Megabox will replace 15% of ads on websites with Mega's own ads

http://bbgamer.co.uk/post/26156196488/megabox-why-its-not-so-awesome

by jarnix • 14 years ago

46 61 14 years ago

bbgamer.co.uk

troebr• 14 years ago

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

crazypyro• 14 years ago

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.

Dystopian• 14 years ago

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)

Permit• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

wmf• 14 years ago

Your computer becomes so slow that you have to reinstall Windows.

adambratt2• 14 years ago

The thing is he'll probably have at least a moderate amount of success with it.

duskwuff• 14 years ago

It's not novel at all, really -- this technique has been used many times before.

The only gotcha is: all the software that's used this technique before has been malware.

nthitz• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

joenathan• 14 years ago

"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?

adambratt2• 14 years ago

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

peteretep• 14 years ago

Also it's two months old

jimrandomh• 14 years ago

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_paulson2• 14 years ago

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.

maxmcd• 14 years ago

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.

jauer• 14 years ago

This has been done wholesale by ISPs for several years.

duked2• 14 years ago

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 !

jbigelow7610• 14 years ago

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

duked2• 14 years ago

Then according to you if you install a software that is ads supported it's a malware too... You may want to rethink your definition or we'll need to pull out all the free section of the android/ios store.

comex2• 14 years ago

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.

kevinpet2• 14 years ago

Downvoted for most blatant use of "malware" to mean "stuff someone doesn't like" as opposed to software that runs without the computer owner's permission or does things other than it claims.

lowboy9• 14 years ago

The only way website operators can be victims of malware is if their site gets a script injected into it. Otherwise they're not a "victim" as much as someone who is negatively affected by a piece of software that a user runs on their computer, whether or not that piece of software is malware or not.

In any case this is moot, because if this is a voluntarily installed piece of software with the user's full intention and knowledge, it's not malware no matter how negatively it affects website owners.

eli• 14 years ago

You're probably right, but I'm not sure a debate over semantics is helpful. It certainly uses the same techniques as some genuine malware and (IMHO) most people would not consider it a fair and legitimate way to make money.

lowboy9• 14 years ago

Shouldn't it be up to the user to decide what she wants to run on her own browser?

If I want to block all ads, I should be able to do that. If I want to replace those ads with kittens, I should be able to do that. If I want to replace those ads with other ads, I should be able to do that because it's my browser.

edit Also, it's useful to talk about semantics here because people are conflating malware with "software that web owners might disagree with".

slig• 14 years ago

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

frozenport• 14 years ago

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

Lexarius• 14 years ago

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

freshbreakfast• 14 years ago

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.

nnnnni• 14 years ago

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

AJ007• 14 years ago

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.

CWIZO• 14 years ago

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

mikemoka• 14 years ago

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.

Megabox will replace 15% of ads on websites with Mega's own ads

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