Blocking the ad may be considered illegal.
Guess I'm breaking the law then.
As I've always said, if you want people to not block your ads, try not making your ads annoying. I started using ad blockers because of ads that would pop up, follow the mouse cursor, have no way to be closed, play sound, slow down the system etc. About the only form of ads I don't mind are the kind on this board, assuming it's showing the plain text links and not the BIG FUCKING TEXT this time.
"We don't want to go down a route that would seem adversarial at all," Zaneis said. "People are free to ignore ads, and they often do that, but when you have a third party blocking those ads, that's the real problem."
And just how are we free to ignore ads that scream, bounce around, bog down the system, and won't go the fuck away?
TV commercials are possibly the worst type of ad, save for adware, because...
-They can't be skipped, unless you're watching something pre-recorded, in which case you can speed them up but you still have to pay attention to see when they end.
-About 90% of the time, they're much, much louder than the actual show.
-They get more and more plentiful over time, eventually to the point where scenes are cut from the show itself to fit them, often at the expense of a joke or two.
-Some of them actually pop up OVER TOP OF THE SHOW ITSELF and have sound that drowns out the show's dialogue. These are, in almost every case, placed just such that they cover/drown out something important. These have also been gradually growing. I estimate we'll be seeing them cover the entire screen by next summer.
They're like having popups appear while you're reading something, cover the screen, and not be closeable for 5 minutes or so. >:[
I follow a simple rule when it comes to advertising: Don't buy from people who try to annoy me into buying things. It works nicely.
Oh yeah, and a
related link. "An invention from Royal Philips Electronics prevents TV viewers from switching the channel during commercials or fast-forwarding past commercials when watching DVR content.
Viewers would be released from the freeze only after paying a fee to the broadcaster. The freeze would be implemented on a program-by-program basis, giving viewers a choice at the start of each one."
Particularly good quote:
So, why then, would a television manufacturer risk angering its consumer base? Philips says: Don't shoot the inventor.
With this technology, it was the company's intention to develop a new paradigm for the watching of on-demand television, not to force people to watch commercials, said Caroline Kamerbeek, communications director for Philips International.
But according to Philips' U.S. Patent No. 20060070095, the apparatus would do just that. The device:
"1) prevents a viewer of a direct (nonrecorded) broadcast from switching channels when an advertisement is displayed and (2) prevents a viewer of a recorded program from fast-forwarding the recorded program in order to skip past advertisements that were recorded with the program. A viewer may either watch the advertisements or pay a fee in order to be able to change channels or fast-forward when the advertisements are being displayed."
DRM at its finest. Sounds like I won't be buying from Philips anymore.
One of the comments points out something nice too: Channel surfing. You flip to a channel and whoops there's an ad playing, now you're forced to watch it even though you weren't watching the show.
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