Watch out, because now your ISP will have the power to insert their own ads into the html streaming through their pipes.
Every single web site owner is affected by NebuAD's technology: whether a site is running ads or not makes no difference, Customers of any ISP evil enough to run NebuAD's platform are going to see ads on every page on every site; ads that don't benefit the content creator. It is important to note that these ads are NOT pop-ups, and this is not a free internet service; the ads are served as if they were part of the page, to paying internet customers who are NOT made aware that these ads have been inserted by their ISP.
Bleh. At least Nic has a possible solution — we should all go to encrypted web pages. I suppose another solution is to not give your business to an ISP that implements such an awful solution.
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This is actually a very old idea; I helped a friend set this kind of thing up at a hosting service's web proxy gateway, so that competitors' ads would be replaced.
It's not going to affect people who pay to host their sites - because we'll just pay to host someplace that doesn't pull that kind of sh*t on their customers. The people who are going to get festooned with ads are all the free-hosters. Like myspacers. Which brings up a question: is there any more real estate LEFT on myspace for ads?
Doesn't this violate some part of the DMCA? What they are essentially doing to modifying intellectual property for their commercial benefit.
Nuff Said? If the DMCA is going to be an 800 pound gorilla, then train the monkey to serve.
*yawn*
Hate to agree with Marcus on anything but he is right - this is a very old idea. Techniques used by this company are implemented in any basic proxy solution ...
One other note on this topic... The concept itself is rather old. Ever watch baseball on TV? See the ads on the boards in the outfield? Say there is an ad for a local restaurant on the backboard (say Murray's in Minneapolis - great steak - I have no idea - seeing a baseball game indoors is just -wrong-). That ad is meaningless in the San Francisco market since the restaurant doesn't exist there. So on tv - that ad is digitally replaced with something else. This was a "big controversy" a few years ago.
TV companies digitally replacing things? You'll be telling me next that the yellow lines on the football field showing where the first down marker is aren't really there!
I don't think that's correct - if I'm reading it correctly, the modification will insert/replace the ads at the client's ISP, not the host's.
PZ has the correct answer: if this ever becomes prevalent, web sites hosting ads (or otherwise care about such modifications) will be forced to switch to using https. That will completely defeat the modification. Actually, it wouldn't be such a bad thing just as long as there is a suitably cheap source of certs for the website owners to use...
Web pages are copyrighted material; inserting ads into them is creating a derivative work without permission from the copyright holder. Let's sue 'em.
Better yet, find out which ISP are doing this and what IP ranges they use, keep track of how many hits from those IPs you get, then send the ISPs a bill for hit-number times, oh, say $100 per-hit advertising fee. You would, of course, have to put up a notification on your site of a licensing agreement saying that you will charge for this before you start.
The people who are going to get festooned with ads are all the free-hosters.
You misunderstand. It is the viewer's ISP that is adding the the adverts. They take the datastream flowing from the internet to to their user's computers, and add adverts to it. All websites will be affected, regardless of how honest their webhosts are.
So on tv - that ad is digitally replaced with something else. This was a "big controversy" a few years ago.
The channels that air baseball matches are content providers. They make the programs, and they're perfectly entitled to show what they want. Modifying the background scenery may be deceitful, but noone's asking you to watch their broadcast; if you don't like it, you can switch it off.
ISPs on the other hand are content carriers. What they're doing is intercepting the works of others and then making modifications.
To expand on hyperdeath's clarification with a better, albeit not perfect, TV analogy...
It would be like if I had a radio transceiver in my yard and I was able to intercept television signals, add commercials into them (which I alone profit off of), then broadcast the altered signals to my neighbors. I'm sure television stations/networks/MLB would have no problems with that, right?
Why isn't everyone using ad-blocking software?
I use Ad-Block Plus on Firefox, and the amount of ads that get through are close to zero. I also use the Customize Google extension which allows me to remove ads from Google/Gmail/etc.
And as far as I know, there is no way advertisers can know that I'm doing this; the ads still get sent to my machine, but my browser doesn't display them. It's great!
I would love to have a filter that changed "to not" to the correct "not to" in absolutely everything I ever read. It drives me completely nuts whenever I see or hear it, and it's more and more often. I wish people could realise how incredibly stupid it makes them sound.
Nice pedantry, there.
