Google's Quiet, Confusing Privacy Policy Change Is Why We Need More Transparency & Control

from the don't-hide-this-shit dept

Last week, I wrote about how privacy is about tradeoffs, and despite what some people claim, there's no such thing as "absolute privacy," nor would you actually want something approximating what people think they mean by it. The real issue is the tradeoff. People are quite willing to trade certain information in exchange for value. But, the trade has to be clear and worth it. That's where the real problems come in. When we don't know what's happening with our data, or it's used in a sneaky way, that's when people feel abused. Give people a clear understanding of what they're giving and what they're getting and you eliminate most of the problem. Then give end users greater control over all of this and you eliminate even more of the problem.

This was our thinking in designing a Privacy Bill of Rights for companies to abide by in designing their services (along with EFF and Namecheap).

It appears that Google would fail to meet the standards of that bill of rights. Last week, ProPublica wrote about how Google quietly changed the privacy policy related to how it connects DoubleClick advertising to other data that it has about you, allowing the company to actually link your name and other identifying information to you as you surf around the web. And, on top of that, it apparently includes tying what you type in Gmail to the ads you might see.

The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on the keywords they used in their Gmail. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct.

The move is a sea change for Google and a further blow to the online ad industry’s longstanding contention that web tracking is mostly anonymous. In recent years, Facebook, offline data brokers and others have increasingly sought to combine their troves of web tracking data with people’s real names. But until this summer, Google held the line.

Here's the thing: a lot of privacy advocates I know will likely say that this move is de facto "bad." And that any linkage between identity and ads is bad. But I'd argue that the real problem here is Google's unwillingness to be clear and transparent. It slipped this change in and then made up some PR-speak about why it was doing it, in a way that wasn't at all clear to basically anyone:

Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville emailed a statement describing Google’s change in privacy policy as an update to adjust to the “smartphone revolution”

“We updated our ads system, and the associated user controls, to match the way people use Google today: across many different devices,” Faville wrote. She added that the change “is 100% optional–if users do not opt-in to these changes, their Google experience will remain unchanged.” (Read Google’s entire statement.)

Existing Google users were prompted to opt-into the new tracking this summer through a request with titles such as “Some new features for your Google account.”

The “new features” received little scrutiny at the time. Wired wrote that it “gives you more granular control over how ads work across devices.” In a personal tech column, the New York Times also described the change as “new controls for the types of advertisements you see around the web.”

Blech. If this is really actually important, and provides more value, don't give the bullshit explanation and confuse reporters. Tell people what's happening and why. If Google is afraid to be upfront and honest about it (things that the company used to do) then it feels like the company recognizes that it's not providing enough value to consumers with these moves. To paraphrase the old saying about it not being the crime but the coverup that gets people, in this case, it's not the privacy policy change that's the clear problem here, but the fact that Google tried to hide it and mislead people about it.

Thankfully, Google does provide the other prong of our test: giving users control.

To opt-out of Google’s identified tracking, visit the Activity controls on Google’s My Account page, and uncheck the box next to “Include Chrome browsing history and activity from websites and apps that use Google services." You can also delete past activity from your account.

But it would have been a lot better if the company could have just been upfront and honest about it. This is why transparency and clarity about intentions are so important. If companies don't do that, then people will (rightly) assume that the moves are designed in a manner to be anti-consumer. If Google truly believes it's providing a better product with such changes, explain why and how and let users decide for themselves.

Filed Under: ads, control, privacy, privacy policies, transparency
Companies: google

CBS Announces New Ad-Free More-Expensive Streaming Service...That Includes Ads

from the subtract dept

Some terrestrial TV stations and cable stations are better at internet-ing than others. While Netflix has built an empire upon streaming ad-free shows, for instance, other services like Hulu have gone the route of a tiered structure, with a price point for streaming with ads and one for streaming without ads. One of the interesting things is seeing other traditional broadcast networks watch how these models play out and then go about offering their own. Take CBS, for instance. It's very clear that CBS is enamored with the idea of streaming its content advertising free, but likes Hulu's tiered structure better than that of Netflix.

At CBS' site, you can see that it is now offering two tiers of its "All Access" platform. The existing service is offered with "Limited Commercials", while a service that costs $4 more is labeled "Commercial Free." I'd like to focus on the commercial free offering for a moment, because it's a bold step that includes giving viewers a way to stream CBS shows "commercial free", except where there are both commercials and where CBS is choosing to call "commercials" by the term "promotional interruptions" instead.

There are some caveats to CBS’ “commercial-free” option. CBS isn’t spending much time highlighting these asterisks, but they tell you interesting things about the TV ecosystem in 2016:

-If you stream a CBS show live, when it first airs, you’ll still see ads — the same ones you’d see on conventional TV, depending on the local TV market you’re in.

