one is best to install and the coding talent is diluted between dozens of competing efforts.
Anyone know of a competing Ad Blocker?
Try Privoxy. An ad-blocking proxy server is a bit more fiddly to install than ABP, but it blocks ads everywhere, including Chrome, IE, email etc. You can also set up a single proxy server for your entire network, so ads don't even get across the threshold.
My initial reaction too, but having investigated I'm happy to keep using it.
https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
This seems a reasonable policy : I stay in control, but the default is to block the distracting and annoying stuff.
The only thing that article doesn't cover is charging - in fact, it states "no one can buy their way onto the whitelist". Perhaps there's an 'admin charge'.
> The only thing that article doesn't cover is charging
They seem to be on a morally/legally dangerous path. First they develop a tool that promises to block ads; then they try to collect money from advertisers to nevertheless let the ads through; next they will try to collect money from users for really blocking the ads they initially promised to; then they'll try to collect yet more money from advertisers to really let through the ads they've already paid to be let through ... and so on.
Eventually, I expect, the lawyers will do rather well out of it, but everyone else with lose out.
Also, I don't just use an ad blocker because I find ads annoying (which I surely do), I also use one because I know that ads aren't typically served by the site that's displaying them and are, at best a privacy intrusion and at worst a potential security risk if the ad server is compromised.
If my ad blocker doesn't block ads because its makers saw fit to accept money to allow ads through then it's time to start looking for a new ad blocker.
Nahhhh. Keep that one and just untick the allow option, download noscript.
It is interesting to note that Adblock Plus has 5 million active users in France and some of the people behind advertising in Germany have lodged formal complaints over adblockers. I assume the advertising industry who polute our eyesight night and day, are going to use this as a test case for elsewhere due to the high percentage of adoption by French users.
Personally I believe that I have the right to see what I want and I do not want a pile of rubbish stealing electricity and processing power on my watch.
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Do you have those huge LED billboards yet? Have you seen what they've done to Times Square? Of course, Google has to have the "world's largest billboard." A hacking crew that took out the power grid might be doing us all a favor.
Google Glass with AdBlocker. Now that's a gadget I'd consider.
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