Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrismorgan | Hacker News Reader

Blogspam for https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/terry-pratchett-and....

The whole thing was a holdover from the 50s or 60s, when practices like that were more common

I hope to heck in another 50 years they'll look back at all the ads on the web, in smart home assistants, etc. with the same disdain.

Here’s hoping, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Ford is going to start forcing ads on you in your own car [0], and Samsung is planning to make all of its devices “smart”. I can’t wait for the day when my overpriced microwave forces me to watch a 30 second ad before it cooks my food.

It used to be that if you weren’t paying, you were the product. But these companies figured out something better - they can make you pay to be the product.

[0] https://techxplore.com/news/2021-05-ford-infotainment-screen...

So this article about injecting an ad into an author’s work without their consent, was made by taking content from another author, repackaging it, and sticking an ad in it?

Impressive chutzpah.

Does anyone have any kind of explanation for the blacked out section?

Probably just a desire to

1. Outline the ad bits, and show that they are integrated in the middle of the text (aka it’s not a page of soup ad in the middle of the novel as you might assume).

2. Limit the risks of IP issues due to unauthorised reproduction even though this is just two pages out of a 350-odd pages novel (so almost certainly fair use).

The author of the article lives in Germany where fair use is not a thing.

There's a right to quote copyright-protected works https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__51.html ( EDIT: in English: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur... ) which often boils down to the same thing, even though it's not literally called "fair use".

All of § 44a - § 53 carve various exceptions. There's not just the right to quote, though I think it may be the most applicable one here.

The black bars are printed like that into the book. They have nothing to do with the reproduction of the ad, they are part of the original ad.

Interesting theories in the replies.

But no, those blacked out sections are there in the original book, not added by the blog poster. Probably to stretch the few ad sentences over a whole page (or two).

No idea, either.

Probably just to fill the pages and maybe to amaze the reader and spend more time on the ad pages.

I have a german edition of a Battletech novel, which has a similar ad for the same 5-min-soup, and the ad itself introduces the blacked out lines.

As a teenager I found this exact same ad in a Star Trek novel from the library. My first naive impression with these black bars was exactly as you said, that the original text is "under" them and just stuff incidentally referring to soup was left visible. "Look how clever we are, changing a replicator scene to a noodle-soup scene with just a bit of tweaking".

But it wasn't, of course. Its just a way to make you read it because you think its somehow still part of the novel. After the ad, the whole page starts again with its real (and completely different) content.

They inserted full page ads in the middle of the book. They dind't want / couldn't change the original text (I think).

I might even be fine with it, if it is printed on a different paper, uses the characters in a clever way, and placed correctly.

Yes, nothing I like better when immersed in a fantasy world than to read an ad for some shitty IRL product. Not at all jarring.

It's to distinguish the ad from the regular text.

Sorry, didn't know! Your source is better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com