I think the ad thing is the sort of thing you can block relatively easily with a decent HOSTS file; a guy named Mike Burgess compiles the one I use and it blocks a lot of ads very nicely. It's a little irritating that I get big blank spots on pages, now that Firefox is compliant with whatever standard it had been ignoring before, and if I actually want to click through, e.g., a Google ad after searching, I have to copy pasta the URL, but on the whole, it's pretty awesome. HOSTS files are good things.
Sounds like language change in action, so I suggest you get used to it instead of being proud of your word rage.
As long as they're not un-blockable, it's fine by me. Between AdBlock, TiVo, and satellite radio, I almost never see or hear ads anymore, anywhere.
And the yellow lines on the football field ARE real. You wouldn't believe how fast those guys can paint.
If you're running your own server, just redirect ISPs that do it to their own welcome page:
We're sorry, but your ISP sucks. Click here to send them a "You suck!" email. Click here to continue on to the site, but make sure you don't click on any of the ads on the left side.
No, jpf, it's more like "Imagine you bought a TV antenna from BobCo, and then BobCo started inserting commercials into the broadcasts you watch, without the knowledge or consent of the broadcasters. Now imagine that BobCo has a local monopoly on TV antennas, because they promised the city council a cheaper antenna rate for residents of your municipality (that they never delivered). You, good sir, are up shit creek."
This even sounds like a copyright violation. Believe me, there are some very uptight web designers and site owners that regard their web pages as works of art and/or fastidiously arranged content presentation. They bitch and twitch about differences between various browser renditions and stress out over 1 pixel distortions or anomalies (some of it quite justified, mind), so unanticipated content, the ads, with discordant color schemes and balance skewing obstructions will cause many lawsuits to fly, I am sure of it.
I am a veteran of web dev communities and some of these people are talking very large bucks spent in very competitive games of SEO and ROI (return on investment), and some of them are very anal about life in general to begin with. Wait till the shit hits the fan on this one!
Also, Think MicroSoft, or Google.
I totally agree mikmik. Having maintained a few sites, none of which were particularly pretty or well made, I would be majorly annoyed if someone came and plastered ads wherever they saw fit. All the sites I've been involved in have been non-commercial either for personal use or for academic purposes. Having spent the time, with my rather limited coding ability, to make a site that is (1) accessible and compliant and (2) looks like it wasn't made by a colour blind hedgehog, why should I have it destroyed by someone out for a quick buck?
And, yeah, I think there may be a few major sites/companies with large litigation budgets who'll be quite happy to take down an ISP or two...
OH yeah. People at a lot of major corporations are going to be reeeeeeally happy when they start getting phone calls about the porn ads on their homepage..
I just had a disturbing vision of a future where every router on the net inserted its own ads. It could crowd out the content pretty easily.
I'd like to program the wireless router at home to insert messages onto my brothers' computer. Would "Get your damn sneakers off the kitchen floor!" be too obvious?
Kseniya:
You could always set up your router to force proxy any http request from your brother through your own webservice.... (I'm almost sure there is an OSS proxy, alongide Apache)
Anyhooo.... I think I'd like that too... (not the sneakers, obviously)!
What a waste of bandwidth. Has anyone done the market research on this?
(I'm almost sure there is an OSS proxy, alongide Apache)
Folks here should know about it already. It's called Squid
I feel so stupid! I should have remembered THAT!
Those talking about ad-blocking and HOSTS files are missing the point here.
The disgruntled party isn't someone viewing the ads (well, they may be disgruntled, but it's their fault for using a sleazy ISP); the real disgruntled party is someone whose copyrighted work is being sold to advertisers without their permission, making money for the ISPs but none for the producer of the copyrighted work. The copyright holder can't ad-block that, apart from, as suggested above, redirecting all traffic from such ISPs away from their site.
This isn't about being anal over one's precious layout. It's about being financially compensated for one's work and having the right to control the commercial use of it.
Those who would do this -- the ISPs, the advertising firms, and the companies buying the advertising -- would be just as strongly opposed if someone were to do something similar with their intellectual property. You can be damned sure there would be lawyers involved. So they deserve all the animus they will get.
I'd like to see the advertisers facing a backlash for choosing to place their ads in such in such an unethical fashion.
Don't know if it'll happen, but if my ISP did that to me I'd look at the ads and make a mental note to boycott them---and a bunch of non-mental notes, one to each company, saying I am disgusted that they'd support such a practice and have no intention of using their services.
Now, imagine that happened with half the people served by an ISP . . .
Sounds like language change in action, so I suggest you get used to it instead of being proud of your word rage.