-CBS says “select on-demand shows will include promotional interruptions.” I talked to a CBS rep for a translation: The “promotional interruptions” will be brief, but un-skippable, promos — 15 seconds at most, and no more than two promos per half-hour — for other CBS shows. They’ll show up in about 10 percent of CBS’ episodes, and about 20 percent of its titles — generally its newer shows. That’s because CBS has sold on-demand rights to some of those shows to subscription services like Amazon or Netflix, and in some cases those services have exclusive rights to an ad-free “window” for those shows.

It appears CBS has been taking its cues from the mobile network industry, which absolutely loves calling its plans "unlimited", even though they are very much limited. In this case, the streaming service is "advertising free", except for all the ads on live shows and all of the promotional interruptions on streaming the older library. I had once thought that coming up with new business models to appeal to the public was hard. Turns out it's not! You just have to call one thing by another name and insist the entire world play make believe!

The folks over at Recode appear to think that CBS doesn't even really want people to use this option.

The big picture is that CBS is still very much in the advertising business, and will be for a very long time. So it is presumably betting that the ad-free option will only be interesting to a subset of its All Access subscribers, who are a small subset of its total audience.

It's breathtaking in its cynicism. CBS decides to claim a service is something it isn't while hoping most customers don't use it or want it and instead use the other level of service. It's an insight into how the company sees its viewers, as little more than money-levers waiting to be pulled in the right order to extract the maximum amount of revenue, regardless of whether it has to engage in double-speak and obfuscation in order to do so.

We at Techdirt want to play along with CBS on this sort of thing, which is why we're proud to say that this post is offered to you vulgarity free! On an unrelated note, CBS' advertising free offering is bullshit.

Filed Under: ad free, ads, promotional interruptions, streaming, streaming tv
Companies: cbs

Ted Cruz Campaign Infringed On Copyright, But Will Probably Be Treated With Kid Gloves Just Because

from the class-war dept

Fresh off the news that Mike Huckabee finally settled the copyright infringement suit over his use of a Survivor song at his Kim Davis rally, we have now learned that the campaign for Ted Cruz has apparently also had an issue with properly licensing music for its campaign. There's a degree or two of separation here to be aware of, with the Cruz campaign having hired an ad agency to handle its digital advertising, and with that ad agency apparently flouting the licensing rules of the music it acquired with pretty stunning abandon. Still, while accusations of infringement by musicians against politicians so rarely are simple cases of infringement, instead fraught with politics, this one, as Eric Goldman notes, appears to be pretty straightfoward.

Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign allegedly hit the copyright infringement bullseye. (All of the following facts are allegations from the complaint, but the defendants’ motion to dismiss doesn’t challenge any of them). The Cruz campaign’s ad agency, Madison McQueen, downloaded two songs from Audiosocket, which I would categorize as a stock music agency. The songs are “Lens” by Sarah Schachner and “Fear of Complacency” by Brad Couture. In each case, the ad agency agreed to Audiosocket’s standard Small Business License Agreement, which prohibited any use “for political purposes” and included a $25k liquidated damages clause. Audiosocket attached unique IDs to its downloads that fingers the ad agency as the downloader of these songs.

Despite the license restrictions, the campaign used both songs in promotional material. Lens was used in the “Victories” video (apparently offline), viewed 78,000 times on YouTube. After the campaign was told that its use was unauthorized, the campaign nevertheless broadcast the video 86 times on Fox Business News (if criminal copyright infringement were being prosecuted, which it won’t be because the DOJ would never go after a sitting Senator for such things, would this fact provide the necessary willfulness?). Fear of Complacency was used in the “Best to Come” video, viewed 12,000 times on YouTube.

It's typical for these types of complaints to be layered in nuance and interpretation, with a dash of one side or the other misunderstanding how licensing, copyright, and the rights that surround public performances work. This does not appear to be one of those cases, as the agreement Madison McQueen agreed to is fairly straightforward and specifically forbids the exact use for which the music was incorporated. As Goldman notes, whereas most campaigns would simply apologize and pay to have all of this go away, the Cruz campaign instead offered up a motion to dismiss. That motion didn't rebut any of the allegations. Instead, Cruz's lawyers argued that the musicians had only applied for copyright registrations and had yet to have that process completed, that it's unclear how many times it should be said that the campaign infringed on the copyrights for the songs, that Audiosocket can't stack its copyright complaint alongside its breach of contract complaint, and that all of this is a moot point because -- not making this up -- Cruz lost and gave up on his candidacy.

The court, predictably, denied every argument in the campaign's motion to dismiss. Which means it's settlement time.

