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Monday, July 15, 2002 |
Another Intellectual Property Land Grab
Once again, the playing field is tilted towards corporations and against individuals. Gator works because people choose to install it (usually in return for advertising supported software), and it shows advertising based on what these people choose to browse. In other words, the individual is choosing to sell their "eyeballs" to Gator. Gator users are selling data on their web browsing habits to Gator in return for letting Gator sell their advertising demographic. Personally, I wouldn't sell at the price that Gator is offering, but this is a personal choice by the consumer. Now, a number of publishers are suing Gator on the grounds that the publisher somehow owns the user's data.This is really sleazy. Remember this, the next time The Washington Post or The New York Timesor the exceedingly hypocritical Dow Jones Corporation editorializes about capitalism and the free market.
Judge: See ya later, Gator. A federal judge orders the software company to temporarily stop displaying pop-up advertising over Web publishers' pages without their permission. [CNET News.com]
Consider the time
My parents came up for a visit this weekend. While he isn't on the Internet yet (I think typing is the barrier), my dad has kept interested in the world; he wanted to go to Best Buy to look at TIVOs with me, and he wanted me to show him what an MP3 player was. He showed me a $50 email terminal he'd bought as a transition step, which doesn't require him to mess around with installing things. I think of him as being, basically, like me...he may not know what a Goth is, and he's probably never heard of House music, but basically we share the same culture. Once in a while, though, the differences force themselves upon me.
After going to Art Fair on the Square, we ended up on the Memorial Union Terrace, talking about unusual names, when he said "Like the name Hitler. Until he came along, I'd never heard of anybody named Hitler." Suddenly I realized the difference between being born in 1957 and being born in 1919. I haven't been that jarred since the time a bunch of us took Gram Steadman out to the Nitty Gritty ( Madison's Official Birthday Bar) for her 102nd birthday, and someone asked her if the OJ Simpson trial really was the trial of the century, and she replied "I thought the trial of the century was the Lindbergh Baby."
