

Megabox will replace 15% of ads on websites with Mega's own ads - jarnix
http://bbgamer.co.uk/post/26156196488/megabox-why-its-not-so-awesome

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jimrandomh
This sort of ad replacement has actually been done plenty of times before, by
malware and by shady toolbars. Pretty much no one is going to be okay with
this: the music industry and the US government hate the guy's guts; it's
directly stealing money from Google; it wants to directly compete with iTunes;
it's directly stealing money from every random blogger and press outlet that
might cover it; and other companies doing exactly this was responsible for
destroying Microsoft Windows' reputation in the eyes of consumers. Oh, and
it's a backdoor held by someone considered wildly untrustworthy. So on the
list of parties that have a vested interest in seeing it fail, we have:

    
    
        - The music industry  
        - The US government  
        - All ad-supported press outlets and blogs  
        - Microsoft, Apple, and Google  
        - The computer security industry
    

Oh, and it's also probably illegal (under copyright and tortious interference
grounds). I think this is really just a signaling ploy; Dotcom wants to be
able to say that he tried to come up with a monetization model for the music
industry. But to say that this is doomed a fairly significant understatement.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
You're generalizing too much. To say that noone is going to go for this is
absurd.

People who pirate songs in large part are clueless. If they download a torrent
with an exe in it, they're still going to click on it because they don't know
better.

If you willingly give the public a chance to replace a small amount of ads for
free stuff, they're going to go for it, because they dont care about replacing
ads that were already there, and they benefit.

It's like if someone plastered over your billboard every other night. Sure
there are people that care, but it's not the people driving on the freeway.

As far as the legal aspects, no doubt that will be a large discussion. But, is
adblock illegal? If this is illegal, should adblock also be illegal? Will this
be enforced the same in all countries?

It's not going to take much for this service yo take off, and while many
projects may come to an unceremonious end, I predict this will be a massive
success before it becomes a failure, but we shall see.

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maxmcd
You're talking about the product, jimrandomh is talking about the
business/legal environment. He doesn't mention the fact that it wont be
appealing to consumers, just that it'll have a handful of very large entities
gunning for it's demise.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
It's not unreasonable to think that MegaBox was one of the reasons behind the
raid.

After all, MegaBox was almost complete when it happened, and we now know that
the FBI had been monitoring Megaupload for 4-5 years.

If they had that much time to gather evidence of wrongdoing, yet fuck up their
execution so badly, it leads one to believe that the operation was rushed,
perhaps by some influential people "gunning for its demise"

Now, if that were really the case, it would be because they actually fear the
product's release, and they would have to feel that the existing legal
framework wouldn't be enough to stop it.

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res0nat0r
I highly doubt much of anything is going to come of this. The US Gov't was
that afraid of MegaBox to rush a raid on Dotcom? Not likely IMO. Grooveshark
hasn't been paying artists for a long time and isn't enough of a threat to
raid as of today.

Most likely more BS self promotion from the Head BS'er.

~~~
lowboy
The US Gov't as an entity isn't afraid. But lobbyists and other politicians
might be afraid of not being able to buy that second house if they don't act
in the interests of the RIAA/etc.

 _edit_ On the surface this sounds like the stuff of tinfoil hats, but
lobbyists _do_ influence politics. A well-placed word with someone on high
could have tipped the action.

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duked
The article is just wrong ! It's not unwanted software or a malware it's
something users decides to install or not knowning what that entails: ad
replacement in exchange of music. Now you may like or dislike this approach
but it's not a malware !

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jbigelow76
It's malware, pure and simple. Website operators can be victims of malware
just like end users can be victims.

~~~
comex
Is Adblock Plus also malware, then? What about Greasemonkey?