Now that the plaintiffs survived the motion to dismiss, I’d expect the parties to revisit a settlement. The sticking point may be computing damages, especially the liquidated damages where the parties may disagree about how many times the license was breached. If Audiosocket accepts $25k per song, it should take $50k or less to buy them out–easily doable (especially if he still has $9M cash on hand). Audiosocket says it’s not claiming each of the 90k+ streams count as individual breaches (which would lead to over $2B of liquidated damages), but I’m not sure what their compromise position will be, so it’s hard to guess how far apart they really are.

To me, the most interesting unresolved question is how this lawsuit and failed motion to dismiss will change any of Sen. Cruz’s positions about copyright law. I’m not familiar with his IP platform, but he now has a first-hand brush with copyright infringement that ought to make him more empathetic towards other well-meaning and honest Americans who find themselves unwittingly staring down the barrel of a copyright infringement shotgun. Unfortunately, if past politicians’ response to being accused of IP infringement is any guide, the chances of Sen. Cruz becoming a champion of user rights are remote.

The more interesting question to my mind is exactly how all of this would play out if Senator Ted Cruz was instead local mailman Ted Cruz, without the legal team and political cache that he enjoys to back him up? We talk a great deal around here about citizens who are engulfed in questionable copyright actions, yet here is a Senator who will be able to pay some sum of money that he has at his ready to make all of this go away.

You would hope that this would lead to some kind of empathy in the halls of government, but naaaaaaah.

Filed Under: ads, copyright, infringement, ted cruz
Companies: audiosocket, madison mcqueen

NBC's 'Most Live Olympics Ever' Will Have A One Hour Broadcast Delay For The Opening Ceremony

from the late-to-the-party dept

It's Olympics season again. What is normally an expose of how the IOC and the USOC become the biggest IP bullies on the block has had a little spice added to it this year in the form of a host country that by all reports is woefully unprepared for its duties while simultaneously being rocked by a pest-spread disease with the delightful symptom of shrinking the brains of fetuses. And if that doesn't make you believe that some combination of a god and/or the universe wants the Olympics to cease to be, perhaps the fact that the whole fiasco will be broadcast by NBC will.

Yes, running in parallel with our posts about IOC bullying, you will find a history of posts about NBC's strange attempts to turn back the clock on its broadcast of the games. Historically, this has meant limiting the live streaming of most of the events, making it as difficult to find and watch any event as possible, and delaying all kinds of event broadcasts until NBC deems that the public wants to watch them. But have heart, dear friends, for the NBC overlords have listened and have declared that these Rio Olympics will be the "most live Olympics ever."

For Rio 2016, NBC says this will be its "most live Olympics ever" with 4,500 hours of coverage streaming on NBCOlympics.com and the recently renamed NBC Sports app. Also new this time around is that the NBC Sports app is on connected TV devices (it launched on Roku and Apple TV last year), not just mobile.

Now, I'll just go ahead and note here that while NBC has been very busy patting itself on the back for how much more live coverage there will be of the Olympics in Rio compared with previous broadcasts, the fact that there is a time difference of exactly one hour between East Coast time and Brazil means that all the live coverage is probably just happenstance rather than any concerted effort by NBC. But, hey, the company has still gotten the message that live coverage only makes sense in a hyper-connected world where view-on-demand can be achieved by the devices we carry around in our pockets at work and while in transit, right?

Sure! Except for the opening ceremony, because you idiots aren't smart enough to be able to watch that live.

The Rio Olympics formally begin August 5th with the opening ceremony from the Maracanã stadium. Proceedings start at 7 p.m. Eastern Time, only you won’t be able to watch them on NBC until at least an hour later. At a press conference yesterday, NBC execs announced plans to broadcast the ceremony at 8 p.m. Eastern Time and 7 p.m. Central Time, each on one hour delays, and at 7 p.m. Mountain Time and 8 p.m. Pacific Time, on two and four-hour delays respectively.

So why the need for anywhere between a one and four our delay to watch the opening ceremony? Two reasons. First, forget all of that hyperconnectivity thing we just talked about, this shit has to only air during prime time. Also, without post-production and planned narration of the ceremony, you viewers won't get all of the great story lines NBC wants to feed you.

By doing a short tape-delay of one hour, it allows us to put it in a time period when more people are home to watch, because it is a Friday night and they get out of their commute or home from wherever they are. And it allows us to curate it with the narrative and storytelling of our announcers to explain what’s going on. And it allows us to put in commercials without cutting out large chunks of the show.

Also, the opening ceremony is really for all of the penis-less viewers out there. And we all know how the ladies don't really like sports but do like their soap operas, amirite?

