[8473] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: Kill Interspersed Commercials (was Re: KidCode: Next steps)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Darren New)
Sun Jun 25 14:25:41 1995
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 08:59:37 +0100
From: Darren New <dnew@sgf.fv.com>
Reply-To: Darren New <dnew@sgf.fv.com>
To: Terje Norderhaug <Norderhaug.CHI@xerox.com>
Cc: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@nsb.fv.com>, Wes Morgan <morgan@engr.uky.edu>,
www-talk@www10.w3.org
In-Reply-To: <ac0bd5f60a0210042073@[130.191.9.113]>
> Guess we are ready for a surprise when somebody combines these...
> An adult site with interspersed commercials might have quite some interest
> in getting visitors.
I don't imagine anyone's going to sell Power Ranger dolls on the playboy
pages. Anyone advertising on an adult site is likely to be selling adult
stuff. If nothing else, minors have relatively low incomes.
> It is the same problem that any group has that want to avoid specific
> content.
Unless the authors label their content.
> However, they arent the problem.
OK.
> The combination of individuals that propose ads to avoid, and a
> clearinghouse for approving which to avoid, might solve this.
And I expect such things will be very open to lawsuits of all kinds.
It'll be fascinating to see what happens if someone ever starts this.
Since I don't want to be in that kind of business, I'm not going to
persue talking about it in relation to KidCode.
> I do, and the main reason is not that the interspersed ad is irritating. I
> don't want another medium with "50 channels and nothing on", as have been
> the result of an advertisement based revenue model on commercial
> television.
Me too. But I'm going about it by making it worthwhile for people to put
up information and get paid for the value of it without having to
advertise. I think the web is plenty big enough that it'll take care of
itself, advertised or not. Since it's *possible* to not need advertising
to pay the rent (so to speak), I think evolution will take care of
"junk".
> Well, I have seen several ads in popular search engines. The ads are
> not related to what I am looking at. (However, it wouldn't be that hard to
> implement the engine so it gives you an ad that match your search ;-)
> Just having documents on the web that relates to things you can buy would
> be somewhat constrained. Suddenly, the main purpose of the Web became to
> sell you things... not information.
You are acting like the addition of advertising to the web is going to
make everything that's already there go away. Newsgroups didn't kill
email, HTTP didn't kill FTP, and Prodigy didn't kill the Internet. Every
time someone adds something, the web gets *bigger*. Nothing bumps
something else out.
> Paying to fetch would be an improvement, due to being the consumer rather
> than the product!
OK. So what are *you* doing to actually help that situation? ;-)
> Agree, and this limits the number of items needed for a "blacklist" of
> pages with interspersed ads.
I think you're very confused here, myself, but I don't know that I'm
going to be able to clear it up.
> I was thinking about decentralize towards the readers, not the author.
But you're not proposing to have the reader have control. You're
proposing some third-party that keeps a blacklist. Your mechanism doesn't
work without at least three people in the picture.
> >You're trying to solve a different problem than I am.
> Yes. However, they intersects to some degree.
Not enough to matter, methinks. You're trying to blacklist people who
don't want to be blacklisted. I'm trying to make it possible for people
to simply and conveniently label stuff.
> >My concern is > >"how do I get rid of censorship."
> My concern is "how do I get only the information I want in the way I want it".
Then KidCode isn't going to do what you want.
> Hopefully no US kids below 5 read this :-) The suggestion is meant to be
> taken seriously - and it appears to be usable within your KidCode framework
> as well.
> (just encrypt the dirty words if you're afraid anyone will se them ;-)
My point is that 99.44% of everything out there is either
"adult-oriented" (dirty pictures) or "kid-oriented" (toys) or neutral
(Stereo speaker reviews). The people putting up the dirty pictures are
currently the only ones in the US that have to worry about this, and
therefore that's what I address.
> Parents might fill in a form that defines what is appropriate for their kids.
I think you've missed my point. If a parent says "No murder for my kid"
and someone puts up a web page that you didn't rate with graphic murder
scenes and the kid has an emotional trauma, are you the one going to be
paying the psychologists bills, pain and suffering, and the losing
party's attourny fees?
> Are you afraid to meet an advertiser after dark? :-)
Not at all. First Virtual never proposed to be the only payment system on
the internet, let alone the only way of paying for some sort of access.
You're still missing a very important point: adding information to the
net does not squeeze out other information. I don't see any need to
support censorship of sites that have ads. If their content is insipid,
people will look elsewhere. There *are* alternatives on the net, unlike
broadcast TV. --Darren
