Down With Pop-Ups

Things are becoming very interesting on the legal front in the Internet realm. With the U.S. courts blocking RIAA from violating privacy on suspicion of P2P file sharing and the Norwegian courts doing the same thing for DeCSS, the tide is moving away from copyright holders. Of course, then you get decisions like yesterday's against WhenU -- a pop-over advertising firm -- that enjoined its use of pop-ups on copyright grounds in a lawsuit brought by an e-commerce site owner. Judge Downs Pop-Ups in Contrary Decision [InternetNews.com]

Pop-ups are annoying, but it is a dangerous sign when the law uses copyright principles to ban entire technologies. The same thing happened to Napster. The irony, of course, is that the law can't put technology back in the can. So pop-ups are, in the final analysis, going to stand or fall based on their responsiveness to what consumers want. If we don't click 'em, they won't build them!!

 Posted by glenn