The people who watch the Olympics are not particularly sports fans. More women watch the Games than men, and for the women, they’re less interested in the result and more interested in the journey. It’s sort of like the ultimate reality show and mini-series wrapped into one. And to tell the truth, it has been the complaint of a few sports writers. It has not been the complaint of the vast viewing public.

Now, to the point about the prime time coverage. Look, hyperconnected or not, it is certainly true that many adults only have certain hours of the day to which they can dedicate some couch-time and watch a bunch of people from a bunch of countries walk around in a circle for a while. But that doesn't mean NBC couldn't also stream the ceremony live for those that want it live. The commentary might be pared down and perhaps we wouldn't get all of the juicy narrative NBC wants to inject for lady viewers, who we all know universally hate sports and all that, but there is value to live coverage that many people want. It's not just a small number of sports writers.

As for that context it claims it needs to inject, that's not the whole story. What the delay really allows NBC to do is inject commercials wherever it wants without omitting any countries from the ceremony while also being able to cut out any undesirable content (i.e. political content) that shows up in the ceremony.

NBC has an incentive to air the ceremony live, but by delaying, they are sacrificing the chance to be first so they can tailor the coverage, cut out any shenanigans, and pick the best places to cut away to commercial. And, of course, cut anything controversial. As Gary Zenkel, NBCSG’s president, pointed out, it’s a show, not a competition.

Which, fine, if NBC wants to act as the speech filter for its viewers, so be it. But who is going to be surprised when NBC also screams bloody murder at people seeing results, highlights, and even coverage of the opening ceremony that will be available on other streams from other nations' broadcasts, on Twitter and Facebook and the like? NBC can't seriously delay its coverage and get mad when all the customers whose demands it ignores move on to other options.

But that's exactly what will happen. We've been here before, after all. And no matter how "live" these Olympics are this go-round, delaying the broadcast and stream of the opening ceremony leads me to believe I know exactly how it will go this time too.

Filed Under: ads, commercials, olympics, opening ceremony, time delay
Companies: nbc

Google's Arbitrary Morality Police Threaten Us Yet Again; Media Sites Probably Shouldn't Use Google Ads

from the looking-for-alternatives dept

Two years ago, we wrote about a ridiculous situation in which the morality police who work for Google's AdSense team threatened to kill our account because they saw that their ads were being displayed on this page, which has a story (from 2012) about a publicity rights claim involving a music video using footage of a porn star without her permission. The story was quite clearly about the intellectual property issues at play, but the AdSense team insisted that since the still image displayed from the embedded video showed a (clothed) woman pole dancing, it violated their policies on "adult or mature content." We protested and AdSense rejected our protest, insisting that the still image of the pole dancing violated their policies. Never mind the fact that the same exact video was hosted on Google-owned YouTube where it had Google's ads enabled...

For what it's worth, this happened just months after we had started using Google AdSense, after representatives from that team put together a big effort to get us switch from the other ad provider we'd been using at the time.

We had hoped that after that incident the AdSense team would have, perhaps, rethought some of its practices. No such luck. Last year we wrote about another case, not involving us, but where Google started threatening the site Antiwar.com for posting the infamous photos of US soldiers mistreating prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. After that story started going viral, Google's AdSense team backed down -- but apparently they've done little to fix their processes.

In the last two weeks we've received two notices of violations from AdSense, each of which seems more ridiculous than the other in some way, and which has us reconsidering our use of AdSense as a media property, as Google fails at distinguishing between reporting on bad things and celebrating those same things. In both cases, the "violation" involved a post that was many years old, so it's unclear why Google suddenly discovered them. In both cases, the posts were basic reporting on something that had happened, and no rational and reasonable person would conclude they violated any policy that AdSense has. And, yet, in both cases, Google claimed they violated its policies, and threatened that if we were unable to sort through the 64,000 other posts on Techdirt to weed out the ones that somehow violate Googles bizarre and arbitrary morality police policies, we risk losing our account.

The first was about a post from 2010, involving a lawsuit concerning assisted suicide. As we noted in our short post on it, there was a legal question about whether or not its illegal to tell people how to commit suicide online. Because while there are laws against assisted suicide, the guy was basically arrested for merely telling people over the internet they should commit suicide, and that seems like protected First Amendment speech. Thus it was an interesting legal question worthy of debate (our post received 60 comments, suggesting many folks agreed). So what could possibly be wrong with that? Well, according to the AdSense team:

Google does not allow the monetization of content that may be sensitive, tragic, or hurtful. While we believe strongly in the freedom of expression and offer broad access to content across the Web without censoring search results, we reserve the right to exercise discretion when reviewing sites and determining whether or not we are able to provide a positive user experience delivering contextually targeted ads to a site with this type of content.

