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

Re: Click Fraud Looms As Search-Engine Threat

AES (siegman@stanford.edu)
Mon, 14 Feb 2005 09:04:40 -0800

In article <telecom24.66.9@telecom-digest.org>, AES
<siegman@stanford.edu> wrote:

> 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]

Thank you for the kind assessment; and I've encountered the same
situation also, which is absolutely infuriating.

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