Creators Of Pop Under Technology Awarded Millions From X10
from the not-sure-who-to-root-for-here... dept
If you remember back to the early days of the pop-under advertising craze, you know that it was X10, the makers of those little spy cameras that were the first to really embrace the annoying intrusive ad form. For years, they've been among the top users of the technology. It turns out, however, that the idea really came from a set of young brothers who say X10 never paid them for the original pop-under ad campaigns they created - and that X10 eventually took their business model and technology. Now, a judge has ruled in their favor and told X10 to pay the brothers $4.3 million for their pop-unders. Ugh. While it was bad of X10 to not pay these guys, it's just as upsetting to hear about these pop-under "innovators" getting millions for promoting one of the most annoying advertising tactics this side of spam. Besides, it's a little unclear what "technology" was stolen, as a simple bit of javascript describing how to create a pop-under hardly seems like it's proprietary.
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Section of the trial transcripts
Plaintiff2: "Super annoying."
Plaintiff1: "Yes, your honor, super-duper annoying... and then these savages stole our idea and started being super-duper annoying WITHOUT US"
Judge: "Is this true?"
Defendent: "Yes your honor, we have been super-duper annoying without them"
Judge: "Bailif, shoot everyone in this room who isn't an employee of the court"
Bailif: "Even the attorneys?"
Judge: "Yes, shoot them first"
At least that's how it would have gone had I been the judge...
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Personally I find Firebird (with the Flash click-to-view plugin) and Privoxy get rid of most of the ads.
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