Re: Interesting Twist to BANNER ADVERTISING

From: David McKnight <David_at_McKnight.net>
Date: Tue 04 Jan 2000 17:06:53 -0800

FRED WROTE:
> You may remember my comments recently about a "Robot
> that Clicks" on banner ads for you. Well, during that
> development we've come upon another interesting bit of
> coding genious that we just had to jump on right away.
> I'm posting it here to see if anyone on this list
> thinks it's interesting or worth the trouble to code.

TO WHICH HUGH SMITH REPLIED:
> Your idea to pre-empt national banner ads and replace
> them with local ads is creative, but I am not sure
> legal. Typically, someone is paying to have their ads
> displayed. If an ad agency, for example, billed a
> client for an ad that was not actually displayed, could
> your actions be construed as a theft of service? I
> don't know; I'm not a lawyer or expert on the net. But,
> if it was me, I'd want to be very certain before I
> engaged in this activity.

This would not be theft, but it would clearly be a
copyright violation if you did not have an agreement
with the content holder to alter the page that was
being served.

Violation of copyright law provides for the awarding of
treble damages -- which could mean *three times* the
value of the banner (or possibly even the value of the
entire page) to the site from which you removed it. It
might also mean three times the cost of the banner to
the advertiser. Don't even consider doing this unless
you have an agreement with the copyright holder -- for
the same reason Kinko's won't burn copies from a
magazine for you unless you have a letter from the
magazine authorizing them to do so. They're being
overly careful of course in view of the fact that the
copyright law allows for fair use (e.g., personal
copying of a part of something). They've probably been
sued. You don't want to be in that position.

Even republishing someone's page within a frame has
been held in court to be a violation of copyright. If
you own a third party product on the other hand that
filters banner ads, that may be considered legal. But I
am not aware of any third party product that filters
and replaces banner ads legally in a commercial
environment.

Just be cautious -- and keep in mind, a web site that
is valued sells advertising as part of its *business*
model. If the advertising were all filtered, it is
unlikely that the site could continue to generate
income from advertisers. And then the valued web site
either has to charge a fee for access, or it goes away.
Personally, I have no problem letting my eyes filter
out unwanted banners -- and even though the occasions
may be rare, I've actually clicked through on a few
banners over the last year.

DAVID

David K. McKnight
TeamMetrx, Groupware That's Simply Addictive
<mailto:David_at_McKnight.net>
Web Site: <http://David.McKnight.net>
(for "Diary of an Internet Startup...")




Received on Tue Jan 04 2000 - 19:06:53 CST