In short, Google AdSense requires some sort of special trigger warning setup, whereby we need to turn it off on any article that someone might consider "sensitive, tragic or hurtful"? Does that mean no AdSense ads are allowed on stories about the shooting in Orlando this weekend? Is that really the official policy of Google's morality police? Sure, I could see that Google might not want to have its ads on a site associated with telling people how to commit suicide -- but obviously that's not what our story was about at all. The fact that the morality police working for AdSense can't seem to tell a journalistic blog post about a legal dispute from a site advocating for assisted suicide (which really doesn't seem that tragic or hurtful in the first place) is fairly ridiculous.

The second complaint, received over the weekend, is about a post from 2012 concerning the band Death Grips' decision to just give away its album after its label, Epic, had tried to shelve the album. It's an interesting story highlighting an all too standard dispute between musicians and a record label, with a somewhat unique solution by the band. So, what could Google possibly be complaining about here? Are you ready for this?

Google ads may not be placed on pages with adult or mature content. This includes, but is not limited to, pages that contain:

• erotic stories or descriptions of sexual acts
• sexual jokes
• erotic or sexual forums
• sexual or profane terms in the URL
• crude language or excessive amounts of profanity

Going through the article, there doesn't seem to be anything like that in our post. What it almost certainly refers to, however, is that we discussed one of the reasons why Epic may have decided to shelve the album release, which is that the band wanted an album cover that was a photograph of an erect penis. We did not post this image, but we did link to it -- along with a clear "NSFW" warning. We didn't even describe what was in the photo, other than implying obliquely that it may have something to do with male genitals. Other than that, the post contains no profanity or sexual language (there are some curses in the comments, but I don't see how that could count).

Once again, any normal, living, thinking human being should be able to look at such a post and recognize that it's a blog post/news story about a newsworthy event, rather than some sort of sexual forum with crude language. But, alas, no such luck -- we're told that we violate AdSense's apparently random policies, and we're at risk of losing our account.

Oddly, on the first notification, we were told that Google automatically turned off ads on that page on their own (though telling us we should explore the rest of our pages to see if there were similar "violations.") On the latter one, Google was not as proactive, instead demanding that we figure out a way to disable ads on that specific page ourselves.

Now, Google is a private company that obviously has the right to choose who it wants to do business with and how it does business, but this seems particularly ridiculous. This does raise questions for us as a media property and whether AdSense is compatible with news reporting. We shouldn't have to worry if the Google morality police might randomly show up at any time to insist we're violating its rules by actually reporting on newsworthy stories.

Filed Under: ads, adsense, google ads, journalism, morality, morality police
Companies: google, techdirt

Newspaper Association Thinks FTC Should Force Readers To Be Subject To Godawful Ads And Invasive Trackers

from the please-let-us-continue-to-screw-our-audience dept

So, it's come to this. After battling back against ad-blocking by guilting or forcing people into whitelisting sites -- rather than taking a good look at their terrible ad inventories, intrusive trackers, or reprehensible practices -- the press is turning to the FTC in hopes of having the government decide how you can surf the web. (h/t EFF)

The crux of the complaint [PDF] is various practices deployed by ad blockers that the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) considers to be anti-competitive or dishonest. But in its run-up to the actual complaints, the NAA makes some seriously stupid assertions.

Adblockers undermine the ability of publishers to continue to provide free or reduced-price content on the Internet because they undercut publishers’ ability to finance enterprise journalism, and they threaten the livelihood of journalists and other content creators.

This assertion continues to scapegoat ad blocking for many publications' decision to force readers to play "find the content" when visiting their sites. As user ad blindness eventually rendered banner ads invisible, the response has been to escalate intrusion, via new ad delivery methods like popunder/popups, autoplay video ads, pervasive trackers, or escalating encroachment of ads into the "content" area. If ad blocker usage is more prevalent, publishers really have no one but themselves to blame.

And there's nothing out there that suggests the only way a publication can remain profitable is by assaulting users with ads and tracking them all over the internet. But that's the narrative publishers have chosen because it's simpler to make users conform to their wishes than it is to cede ground to site visitors' best interests.

From there, the NAA's narrative gets even worse. In deriding "free-rider technology," the NAA defends its use of invasive trackers by implying that all content -- whether it's ads or the stuff site visitors actually want to see -- is equal in its eyes.

By preventing publishers from identifying repeat visitors and making these offers to them, content blockers harm consumers.

"Content blockers." If that's a slip, it's a Freudian one. This suggests those behind this letter to the FTC consider advertising to be just as worthwhile a use of bandwidth and user attention as the actual journalism buried underneath it.

In the NAA's eyes, the real villain here is "deceptive" ad blockers.

