OT: Adblock, free software that deletes ads from web sites

[BrennerNY@xxxxxxxx]

       Here's a story from yesterday's NYTimes that may be of general interest. (See below).

       Lynn Brenner

       718 855 2179



September 3, 2007

Link by Link

Whiting Out the Ads, but at What Cost?



By http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/noam_cohen/index.html?inline=nyt-perNOAM COHEN

    MORE white space.



I sent an e-mail message to a friend telling him about Adblock Plus,an easy-to-use free addition to the Firefox Internet browser thatdeletes advertisements from Web sites. That subject line of his replysummed it up quite nicely.



What happens when the advertisements are wiped clean from a Website? There is a contented feeling similar to what happens when youwatch a recorded half-hour network TV show on DVD in 22 minutes, orwhen a blizzard hits Times Square and for a few hours, the streets arequiet and unhurried, until the plows come to clear away all that whitespace.



 But when a blizzard hits Times Square, the news reports will focuson the millions of dollars of business lost, not the cross-countryskiing opportunities gained. 



Likewise, in the larger scheme of things, Adblock Plus — while stilla niche product for a niche browser — is potentially a huge developmentin the online world, and not because it simplifies Web sites clutteredwith advertisements.



The larger importance of Adblock is its potential for extreme menaceto the online-advertising business model. After an installation thattakes but a minute or two, Adblock usually makes all commercialcommunication disappear. No flashing whack-a-mole banners. No http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/google_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-orgGoogle ads based on the search terms you have entered.



 From that perspective, the program is an unwelcome arrival afteryears of worry that there might never be an online advertising businessmodel to support the expense of creating entertainment programming orjournalism, or sophisticated search engines, for that matter. 



For now, however, the big players have decided to ignore the phenomenon. Neither Google nor http://cnn.com/CNN.com, for example, would comment on ad-blocking programs, which can also be added to http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/microsoft_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-orgMicrosoft’sInternet Explorer 7. (The Internet Explorer add-ons are not necessarilyfree and do not necessarily work as seamlessly as Adblock Plus workingwith the open-source Firefox browser.)



 Wladimir Palant, developer of the open-source Adblock Plus project,wrote in an e-mail message that he had not heard anything from largecompanies like Google, because, he suspects, the program “isn’t popularenough yet. Attacking it would be a waste of time for these companies.”He estimated there were 2.5 million users of Adblock Plus around theworld. 



“The numbers are rising steadily,” he wrote, adding that his figuresdo not “show exponential growth any more (luckily, the server haslimited traffic), but there are still 300,000 to 400,000 new users eachmonth.”



Mr. Palant, a 27-year-old programmer in Cologne, Germany, is not anideological opponent of online advertising. For example, he countshimself a fan of the ads that show up with a Google search, saying theyare useful and unobtrusive. That does not mean Adblock will not blockGoogle’s ads, however. It means Mr. Palant has to customize his ownversion of the program to allow them in.



But if enough people rally to Adblock and similar services, they could be considered the http://www.nytimes.com/mem/MWredirect.html?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=TIVOTiVofor the computer, but without any expensive equipment or servicecharges. And perhaps most critically, as an open-source project,Adblock is the hands of anyone who wants to contribute. So no one candecide to make a deal with prominent Web sites to change the way theprogram operates. (As things turned out, TiVo and a rival, ReplayTV,opted not to include an automatic service to skip ads after vociferousobjections by the television industry.)



For now, the opposition to Adblock Plus has been led by small Websites who want all Firefox users blocked from Internet sites inretaliation. One such advocacy site, http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/whyfirefoxisblocked.com,taunts a Firefox user with the headline, “You’ve reached this pagebecause the site you were trying to visit now blocks the Firefoxbrowser.”



The page includes the following argument: “While blanket ad blockingin general is still theft, the real problem is Adblock Plus’sunwillingness to allow individual site owners the freedom to blockpeople using their plug-in. Blocking Firefox is the only alternative.”



Mr. Palant, writing on a blog related to the project (http://adblockplus.org/blogadblockplus.org/blog/), lashed out at those kinds of arguments. 



“There is only one reliable way to make sure your ads aren’t blocked— make sure the users don’t want to block them,” he wrote. “Don’tforget about the users. Use ads in a way that doesn’t degrade theirexperience.”



For now, these issues will be debated on the fringes of theInternet. The first stage of a corporate response would betechnological, not legal, said Randal C. Picker, a law professor at thehttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_chicago/index.html?inline=nyt-orgUniversity of Chicagowho has studied the copyright issues related to TiVo. Televisionnetworks could not change their signals to thwart TiVo the way Websites can use technology to complicate the process of filtering outads, he said.



 One response by Web sites would be for them “to serve ads fromtheir own servers,” Mr. Palant wrote in an e-mail message. “For them,this has the advantage that they will probably escape common filterrules, which are usually targeted at large advertising servers.”



 He said, however, that “the most annoying ads usually find their way to popular filter lists.” 



The only large player willing to comment was Microsoft, which is inan interesting position: it produces the dominant browser that is beingchallenged by Firefox, but it is also in the online ad business throughits MSN portal and search functions.



In a statement, Microsoft spoke of its success in permittingthird-party developers to “add value to the browser experience throughthe creation of add-ons.” The statement continues: “The range ofadd-ons available does include ad blocking software. It would not beappropriate for Microsoft to comment on the merits or demerits of aspecific add-on, or group of add-ons. Provided they have not beendesigned with malicious intent and do not compromise a user’s privacyor security, Microsoft is pleased to see new add-ons that add to therange of options that users have for customizing their browsingexperience.”



It’s nice of Microsoft to recognize that there will always be peoplewho delight in the white space. Given the decentralized nature of theInternet, the user’s experience has to come first — for now.








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