Free.fr has been trying for years to force big content providers, and especially Google, to participate in ISPs' infrastructure costs. This move is most likely a way to dry up AdSense revenue, hoping that Google will cave in.<p>Free.fr, and beyond the company its boss Xavier Niel, has a consistent track record of pissing of big players in established markets. Niel made his wealth with Minitel, including sex and dating sites, then consistently disrupted networking markets with Free.fr:<p>* they first sold dialup connection for the cost of a local communications, without ads;<p>* they established the price of unlimited ADSL around €30/month;<p>* they introduced TV over IP and free phone calls over IP through the freebox (the ADSL router that comes with a free.fr subscription)<p>* they started a bandwidth race, offering tens of MB/s when historic operators were stuck at 512KB/s.<p>* they slashed mobile phone prices: no subsidized phones, no contract, but unlimited calls and data (bandwitdth capped beyond 3GB/month) for less than 20€/month.<p>Their whole business model has always been about pissing off fat cats, big time. They're trying their luck against Google.
I have a hard time empathizing with the ad companies in this case.<p>I'd rather pay money for many of these services, but I'm rarely given the option. In the meantime, my browsing is regularly interrupted by ads that I have to click through, ads I have to wait through, ads that pop up and block what I was trying to read, and ads that play noises I don't want to hear.<p>I think it is fast becoming time where ads as a source of revenue for a site is going away; it's time for people to find better ways to monitize the content they're publishing.
That is disgusting. ISP have no job of interfering with any traffic to the end user. Their role is to be just dumb pipes that provide bandwidth.<p>They should not inspect or monitor their users traffic for any reason short of court order.
I setup a new router today (ASUS RT-N66u) with TomatoUSB; it lets one run scripts and I installed a script that does ad-blocking on everything / all devices.<p>I found the script here
<a href="http://www.shadowandy.net/2012/11/adblocking-with-tomatousb-router-ad-free-internet-for-all-your-devices.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.shadowandy.net/2012/11/adblocking-with-tomatousb-...</a><p>It seems to be working pretty well so far.
This serves as a good example of how net neutrality rules would impinge users’ rights and give big(ger) business an advantage.<p>This is not a net-neutral move by the Free.fr. Clearly some content is being treated differently than other content, based on source.<p>However, I think it’s up to users (and by extension, the services they purchase) to decide how to handle web content. Users might or might not like this particular move, who knows. But it’s up to them to keep using the ISP, or to change the setting in the router.<p>Under net neutrality law, should it exist, the ISP’s move would be illegal, no? Which means that Google uses regulation to ensure delivery of its product. Incumbency protection.<p>In fact, look for Google to posit exactly this net neutrality claim. My preference is that Free.fr and Google fight for your affections.
Working in information security, I spent a good amount of time tracking down malware infections on our company's machines. While most of them are from email attachments, a good number of them source from ad servers that have been hijacked to serve malicious content.<p>I see a comment on Ars that says ad-based malware is overblown as a concern, and let me assure you it is not. Hijacked ad servers are an incredibly effective way to spread your malware across many unsuspecting users. If this was overblown, you wouldn't see so many people working so hard to find new browser 0-day exploits.
I cant see this being a good thing for the internet industry. A lot of websites rely on advertising to keep their websites running.<p>Sure users can already do this, but that has been limited to a very small subset of users, and was always user choice. Automatically doing it for everyone through that isp is crazy.<p>I wonder how this could relate to censorship, first ads, what next? Just a thought...
I fear the response from advertisers, which will trigger a technology war that will eat endless computer cycles with complicated ad-content delivery networks.<p>An easy solution is to equate blocking AdSense with blocking Google.com. I am not sure why Google hasn't already taken this step.