Ad-blocking companies argue that consumers should use their software to “opt out” of the online advertising ecosystem, either because of concerns with privacy or the data use represented by digital advertising. But as a review of the practices of adblocking companies discloses, consumers do not “opt out” of an ecosystem by using ad-blockers. Instead, they “opt in” to a deceptive new environment that does not adequately disclose its practices to consumers.

The supposed "deception" the NAA refers to is things like AdBlock Plus selling companies spaces on its "whitelist." Then it has the audacity to make claims about the darkish shade of ad blockers' kettles by claiming any information about these built-in whitelists is buried in the terms of service. Burial of crucial details under several pages of fine print is SOP for 99.9% of the internet -- including (especially) the same tracking software the NAA says is crucial to the survival of the industry.

The NAA also claims that evading paywalls -- if enabled by ad blockers -- is an "unfair method of competition." Considering how easy it is to evade most paywalls (via referral links, Google searches, going "incognito," etc.), it seems rather disingenuous to claim the automation of this process is somehow a violation of trade laws. For that matter, the complaint offers no proof that any popular ad-blocking extension actually offers this "service." (There are extensions written solely for that purpose, however.)

The complaint also takes issue with "replacement" services that substitute bad ads with better ads or offer micropayments to sites in exchange for blocking their revenue generators. The NAA insists these, too, are deceptive and should be kicked of the 'net by the FTC.

But most worryingly, the NAA wants internet users to be forbidden from taking steps to protect their privacy.

Some ad-blockers evade metered subscription services and paywalls by preventing publishers from identifying repeat visitors and making offers to consumers about their subscription services…

While it doesn't specifically name any apps or extensions that act in the interest of users' privacy, the wording used implies the use of IP-address obscuring options (VPNs, Tor) along with script blockers and software like the EFF's Privacy Badger are similarly unwelcome in its plan for the future.

What the NAA wants is an internet that operates on its terms. It wants to continue to deploy shitty ad inventories and allow users to take the bandwidth hit, all the while shadowing them across the web in hopes of shoving even more ads in their faces. There's no hint of a compromise in this complaint. It wants the FCC to force the web to bend to the NAA's will. At no point does it even consider the ramifications of this action. It's pure self-interest, disguised as a concern for poor consumers who have voted to opt-out of ad onslaughts by using "deceptive" ad blockers.

Filed Under: ad blockers, ads, business models, felony interference with a business model, ftc, newspapers, privacy, tracking
Companies: naa, newspapers association of america

Baidu Pushes Back On Chinese Gov't Investigation By Freeing Up Images Related To Tiananmen Square

from the power-play dept

So we've talked a lot about the Great Firewall of China and how it works. Contrary to what many believe, it's not just a giant government bureaucracy blacklisting content, but a huge ecosystem that partially relies on unpredictability and the lack of intermediary liability protections online. That is, rather than directly say "this and that are blocked," the Chinese government will often just let companies know when they've failed to properly block content and threaten them with serious consequences. Because of this, you get a culture of overblocking, to avoid running afoul of the demands. This is one of the reasons why we believe that strong intermediary liability protections are so important. Without them, you're basically begging for widespread censorship to avoid legal consequences.

And, in many ways, it works quite well in China. Yes, sophisticated users know how to use VPNs and proxies and to get around the blocks, but many people do not. But something interesting is happening in China right now, as one of the largest and most successful internet companies there appears to be challenging the censorship regime. First, it's important to recognize that in China, one subject that is absolutely, without question, censored, is anything relating to the Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown of 1989. On the internet in China, it's as if the event never happened. People have tried workarounds, using euphemisms and wordplay, but eventually those get disappeared down the memory hole too. There was even that time the censors banned the term "big yellow duck," after people replaced the famous tanks in the "tank man" photo with giant rubber ducks: But something odd happened yesterday. Suddenly, on Baidu (which is like the Google of China), searches related to the tank man and other symbols of the Tiananmen Square protests were showing up on Baidu. Clay Shirky, who has been living in China recently, posted details on his Twitter feed, which is well worth reading:

China's https://t.co/G1q2OYdfSV unblocks search results for 虫堂臂挡车 (known to us as tank man, from Tiananmen massacre) pic.twitter.com/DU2X3RZnWv

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

It appears that this is something of a reaction to the Chinese government announcing that it will be investigating Baidu's advertising practices, following the death of a young man from cancer, who had kicked up quite a lot of attention after he had tried an "experimental" cancer treatment he discovered via an ad on Baidu. When it didn't work, he blamed Baidu for allowing the ad, and when he passed away there was a public outcry. In response, the government announced plans to investigate Baidu's ad practices. It appears that Baidu loosening the padlocks on Tiananmen Square might be a response to that, which lots of people seem to think is playing with a fire in a manner that will almost certainly leave the company burned.

