and not fulfilling your half of the bargain in letting them deliver the ads
to you.
You had me up until this bit. When I go to a website, I am not engaging in any
sort of bargain with the webmaster. I never negotiate what I will do or demand
what I will get from them. There is no agreement that I explicitly agree to
saying I will look at their ads. If there was such a EULA on a website, I would
quickly opt out and not go to their site.
Some of the youngsters on /. may not remember this, but there was a time when
there were no advertisements on the web. Somehow, people still found a way to
afford to publish their sites. In the unlikely case that all advertisements on
the web were to suddenly stop paying off, the web would still exist. The
advertisers, and even the publishers of web content do not have some sort or
god-given right to make a profit. And we, the web users, do not have any
requirement to provide these people with profits.
As to your stealing soliloquy, come on. What has been stolen? Did I break into
someone's house and remove the ad profit from them? No. There is no physical
thing that they have lost. They lost a potential profit. A profit that they are
not entitled to. They can not demand that that I look at an ad, or download
one. If they want to force people to pay for their web page, then they need to
ask them for money. The subscription model has worked for a long time.
It's like saying that you are stealing from Walmart if you walk into their
store and you don't buy anything. In this scenario, they may want you to buy
their crap. Their whole business model is predicated upon people buying their
crap. And you are using their employees' time, taking up valuable parking real
estate, and a whole host of other expenses. Their costs are the same regardless
of how many people come into the store. But since you did not buy anything, you
have stolen from them more egregiously than any mp3 copying, EULA violating,
device unlocking pirates. Right?
Costs me money too
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 11, @01:53PM (#20557671)
Adverts on a web page are sent to my browser as links, which my browser must in
turn request from the appropriate server.
This means that each advert on a page causes my computer to actively send and
then receive additional data.
This results in real additional bandwidth usage on my part.
If I am using any kind of metered access, or even if I am using unmetered
access but with one of the major ISP's who arbitrarily enforce unofficial
bandwith caps, then I incur a real cost for viewing that advert.
So, me configuring my computer to not waste resources in that way is no more
immoral than the web site configuring their page such that viewing the
advertisements makes use of my resources.
a better mantra
(Score:5, Insightful)
by sdedeo (683762) on Tuesday September 11, @01:18PM (#20556917)
"Your business model is not my problem"
Re:a better mantra
(Score:5, Funny)
by SCHecklerX (229973) on Tuesday September 11, @01:32PM (#20557205)
(http://freefall.homeip.net/)
Somebody should make a t-shirt with that. I like it. We can advertise it with
web advertisements!
o
Re:a better mantra
(Score:5, Funny)
by mcmonkey (96054) on Tuesday September 11, @01:43PM (#20557405)
(http://www.evolt.org/)
"Your business model is not my problem".
Forget the t-shirts, it should be stamped on every MBA diploma and integrated
into every word processor. Finally Clippy has found his purpose!
"It looks you are making a business plan. You do realize no one is obligated to
behave in the manner required to make your business profitable, right?"
Re:Oh boo hoo
(Score:5, Informative)
by SatanicPuppy (611928) * on Tuesday September 11, @01:28PM (#20557141)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 19, @06:12PM)
It's not just about "offensive" ads...It's ads that slow down your goddamn page
loads, because the page waits for the massively overloaded ad server to finish
loading its ad before the rest of the content pops up. Screw that.
I block ads from most big banner providers because I hate them. For sites that
depend on that revenue I tend to buy their stuff, or subscribe, or donate, or
whatever.
For small providers or people who host their own ads? I don't block 'em.
They're usually not as annoying to me as the interminable "Punch the Monkey to
Win an XBox/iPod/Whore" ads and I don't mind giving them my business. Hell, to
use an over-wrought example, look at Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com]...They put
thought into the ads they choose to host, and the ads are relevant and
informative to the people who frequent their site.