Has The Stern Effect Already Worn Off For Sirius?

Warner Bros. Neglects To Hype Other Internet Plan Involving Adware

from the adware,-the-old-standby dept

Thu, May 11th 2006 10:57am — Joseph Weisenthal

Warner Bros got a lot of attention this week for announcing a distribution deal with BitTorrent, even though the actual terms of the deal were hardly inspiring. However, the BitTorrent deal wasn't their only foray into new distribution methods, though one can hardly fault them for wanting to keep that a secret. The company is also partnering (via Broadband Reports) with adware firm 180solutions. Basically, a user can watch some soap operas for free, in exchange for letting 180solutions place their software on their computer and serve ads throughout the day. Some, of course, may decide that the tradeoff is worth it, but the company has a reputation for being misleading about what their software does, among other familiar complaints about adware companies. This deal is also rare in that there's often a long chain of partners and affiliates between the advertiser and the adware companies, which allows all parties involved to claim innocence. In light of these two deals, what are consumers likely to do? Will they opt for adware, pop-ups, non-burnable files, high prices, and no interoperability among devices or free, easy, pirated files?

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10 Comments

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anonymous coward, 11 May 2006 @ 11:34am

You could offer me the chance to give Jessica Simpson a Dirty Sanchez and I still wouldn't install 180solutions adware on my computer.
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- wolff000, 11 May 2006 @ 12:08pm
  
  Re:
  If they gave me the chance to do that just for installing thier bug ridden, system slowing , memory eating garbage I would install it. I have more than one machine and I can sacrifice one for that. back to the story though. this could work as lots and lots of people dion't know how bad 180 or would be willing to deal with the crap for the freebie. i however will continue to be a pirate. AAARRGGHHH! Yo ho ho and a terabyte of movies!
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- Truth, 12 May 2006 @ 7:31am
  
  180 solutions is SPYWARE
  It's 180solutions SYPWARE, not adware. Adware would not try to hide itself or keep you from uninstalling it. As soon as a company makes the effort to cover their tracks, it's SPYWARE!
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2006 @ 11:52am

A Flaming Dragon would be awfully tempting though
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Anonymous Coward, 11 May 2006 @ 12:13pm

Do as they say not as they do
They pull shit like this all the time and then make a huge deal over something as petty as file sharing.
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eb, 11 May 2006 @ 12:16pm

No question about the outcome
If people are desperate enough to watch daytime soaps, they would probably welcome ads on their PC to give them something else to do.
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- Julie, 11 May 2006 @ 7:08pm
  
  Re: No question about the outcome
  hell if they're that desperate maybe they could just watch Soap Network at night to see their soaps. I mean they likely have broadband if they are gonna download soaps and if they have broadband chances are they have cable or sattellite or can afford one of them. Anything is better than this spyware bullshianitz.
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Free Classified Listings, 11 May 2006 @ 12:46pm

BitTorrent
Cool maybe they could combine the two and people could use their own bandwidth to download a piece of shit spyware.
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tiberius, 11 May 2006 @ 12:56pm

Anyone that would go for this already has a substantial "load" of adware and spyware. They would never know the difference. More sauce for the Geekwad goose :)
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Dale Albiston, 12 May 2006 @ 12:03am

virtual machines
set up a virtual machine, let 180 install on *that*, given all it would be used for is this "service", and 180 can't screw up the host who cares? if it gets to annoying, wipe it and start again (yawn) probably a violation of the TOS but frankly given 180s rep for being honest like I care.
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