This is a direct & blatant refusal to play by the rules. Baidu has a lot of power behind the scenes, but even then, this looks like treason.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

This will probably end soon - hearing from friends in Beijing that some searches are censored again - but it will cause months of trouble.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

Young, educated Chinese are so used to cat and mouse censorship that when they see something like this, they screenshot immediately.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

At a conservative guess, there've been a billion screenshots taken of various banned images, jokes, and memes during the last day.

— Clay Shirky (@cshirky) May 6, 2016

Shirky has a lot more to say, including some further speculation that perhaps there was growing tension from last year, after the Chinese government basically made use of Baidu to fire a denial of service at GitHub. The fact that the packets came via Baidu was, as Shirky notes, a PR blackeye for Baidu at a time when the company wants to expand beyond China. Shirky also deleted a tweet that originally said "this has to backfire," noting how central media and internet censorship is to the current regime.

The brief dropping of the censorship appears to be (again, Shirky notes no one knows for sure -- but many people seem to believe) Baidu trying to let the Chinese government know that it has become powerful enough to make trouble for the government, so it's not just a one way street in terms of who holds the power. Of course, that seems like an incredibly risky move to make if you really don't have enough power to stand up to the government.

We may never know all the details of what's going on, but it's a brief, if fascinating, view into some of what's going on in China today with the Great Firewall, and the increasing power of some of its most successful companies. But it's also a reminder of why we should be so thankful for strong intermediary liability protections in the US, and how not having such protections is a sure path to censorship.

Filed Under: ads, censorship, china, clay shirky, great firewall, intermediary liability, investigations, power, search, tank man
Companies: baidu

Forbes Is Confused: You Can View Content Using An Adblocker By Promising Not To Use An Adblocker

from the er? dept

Forbes, an organization with a website presumably built on the value of its content, also has made the unfortunate decision recently to try to block off access to anyone using adblocker software, apparently so that it could successfully allow malicious "ads" to infect its readers' machines. This set of circumstances would seem to be one that would have Forbes re-thinking its adblocker policy, assuming it wishes to retain the trust of its readership. And it turns out that Forbes is doing so. And then not! Or maybe? Allow me to explain.

Rob Leathern recently noticed that going to Forbes.com and refreshing the screen after being told that he should disable his adblocker suddenly offered up a new option: becoming a member. That membership would allow the viewing of the content for free. And, hey, all it wanted in return was the ability to manage his social media contacts for him.

So @Forbes now lets ad blocking users access content if they Google-login and let Forbes... manage their contacts?! pic.twitter.com/CbM4qovEed

— Rob Leathern (@robleathern) May 2, 2016

Forbes, a site that in the past has allowed malicious ads to be presented to its readers, would now like access and control of those readers' social media contacts, which sounds like a terrible idea. But even more strange was when Leathern bothered to look into the terms of services that such a membership with Forbes entailed.




If you aren't laughing by now, you should be. Because the ToS for a membership which would allow readers to access the site's content while using an adblocker contain language asserting that you cannot use an adblocker. Whatever else you may think of Forbes in general, having multiple personalities running policy for the site seems like a bad strategy. Leathern's conclusion summarizes it nicely:

So I’ve basically agreed now to not block their ads, after signing up for the express purpose of being able to see their content while blocking their ads.

Forbes: a confused schizophrenic that would like to serve you some malware, please. I can just hear the dollars rolling into the coffers now...

Filed Under: ad blocking, ads, privacy, social media
Companies: forbes

Game Critic Keeps YouTube Vids Ad-Free By Creating ContentID Feeding Frenzy

from the sharks-in-the-water dept

You should know by now that YouTube's ContentID system is a horrible mess. This system, which allows purported intellectual property owners to claim other people's uploads as containing their content, and then allowing those purported owners to either take the videos down or monetize them for themselves, is so rife with abuse, trolls, and mistakes that it's a wonder anyone at any point thought this was an idea that could work. Lost in all of this bowing towards intellectual property owners has bred some creative methods for getting around ContentID abuse, but it's still a problem. A problem particularly challenging in the video game reviews space on YouTube, where entirely too many game studios think that using ContentID to flag game reviews is a practice worth repeating.

But one game reviewer, Jim Sterling, decided to test out a way to keep his videos advertising-free. The method? Include all kinds of previously flagged content in his new videos from different IP owners and set them all into a ContentID war with one another.

Earlier this week, game critic Jim Sterling uploaded an episode of his Jimquisition series, where he skewers the recently released Wii U game Star Fox Zero. The entire episode is worth a watch based on Sterling's well-reasoned arguments. But the thing that really sets it apart is a revelation near the end of the video, where Sterling explains why he makes such ample use of footage that is completely unrelated to what he actually discusses throughout the video.

