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Megabox will replace 15% of ads on websites with Mega's own ads
- troebr 14y agoIt's fine, I'll use MegaAdblock. Is this even legal? Replacing content providers' ads seems wrong.
- crazypyro 14y agoIf adblock is legal, this is legal. Instead of ignoring ads, its simply replacing a websites ads' with their own. Is it ethical? That is an entirely different question.
- Dystopian 14y agoThe real question for me is how MegaKey will interact with other 3rd party software, such as ad-blockers - and how much / what / information they'll be collecting about my surfing habits (I'm assuming they'll be collecting all of it so they can better target their ad-serving)
- Permit 14y agoHaha, wow. That's an incredibly novel approach. I won't be surprised if many here oppose it as it strips revenue from deserving websites and redirects it to Dotcom. Is it any worse than AdBlock, though?
- randomchars 14y agoAnd what if I make something that does this too? If you have 10 applications all trying to replace 15% of ads on the web what will happen?
- adambratt 14y agoThe thing is he'll probably have at least a moderate amount of success with it.
- duskwuff 14y agoIt's not novel at all, really -- this technique has been used many times before. The only gotcha is: all the software that's used this technique before has been malware.
- nthitz 14y agoIf my AdBlock software blocks the MegaAds as well then what? Will I still have access to free music? Certainly an interesting business model!
- stephengillie 14y agoEither AdBlock or the ad-blocking-hosts-file block all Comedy Central ads (including Daily Show, Colbert, and South Park), so their shows play without commercials. Sometimes weird things happen, ie. after a commercial break, the show will play for 30 seconds then jump to after the next commercial break.
- joenathan 14y ago"I’m very kinda unsure", "I guess", "will maybe have", "Maybe not, maybe so", "Hopefully there’ll probably be". Is this what passes for an article? Or even hacker news?
- jimrandomh 14y agoThis sort of ad replacement has actually been done plenty of times before, by malware and by shady toolbars. Pretty much no one is going to be okay with this: the music industry and the US government hate the guy's guts; it's directly stealing money from Google; it wants to directly compete with iTunes; it's directly stealing money from every random blogger and press outlet that might cover it; and other companies doing exactly this was responsible for destroying Microsoft Windows' reputation in the eyes of consumers. Oh, and it's a backdoor held by someone considered wildly untrustworthy. So on the list of parties that have a vested interest in seeing it fail, we have: - The music industry - The US government - All ad-supported press outlets and blogs - Microsoft, Apple, and Google - The computer security industry Oh, and it's also probably illegal (under copyright and tortious interference grounds). I think this is really just a signaling ploy; Dotcom wants to be able to say that he tried to come up with a monetization model for the music industry. But to say that this is doomed a fairly significant understatement.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoYou're generalizing too much. To say that noone is going to go for this is absurd. People who pirate songs in large part are clueless. If they download a torrent with an exe in it, they're still going to click on it because they don't know better. If you willingly give the public a chance to replace a small amount of ads for free stuff, they're going to go for it, because they dont care about replacing ads that were already there, and they benefit. It's like if someone plastered over your billboard every other night. Sure there are people that care, but it's not the people driving on the freeway. As far as the legal aspects, no doubt that will be a large discussion. But, is adblock illegal? If this is illegal, should adblock also be illegal? Will this be enforced the same in all countries? It's not going to take much for this service yo take off, and while many projects may come to an unceremonious end, I predict this will be a massive success before it becomes a failure, but we shall see.
- maxmcd 14y agoYou're talking about the product, jimrandomh is talking about the business/legal environment. He doesn't mention the fact that it wont be appealing to consumers, just that it'll have a handful of very large entities gunning for it's demise.
- duked 14y agoThe article is just wrong ! It's not unwanted software or a malware it's something users decides to install or not knowning what that entails: ad replacement in exchange of music. Now you may like or dislike this approach but it's not a malware !
- jbigelow76 14y agoIt's malware, pure and simple. Website operators can be victims of malware just like end users can be victims.
- comex 14y agoIs Adblock Plus also malware, then? What about Greasemonkey? The uncomfortable truth is that website operators do not have the right to control what sort of software users use to view their websites.
- jbigelow76 14y agoI'm not interested in arguing about what the end user does concerning ad blocking. Everybody falls into one camp or another and I've never seen anybody change sides. I'm talking about malware and it's effects from the perspective of the website owner. Let's take some hypothetical numbers to make it easy. Operator X has a website that displays 1000 ad impressions in a month, for those 1000 impressions he receives 100 dollars. Now megawhatever diverts 15% of those impressions, net result is the Operator X still serves 1000 ad impressions but only earns 85 dollars for the month. 15 dollars has been stolen from him. The aggregate value of the delivery of those ads is what matters, not who saw the ads. So it doesn't matter if it's 100 people, none of whom have Adblock or 200 people, 50% of whom have AdBlock. This is strictly from the perspective of the website owner. If you lose 15% revenue from one month to the next while your audience stays constant then you are definitely going to view megawhatever as malware. Edit: for further clarification, I wouldn't view somebody who did not use adblock in month 1 and switching it on in month 2 as stealing from the website owner because the revenue is not being diverted. The audience, in the context of the ads, has simply decreased from one month to the next.
- slig 14y agoOne can wish that Google would block them from the SERPs. Let's see if they can succeed while being invisible.
- frozenport 14y agoI can't wait until Project Glass takes this approach with our vision :-)
- nodrama 14y agoI like this. The more succesful it will be, the closer we will get to a pay-for-content web. Also, the payments methods will need to get much simpler. Offtopic: I had this ideea of an ad blocker for tv. It will be some device that you can place very close to your tv and it listens for comercial breaks. When it identifies one, automatically turn the volume very low.
- freshbreakfast 14y agoIf, against all odds, this scheme works and becomes acceptable, it can't last too long before competitors offering different kinds of service/values copy the same scheme. At which point, it becomes a real estate grab, and before you know it, this new meta layer of ad-serving apps become the ad network itself. I'm not sure that's good thing.
- nnnnni 14y agoHow long until someone cracks it to prevent the url rewriting?
- AJ007 14y agoGator/Claria did this 10 years ago. Replacing existing ads is a big no, and is quite different than popping up ads over someone's existing site. Based on what happened with them, pretty much any one who owns a website that shows display revenue can be a plaintiff again Megabox.
- CWIZO 14y agoPardon me, but where has the 15% came from? I don't see that number anywhere in the article.
- mikemoka 14y agoSo he is making you a proposal along these lines: -hey man, come over here, I'll let you listen to music for free if you let me steal money from the websites you visit...do we have a deal? totally legit.