There is a problem that commercial web sites, particularly ones that serve news feeds need to consider. That other commercial web sites may use your 'printer-friendly' feature, intended for individuals to print out stories on their printers, as a method to link to your stories while removing your ads. I first noticed www.worldnetdaily.com and www.drudgereport.com doing this to yahoo news. Both of these sites are high volume sites that make their money by linking to stories. By adding '&printer=1" to links, about 90% of yahoo's ads are removed. This means that yahoo serves the stories, but doesn't get paid. This seems very dishonest to me, especially considering that the other sites are also commercial, and make their money this way. The vendor yahoo has been contacted. Suggestions: Change your TOS to explicitly cover this type of malicious activity and damages you might seek. Seek out high volume sites taking advantage of your sites and send them warning letters. Reconsider if you really need a printer friendly function. Max Kennedy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Apr 29 2002 - 13:36:52 PDT