Oh, boy — this is a great example of the old foot-in-mouth disease. As seen on MacFixIt:
Last week we mentioned a company called “Popuptraffic.com” that was directly boasts about their ability to subvert pop-up blockers.
MacFixIt reader David Ourisman had an interesting exchange with a representative from “Popuptraffic.com”, as follows:
David Ourisman wrote: “I am writing to complain about the fact that you are intentionally trying to subvert web users desire not to view pop-under ads. This is a very poor business practice, and I consider any impression from an unwanted advertisement to be an inducement to boycott that advertiser.”
Popuptraffic.com’s response: “How dare you? Let me teach you a little something that you obviously never were able to grasp. If you go to a website and in exchange for taking what that website is providing, you are shown a popup ad, you allow the owner of the site the to recoup some of the very real costs involved with keeping a site online. By using a popup blocker, you are essentially stealing their work. You’re nothing more than a common thief. Sincerely, Ron Holiday.”
What a huge load of bull. People are so easily able to delude themselves into believing their own justifications for their actions — see also conservatives — that they will come up with ridiculous arguments that no sane person would accept.
This is like saying that you’re stealing television programs if you don’t watch the commercials. In the case of television, well, the networks are using our publicly-owned spectrum to broadcast them. If they don’t like it, they can go off the air and deliver their programming some other way. And frankly, if I have to pay for a television program, I sure as hell don’t want to watch any commercials. Next someone will say that if I don’t watch the 10 minutes of ads before a movie I paid $10 to see, then I’m a thief.
Ron Holiday seems to think that it’s his god-given right to annoy the hell out of people because they made the mistake of reading a few words on a website. His intrusive hacks to make ads pop up in your face is hardly a right when plenty of advertisers manage to get their message out without popups.
I think it’s time to tell Popuptraffic.com where they can shove their obnoxious ads and their obnoxious spokesperson.
