One World, One Internet
Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but it seems like there's a lot of stupid things going on with the internet these days. First I read a post at BoingBoing that says the Supreme Court says that material is obscene if any community in the US objects. Honest, I know a lot of people are worried about porn and other nasty stuff on the Internet, but seriously, this ain't the way to deal with it. Think about it -- there are some seriously freaky people out there with some whacked-out ideas of what's obscene. I don't think it's a good idea to let any community decide for the whole US what's obscene. I'd hate to think that I could be charged with a federal crime just because somebody representing some ultraconservative community somewhere in the United States decided that something on my blog was obscene.
Of course I don't have to worry about that too much since I'm in Australia. But then again our politicians are trying to do some fairly stupid things over here, too. On Tuesday, the leader of our federal Opposition, Kim Beazley, announced the Australian Labor Party's plan to make all Australian ISPs use filters to provide a "clean feed" to all Australian households, schools, and anywhere else that provides internet access that might be used by children. Electronic Frontiers Australia does a pretty good job explaining why this is a bad idea. I can understand why a lot of parents worry about their kids using the Net (including my friend Terry at The Affiliate Marketing Blog who's written a great post about keeping your kids safe online recently). I think every parent needs to be aware of what's going on online, and to be aware of what their kids are doing online. And to educate themselves about what they need to do to protect their children online. But I don't think making ISPs filter content is the way to go. If parents want content filtered, they need to do it at home.
So what does any of this have to do with FreeCashSpace? Apart from the possibility that my blog might be end up filtered even though it's not nasty, I guess I'm just thinking a lot about how these sorts of things can fragment the Internet. Like a lot of the proposals for tiered network traffic, I think it's all a bad idea. It seems to have a lot more with trying to take control or make more profits than it does with giving people better services. Which brings me to the thing that got me started on this in the first place. BoingBoing had another post from Cory Doctorow about Yahoo's new requirement that everybody serving ads through their Yahoo Publisher Network has to find a way to make sure the ads aren't viewed by non-US readers. Again, I understand that advertisers may not want their ads viewed by non-US readers, but it seems to me Yahoo should be the one dealing with it, either by serving up PSAs or whatever, or simply not charging the advertisers for any clicks that come from non-US IPs. Easy. Done. Why put the burden on the publisher? Because I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is that a lot of publishers are just going to block non-US traffic to make sure they don't risk losing their YPN account.
Can you imagine if Google did this with Adsense? Can you imagine what a mess it would be if every website with an Adsense ad on it blocked all non-US traffic? What a freaking nightmare! And I'm not saying that to get into a Google vs Yahoo thing, I'm just trying to show how bad it could get if YPN ever gets as popular as Adsense. I hope that if publishers are going to try to comply with Yahoo's 'No Non-US Traffic' demands, they at least do it with more subtle redirections, rather than just outright blocking. Send me to a copy of your page that doesn't have the YPN ads and as long as your redirect doesn't take long, I may never even know what I'm missing.
But before you do even that, I hope you'll take time to think about whether that sort of thing is to your benefit, or Yahoo's. Because just like with Adsense or any other advertising program, I think there are only so many hoops a publisher can jumpt through before it has a serious negative impact on the relationship between the publisher and the readers. I've been thinking about that a lot after reading Chris Garrett's post called Adsense Blogs vs Sticky Blogs at Performancing.com. At the end of the day, are you putting your audience first or your sponsor first?
Of course I don't have to worry about that too much since I'm in Australia. But then again our politicians are trying to do some fairly stupid things over here, too. On Tuesday, the leader of our federal Opposition, Kim Beazley, announced the Australian Labor Party's plan to make all Australian ISPs use filters to provide a "clean feed" to all Australian households, schools, and anywhere else that provides internet access that might be used by children. Electronic Frontiers Australia does a pretty good job explaining why this is a bad idea. I can understand why a lot of parents worry about their kids using the Net (including my friend Terry at The Affiliate Marketing Blog who's written a great post about keeping your kids safe online recently). I think every parent needs to be aware of what's going on online, and to be aware of what their kids are doing online. And to educate themselves about what they need to do to protect their children online. But I don't think making ISPs filter content is the way to go. If parents want content filtered, they need to do it at home.
So what does any of this have to do with FreeCashSpace? Apart from the possibility that my blog might be end up filtered even though it's not nasty, I guess I'm just thinking a lot about how these sorts of things can fragment the Internet. Like a lot of the proposals for tiered network traffic, I think it's all a bad idea. It seems to have a lot more with trying to take control or make more profits than it does with giving people better services. Which brings me to the thing that got me started on this in the first place. BoingBoing had another post from Cory Doctorow about Yahoo's new requirement that everybody serving ads through their Yahoo Publisher Network has to find a way to make sure the ads aren't viewed by non-US readers. Again, I understand that advertisers may not want their ads viewed by non-US readers, but it seems to me Yahoo should be the one dealing with it, either by serving up PSAs or whatever, or simply not charging the advertisers for any clicks that come from non-US IPs. Easy. Done. Why put the burden on the publisher? Because I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is that a lot of publishers are just going to block non-US traffic to make sure they don't risk losing their YPN account.
Can you imagine if Google did this with Adsense? Can you imagine what a mess it would be if every website with an Adsense ad on it blocked all non-US traffic? What a freaking nightmare! And I'm not saying that to get into a Google vs Yahoo thing, I'm just trying to show how bad it could get if YPN ever gets as popular as Adsense. I hope that if publishers are going to try to comply with Yahoo's 'No Non-US Traffic' demands, they at least do it with more subtle redirections, rather than just outright blocking. Send me to a copy of your page that doesn't have the YPN ads and as long as your redirect doesn't take long, I may never even know what I'm missing.
But before you do even that, I hope you'll take time to think about whether that sort of thing is to your benefit, or Yahoo's. Because just like with Adsense or any other advertising program, I think there are only so many hoops a publisher can jumpt through before it has a serious negative impact on the relationship between the publisher and the readers. I've been thinking about that a lot after reading Chris Garrett's post called Adsense Blogs vs Sticky Blogs at Performancing.com. At the end of the day, are you putting your audience first or your sponsor first?
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