[105265] in Cypherpunks
Re: Advertising Creepiness
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Declan McCullagh)
Mon Nov 9 09:26:04 1998
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 09:04:09 -0500
To: Steve Schear <schear@lvcm.com>, Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <v04003a05b26c50a4abc7@[24.1.50.17]>
Reply-To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
I didn't see Tim's original post, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see
such a right "emerge" in claims by media company lawyers. (Probably not the
advertisers.)
Something that came across our Reuters feed over the weekend is a lawsuit
by the whitehouse.com folks -- they're pissed that a new version of
Netscape has some "intelligent" guessing features that, when someone types
in "whitehouse," automatically take 'em to whitehouse.gov.
Which interferes with the rights of the whitehouse.com porn site, or so the
argument goes.
-Declan
At 12:00 AM 11-9-98 -0800, Steve Schear wrote:
>>I wonder if advertisers will try to cite some right to enjoin ad busters
>>from busting their ads? (Far-fetched, perhaps. But imagine if a particular
>>version of this filtering occurrred...imagine the howls if Microsoft
>>Explorer automatically filtered out the ads of companies it disliked or was
>>competing against? Legal? Restraint of trade?)
>
>They'll probably claim that the entire Web site feed (ads and all) are
>copyrighted and try to prevent purveyors of software or services which
>attempt to modify their copyright material and present it in a modified
>fashion without permission. TV broadcasters successfully used this tactic
>against taverns which inserted local ads during Monday Night Football.
>
>--Steve
>
