Now Google is an ad agency that currently has the world’s best internet search engine ‘bolted’ onto it. Take the search engine away and Google will either collapse and disappear or join the other ‘MAD MEN’ in New York City….

It is and THEY DON’T CARE!!!

It’s just greed, pure and simple.

Some of the fees collected is invested in the company and the bulk of it is likely blown on wasteful mass advertising, a multibillion dollar industry that ultimate causes MORE problems than it solves!

Push-based advertising is dead…the internet KILLED it!

We have the internet, search engines, and word of mouth.

This is why Google Adwords is so WILDLY successful because it is pull-based. If you search on Google for X they will show you ads for X because it is relevant to what you are searching for. If you are a ‘hardcore’ Google user, you will ignore these ads because they didn’t come up ‘organically’ in the search results.

For people not able to get online (easily), there are (cell)phones, phonebooks, their five senses, and word of mouth.

I found my way here after seeing one of the characters in this webcomic fanarted by ANOTHER webcomic artist. This is the use of one of the five senses along with a variation of word of mouth.

I probably NEVER would have come here if that series of events HAD NOT happened. I virtually NEVER click on any sort of advertising unless the ad copy or the banner ad TRULY piques my interest (which is ALMOST never).

A search engine that can replace Google would have to offer Google-quality web searches minus all the advertising and ‘spamdexing’ that plagues it and makes it less effective.

Fortunately, their isn’t enough of them online to make the ‘free internet’ collapse into oblivion…just yet.

But their numbers are growing daily as users leave an ad-clogged ‘meatspace’ in developed nations, go online, and are bombarded by all sorts of advertising and malware coded as fraudulent cash grab attemps (theft).

I read recently a VERY useful website spent $30 on Google Adwords and got NOTHING in return.

So they got featured on another site that A LOT of people on the internet visit and got exposure. People there decried this as a disguised advertisement but the website owner got what he wanted there where the money spent on ‘pure’ advertising was just wasted (in the end).

It looks like promotion/exposure on high ranking, high traffic sites relevant to the content being promoted is advertisng of the future — it is the internet version of product placement done in the entertainment media.

it is described here in detail:

http://www.seobook.com/freetards

In essence this whole debate/issue boils down to this…

The internet has made ANYTHING that can be stored as a computer file have a value of ESSENTIALLY $0.00 It is not $0.00 due mainly to hardware and manpower needed to keep the internet online.

At the dawn of the WWW back in 1995 or so, business-savvy companies and people saw the internet as a potential moneyspinner/resource stream so they invested in it. The best way they did this was giving away content as a ‘loss leader’ to get some people to pay for the ‘premium’ content and generate profit for their enterprise. Fast forward to today (2013), and most people online EXPECT to recieve ANY AND ALL content for free no matter what! This is why there is such a $#!+storm flying about online over ‘piracy’ and ‘copyright’ — really copyright infringement which is a tangible drain on the bottom line of ANY commercial endeavor not involving 3-dimensional objects for sale.

Somebody said something online that best describes the freetard mindset. To paraphrase somewhat, they said:

“I paid for my internet connection, I WILL NOT pay for anything else (computer files) I find online.”

THIS is what has content creators up in arms about.

Some give up.

Some keep trying.

Some fight back against the freetards/infringers (REAL piracy is raiding ships and killing people like in Somalia) with DRM, forced advertising, and the like to ‘insure’ they get paid for their efforts. This group is ‘under fire’ the most with ‘bellyaching’ by the freetards and infringement by the infringers which includes ‘crackers’ — talented computer programmers who are able to remove DRM from commercial content and redistribute the unprotected content for free (with or without malware imbeded), or for pay (and the original owner gets NOTHING).

The best example of this is the DVD / HD-DVD / Blu-Ray content protection and presentation specifications.

They are ALL broken.

This is why they were broken.

They all consist of three parts: the content, the descrabling alogrithm, and the descrambling key. For non-elite programmers, this protection system works and in the case of DVDs worked well from 1995 to 1999.

In 1999, three programmers reversed engineered the descrambling algorithm and managed to extract a working ‘player key’ from another software DVD player to release ‘
DeCSS’ to the internet to wide acclaim and revulsion.

The security specifications mentioned above protect content from attackers seeking to liberate it from its protections yet give them all they need to do so. All it takes is time, talent and determination to make such ‘breaks’ a reality.

Nowadays, ‘Big Media’ has lobbied governments to enact draconian anti-infringement laws (such as the DMCA) and has successfully pressured computer and media player manufacturers to employ anti-infringement technology in the devices they manufacture.

However, this is eventurally all for naught due to what is called ‘the analog hole’.

No matter how much protection is layered on content in the digital domain, it STILL has to be decrypted into the analog domain to be seen and heard and understood. At this point, the content can be captured by recording devices across this ‘air gap’ and redistributed for free with a small loss in quality against the content owner’s wishes.

So really it seems that infringement is simply a pricing problem.

Price your content cheaply enough to make infringement a waste of time and resources and count on the law of large numbers to make enough sales to make your endeavors financially worthwhile.

I voted ‘with my wallet’ and bought the chaper 5 only ebook and found it was well worth the purchase and enabled me to support in a small way the people responsible for this wonderful webcomic I am reading through to get to the most current page posted.

Thank you for taking time to read this lengthy post,

InstantSpinneretteFan

If the ghost of Steve Jobs chips in 6 hours per page for an e-book, I’ll consider giving Apple a 30% cut.