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Monday, June 20, 2005

How we will continue to be made aware of the many exciting goods and services available to us?

I learned today that by blocking banner ads on a web forum where I am a paid subscriber, I am in violation of the site's Terms of Use, which provide:
"...you agree to display the content, without modification, as specified by the code. In particular, if you retrieve the content and cause any part of an HTML page from the site to be displayed, you must display the page in its entirety, without removing, blocking, filtering, suppressing, or modifying any features of the content, including advertising..."
There's no policing or enforcement mechanism for this rule, of course, which makes me wonder whether it qualifies as a "rule" in any meaningful sense. One civilly-disobedient person posted that he did not accept the Terms of Use and that using adblocking software is no different from hiring someone to cut all the ads out of your newspaper before you read it. For this he was banned from the site. Or at least they banned the user ID he seems to have created for the bold act of civil disobedience.

Although many of the media I enjoy are partly financed by advertising, this is the first time I've been confronted by the idea that I have some obligation not to avoid the ads that make my entertainment possible. If I want to mute commercials, or speed through them, there's nothing anyone can do to stop me. If I want to hire someone to clip all the ads out of my newspaper, bully for me. I wonder if this will continue to be the case with digital media. As these media mature, I would expect little ad-snipping valet-bots to become available. What will the dynamic become among consumers, content providers and advertisers? Will someone try to figure out what happens to digital signals after they enter my devices, and police my actions? Will content providers be able to threaten and cajole device manufacturers--as the TV networks did TiVo and Replay TV--so the full range of ad blocking is kept from consumers? Will subscription models predominate?

Just as important, I wonder how we will continue to be made aware of the many exciting goods and services available to us. Perhaps the bargain will be something like what gmail offers, an attractive added value in return for our agreement to look at some ads. Others have had more creative ideas.


posted at 11:28 PM

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