Item — HN Reader

The first use case they mention is restricting ad fraud (and, presumably, ad blocking):

> Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they're human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.

So if this goes forward, websites will be able to call the web environment integrity API to check you are a proper ad-watching human before serving content.

1 comments

"Your contract with the network when you get the show is, you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Anytime you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing programming."

Jamie Kellner's words still ring true today. When corporations make content available supported by advertisements, they are assuming a moral obligation on your part to see those advertisements. Violating that obligation is felony contempt of business model.

Jesus, I thought this was satire, but this guy is for real.

Not a lawyer, but in my understanding, the core property of a contract is that both sides are aware of it, in particular of their obligations in the contract. There must also be a defined moment the contract is concluded.

This is specifically not the case with ads: Ad-supported services are frequently advertised as "for free", not in the sense that ads are the "payment". Even if they were, they would be unlike any other business transaction as the service provider is free to change the "price" (i.e. amount of ads shown) at any time.

That's not even considering all the situations where you're subjected to ads without receiving any kind of service - or where something that you paid money for suddenly starts to show you ads too.

Felony contempt of business model indeed, as well as theft of assumed future profits!

But why should I care about the contract when the providers violates it as well? When you provide your services in the country I reside in but refuse to follow our national laws, you have violated the contract as well.

I live in Norway, and even "serious" advertisers shows me alcohol and gambling advertisiments. This is strictly forbidden by norwegian law, yet I have seen multiple advertisements of this kind from Google, Facebook and Discovery. Discovery in particular has just recently agreed to follow the law for television broadcasts, to be fair.

GDPR is also violated a lot, especially by advertising corporations. I have never consented to the vast amount of tracking that I'm subjected to when browsing the internet, even though I have that right.

It's not like they are obligated to provide services to my country either. If european laws are too strict, they can always leave instead of violating our rights.

You don't have a contract with the network. The advertisers do. The network is committed to deliver audiences to the advertisers in return for money. The way they do this is by showing content that the audience wants to watch. You don't owe neither of them nowt.

This is sarcasm right? Because otherwise it sounds like going to the bathroom during a commercial would be illegal.

Kellner did add "I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom." But if your bathroom breaks become too frequent, I guess you run the risk of "actually stealing programming".

Looking forward to the debates about the precise number and length of bathroom breaks per session that the networks would be willing to grant.

(I'm very sure they'll be willing to work out reasonable solutions for edge cases - i.e. you'll be granted up to 2 extra bathroom breaks if you have a corresponding medical condition. Just connect your Netflix and Samsung accounts with your healthcare provider's and they'll figure out the rest. We're all humans after all!)

Verification can solves this.

Don't worry, Sony's already figured this out out https://www.creativebloq.com/sony-tv-patent

McDonalds!