"You may have noticed this week's video had footage from Metal Gear Solid V, Grand Theft Auto V, and Beyond: Two Souls in it," Sterling said. "Now, there's a reason for that. The reason is Nintendo. Because I'm talking about a Nintendo game this week, I've used Nintendo game footage, and that means Nintendo will attempt to monetize this video even though the point of the Jimquisition is to be ad-free, thanks to your lovely help on Patreon."

But by including game footage that had been previously flagged through ContentID by other studios, particularly studios known to not try to monetize game reviews, he created a ContentID race between the different studios. The result?

"I can confirm it works," Jim Sterling said over email. "It's worked several times before. WMG tried to monetize the video for the Erasure music, but couldn't because Nintendo and Take-Two had set their ContentID in this particular case to Not Monetized."

It's like beating cancer by contracting herpes and having the herpes eat the cancer... or something like that. Look, I didn't go to medical school, alright? The loophole in the ContentID system is that it's not like all kinds of people can flag a video for monetization. It appears to be a first-to-flag-wins sort of scenario. So, just include some completely unrelated footage from a studio that is known to flag reviews as "Not Monetized" and the content remains ad-free.

It's clever, to be sure, but some of us long for the day when such workarounds aren't needed just to produce a simple video game review.

Filed Under: ads, competing claims, contentid, copyright, infringement, jim sterling, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

NBC Smells Cord Cutting On The Wind, Will Reduce 'SNL' Ad Load By 30% Next Season

from the adapt-or-die dept

For several years now we've noted how instead of adapting to the cord cutting age, many in the cable and broadcast industry have responded with the not-so-ingenious approach of aggressive denial, raising rates as fast as humanly possible, and stuffing even more ads into every television hour. And when broadcasters can't get the ads to fit, they'll just resort to speeding up or editing programs to ensure that they're hammering paying customers with more ads than ever. Given the rise in alternative viewing options, this obviously isn't the most ingenious form of market adaptation.

But in a sign that somebody over at the Comcast NBC Universal media empire is at least making a fleeting attempt at sector evolution, the company has announced that it will be dramatically reducing ad loads in some programs. More specifically, the company says it will be reducing the advertising load in each episode of "Saturday Night Live" by around 30%:

"NBC's "Saturday Night Live" is paring down its commercial load, with plans to cut about 30% of ads out of the sketch comedy show next season. It will do this by removing two commercial breaks per episode, giving viewers more content, said Linda Yaccarino, chairman-advertising sales and client partnerships, NBC Universal."

The catch? The company's going to be experimenting with more native, sponsored, and product placement advertising as part of the attempt to combat cord cutting and ad-skipping simultaneously:

"And for advertisers, NBC will also be offering a limited opportunity to partner with "SNL" to create original branded content. These native pods will only occur six times a year, Ms. Yaccarino said. "As the decades have gone by, commercial time has grown," Lorne Michaels, creator and executive producer, "Saturday Night Live," said in a statement. "This will give time back to the show and make it easier to watch the show live."

While it's not entirely clear what these "native pods" will exactly look like, it's not so much an evolution in advertising as it is a return to the bygone era of fifties TV sponsored product placement:This isn't NBC's first flirtation with making a 180 industry turn back to content of this type, and the company has previously stated that advertisers can pay $300,000 or more just to get their feet in the door with product placement and native ads. And while quality and humor are certainly subjective, the problem is NBC's past experiments on this front really aren't that funny, and occasionally stumble into what feels like desperation. That opens the door to damaging your brand if your attempt to pitch laundry detergent or pharmaceuticals during a sketch is too ham-fisted.

NBC and advertisers are responding to the fact that prime time ratings and traditional cable TV subscribers continue to drop. Nielsen (the same company that used to call cord cutting "purely fiction") notes that most broadcasters continued to see up to a 4.1% decline in the number of homes tuning in to traditional television last month. That's again thanks to both cord cutting and "cord trimming," or the act of cutting back on the number of channels or premium networks a users subscribes to -- both in turn a response to high prices, restrictive viewing options, and flagging quality.

And while creatively experimenting with how ads get delivered is certainly part of the solution, it's not going to be a substitute for the one thing broadcasters (and by proxy cable companies) have been totally unwilling to do: offer the same content at a lower price. Ultimately the sector's going to have to take it on the chin, lose significantly more money, and begin seriously competing on channel bundle flexibility and price. That's an utterly unappealing proposition for an industry used to raising prices at four-times the rate of inflation, but the alternative is letting pesky, innovative upstarts walk away with legions of younger, disenfranchised television viewers.

Filed Under: ads, commercials, cord cutting, native advertisers, product placement, saturday night live, snl