The uncomfortable truth is that website operators do not have the right to
control what sort of software users use to view their websites.

~~~
jbigelow76
I'm not interested in arguing about what the end user does concerning ad
blocking. Everybody falls into one camp or another and I've never seen anybody
change sides.

I'm talking about malware and it's effects from the perspective of the website
owner. Let's take some hypothetical numbers to make it easy. Operator X has a
website that displays 1000 ad impressions in a month, for those 1000
impressions he receives 100 dollars. Now megawhatever diverts 15% of those
impressions, net result is the Operator X still serves 1000 ad impressions but
only earns 85 dollars for the month. 15 dollars has been stolen from him.

The aggregate value of the delivery of those ads is what matters, not who saw
the ads. So it doesn't matter if it's 100 people, none of whom have Adblock or
200 people, 50% of whom have AdBlock. This is strictly from the perspective of
the website owner. If you lose 15% revenue from one month to the next while
your audience stays constant then you are definitely going to view
megawhatever as malware.

Edit: for further clarification, I wouldn't view somebody who did not use
adblock in month 1 and switching it on in month 2 as stealing from the website
owner because the revenue is not being diverted. The audience, in the context
of the ads, has simply decreased from one month to the next.

~~~
lowboy
Your definition of the word "malware" goes against the common definition. IMO,
most people would consider malware something that is installed without the
user's intent. Just because a piece of software negatively impacts website
owners doesn't make it malware.

Website owners would probably consider AdBlock malware, but almost 25 million
users across Firefox and Chrome would disagree with that.

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freshbreakfast
If, against all odds, this scheme works and becomes acceptable, it can't last
too long before competitors offering different kinds of service/values copy
the same scheme. At which point, it becomes a real estate grab, and before you
know it, this new meta layer of ad-serving apps become the ad network itself.
I'm not sure that's good thing.

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AJ007
Gator/Claria did this 10 years ago. Replacing existing ads is a big no, and is
quite different than popping up ads over someone's existing site.

Based on what happened with them, pretty much any one who owns a website that
shows display revenue can be a plaintiff again Megabox.

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joenathan
"I’m very kinda unsure", "I guess", "will maybe have", "Maybe not, maybe so",
"Hopefully there’ll probably be".

Is this what passes for an article? Or even hacker news?

~~~
adambratt
Granted the quality of the article isn't amazing, but the points it brings up
are certainly interesting/warranted.

~~~
peteretep
Also it's two months old

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nthitz
If my AdBlock software blocks the MegaAds as well then what? Will I still have
access to free music? Certainly an interesting business model!

~~~
stephengillie
Either AdBlock or the ad-blocking-hosts-file block all Comedy Central ads
(including Daily Show, Colbert, and South Park), so their shows play without
commercials. Sometimes weird things happen, ie. after a commercial break, the
show will play for 30 seconds then jump to after the next commercial break.

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slig
One can wish that Google would block them from the SERPs. Let's see if they
can succeed while being invisible.

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Dystopian
The real question for me is how MegaKey will interact with other 3rd party
software, such as ad-blockers - and how much / what / information they'll be
collecting about my surfing habits (I'm assuming they'll be collecting all of
it so they can better target their ad-serving)

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troebr
It's fine, I'll use MegaAdblock. Is this even legal? Replacing content
providers' ads seems wrong.

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crazypyro
If adblock is legal, this is legal. Instead of ignoring ads, its simply
replacing a websites ads' with their own.

Is it ethical? That is an entirely different question.

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mikemoka
So he is making you a proposal along these lines:

-hey man, come over here, I'll let you listen to music for free if you let me steal money from the websites you visit...do we have a deal?

totally legit.

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CWIZO
Pardon me, but where has the 15% came from? I don't see that number anywhere
in the article.

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Permit
Haha, wow. That's an incredibly novel approach. I won't be surprised if many
here oppose it as it strips revenue from deserving websites and redirects it
to Dotcom.

Is it any worse than AdBlock, though?

~~~
randomchars
And what if I make something that does this too? If you have 10 applications
all trying to replace 15% of ads on the web what will happen?

~~~
Danieru
A situation similar to the Birthday Problem:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem>

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frozenport
I can't wait until Project Glass takes this approach with our vision :-)

~~~
Lexarius
I can't wait until I can install AdBlock-AR and replace real ads with pictures
of adorable kittens.

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nnnnni
How long until someone cracks it to prevent the url rewriting?

