Augh, stop saying Big Brother!! While I agree with your post, that phrase has been so overused by tin-foil hat nutjobs and teenagers that it's completely lost credibility.
As for the article above - well, good! Glad to see people are growing conscious of privacy concerns. If the government had real validity in their claims, surely someone would explain the snooping process in more detail to the U.S. citizenry, or at least provide a smidgen of transparency beyond the current state of affairs.
Alternatively, just about every artist signed to Bandcamp ever.
Hell, half the reason people pirate is because of how stupidly difficult buying off of Amazon or similar services can be. People like to hear the music, in full, over and over again, before purchasing full quality for portable listening. That's just how it goes, and artists (and labels) should learn to respect that.
Mozilla is a great company. Period. They've done so much for the case of user rights and privacy, and I'm pissed off that some corporate slime feels the need to fork their best product and masquerade as legitimate Mozilla software.
Now Google, on the other hand, didn't make too big a stink when the SWIron browser was placed on browserchoice.eu. And that platform is KNOWN adware/scareware. Hopefully Mozilla doesn't get beleaguered with illegitimate forks and end up apathetic like its primary competitor...
There is one point of marketing you might be forgetting during all this (and something I didn't notice until now). Namely, that native advertising cannot be blocked from the end-user through traditional means.
For example, the sponsored resource on the top right of the page is not counted as an external resource, and therefore becomes far more difficult to set up a HOSTS file for. Services such as NoScript or AdBlock fall flat here unless they provide very specific rulesets to combat the deeply-imbedded advertisements.
Overall, this is terrible news for the consumer due to this specific issue. They are being forced to view an advertisement with very little way of blocking it, sans preventing the node from loading altogether. I'm sorry Techdirt, but while your articles are normally wonderful,
this one is not justification for depriving user-choice.
Until adverts cease being such a point of distribution for malicious code, and until they stop being based off of an IP's prior history and thus violating user privacy, I will not back down from using extensions and third-party cookie blocking to keep them out of sight and out of mind.
There is already a good alternative to advertising: namely, donations. Many sites have thrown away the antiquated business model of profiting from user-frustration, and instead serve only their own plea for money directly from their readership. Chances are, with at least 1 in 50 independent legal adults who read a site regularly and enjoy its content, there will be enough cumulative donations enough to keep it afloat. This is tougher for news sources who hire journalists, since they obviously need to pay those individuals, but is viable for a number of hosting purposes and can keep independent/volunteer services afloat.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Landpaddle.
Re:
Augh, stop saying Big Brother!! While I agree with your post, that phrase has been so overused by tin-foil hat nutjobs and teenagers that it's completely lost credibility.
As for the article above - well, good! Glad to see people are growing conscious of privacy concerns. If the government had real validity in their claims, surely someone would explain the snooping process in more detail to the U.S. citizenry, or at least provide a smidgen of transparency beyond the current state of affairs.
Re: Re: Opposite game
Alternatively, just about every artist signed to Bandcamp ever.
Hell, half the reason people pirate is because of how stupidly difficult buying off of Amazon or similar services can be. People like to hear the music, in full, over and over again, before purchasing full quality for portable listening. That's just how it goes, and artists (and labels) should learn to respect that.
Incredibly aggravating
Mozilla is a great company. Period. They've done so much for the case of user rights and privacy, and I'm pissed off that some corporate slime feels the need to fork their best product and masquerade as legitimate Mozilla software.
Now Google, on the other hand, didn't make too big a stink when the SWIron browser was placed on browserchoice.eu. And that platform is KNOWN adware/scareware. Hopefully Mozilla doesn't get beleaguered with illegitimate forks and end up apathetic like its primary competitor...
Re: Sales
There is one point of marketing you might be forgetting during all this (and something I didn't notice until now). Namely, that native advertising cannot be blocked from the end-user through traditional means.
For example, the sponsored resource on the top right of the page is not counted as an external resource, and therefore becomes far more difficult to set up a HOSTS file for. Services such as NoScript or AdBlock fall flat here unless they provide very specific rulesets to combat the deeply-imbedded advertisements.
Overall, this is terrible news for the consumer due to this specific issue. They are being forced to view an advertisement with very little way of blocking it, sans preventing the node from loading altogether. I'm sorry Techdirt, but while your articles are normally wonderful,
this one is not justification for depriving user-choice.
Until adverts cease being such a point of distribution for malicious code, and until they stop being based off of an IP's prior history and thus violating user privacy, I will not back down from using extensions and third-party cookie blocking to keep them out of sight and out of mind.
There is already a good alternative to advertising: namely, donations. Many sites have thrown away the antiquated business model of profiting from user-frustration, and instead serve only their own plea for money directly from their readership. Chances are, with at least 1 in 50 independent legal adults who read a site regularly and enjoy its content, there will be enough cumulative donations enough to keep it afloat. This is tougher for news sources who hire journalists, since they obviously need to pay those individuals, but is viable for a number of hosting purposes and can keep independent/volunteer services afloat.