From: Information Security <guy@panix.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 05:23:37 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Advertising Creepiness
Message-ID: <199811081759.MAA27023@panix7.panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



   >   From owner-ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com Sat Nov  7 16:04:32 1998
   >   To: ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
   >   From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
   >   Subject: IP: Re: A question about the new ISP ruling and email...
   >   Cc: believer@telepath.com
   >
   >   Now *this* should be fun. Someone who claims to be a cypherpunk is now
   >   going to call the copyright police on a non-profit, volunteer news list.

Would you like to know whether it is "fair use" to repost entire articles?

I would.

   >   When the going gets tough, the "tough" rat out the innocent, it appears...

"Innocent" is hardly an accurate description of Michele Moore.

Would you like Information Security to cough up more
color on his netcopping move?

Hey, you ratted me out to the IP list!

;-)

----

   >   From: Steve Mynott <stevem@tightrope.demon.co.uk>
   >   Subject: Re: Advertising Creepiness
   >
   >   On Sat, Nov 07, 1998 at 11:50:05PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
   >    
   >   > Myself, I try to mostly just snip out a few paragraphs of a story and
   >   > comment on them, fair use and all.
   >   >
   >   > My guess is that nearly all of us skip this junk
   >   > completely, and I think marketing studies will someday confirm this.
   >
   >   Click through rates are something like 2%, so most are screening them out.
   >   I rarely noticed what the ads actually said.
   >
   >   > (Yes, I tried the utilities which purport to flush banner ads, but they
   >   > didn't work well (long delays, cruftiness).)
   >
   >   I don't know which ones you have tried but junkbuster 
   >
   >   http://www.junkbuster.org/ (a proxy on port 8000)
   >
   >   works _very_ well on my linux system, particularly with the "blank gif"
   >   patch.
   >
   >   It blanks out 99% of banner gifs, which makes pages like metacrawler and
   >   wired look more visually attractive and load faster.

But, when sites get smarter about using server-side includes,
the I/O delays will still be there.

I think ISPs should offer a proxy service for WWW access. They have
bigger pipes.

This could include an opt-in (configure through an ISP-local WWW page)
adbuster. At the same time, it would to a certain extent anonymize
access.

And let's say cable-modem access becomes wide-spread, and legislation
forces the cable companies to allow ISP choice. I think ISPs that offer
some privacy in user access over this shared medium will have a leg-up
on their competition.

That would involve software residing local to the user's box that
would encrypt access between them and the ISP for WWW, email, ftp, etc.
More than just ssh.

Hey, then you would finally have ads that make clear what encryption
is for the average user: picture two neighbors going to work in the
morning meeting in the elevator, and one starts hinting he knows
what the other was receiving for email, which sites he was surfing...

Maybe the Anonymizer.com people will release/sell such software for ISPs,
and, of course, sans GAK.

---guy