TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat

Re: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat

AES (siegman@stanford.edu)
Sun, 13 Feb 2005 13:41:50 -0800

In article <telecom24.65.9@telecom-digest.org>, Michael D. Sullivan
<userid@camsul.example.invalid> wrote:

> It's different, however, when someone sets out deliberately to impose
> unnecessary costs on a business, as opposed to shopping in good faith
> as a consumer. If Cartier's, for example, sent people into Tiffany's
> to tie up their salespeople, and Tiffany's suffered lost sales, then
> Tiffany's might have grounds for a lawsuit against Cartier's.

Question for Michael Sullivan:

Is it different when the _business_ sets out deliberately to impose
unnecessary or unwanted costs (however minor) on the _individual_?

Suppose while passing by Cartier's front door on my way back to work I
drop into their store to make a quick good-faith query about one of
their products.

I discover after doing this, however, that they won't let me back out
their front door again. I can only leave via a rear door, which
forces me to walk through an arcade filled with display windows for
their mechandise or other related merchandise and then dumps me out on
the next street, a block in the opposite direction from my initial
destination. Turns out they get paid small amounts by the other
merchants for doing this.

Is the analogy to certain kinds of hidden pop-up window ads clear
enough? Would retaliatory actions on my part be justified? (e.g, if
there were pushbuttons in the arcade to serve me with catalogs, could
I justifiably push several of them and dump the catalogs on the
floor?)

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your point is a *very good one*. I
have even had some bozos (but in fairness, they are usually the
sex purveyors) not let me leave at all, dumping one new window after
another at me without any absolute way out short of recyling power
on the computer. PAT]

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