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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I've only seen the "tricky" Download Now buttons on shady video websites (read: those that have all the episodes of Seinfeld on them).

Though I've had more and more invasive ads in newspaper sites (the fact that I get so many ads on NYT's site despite being a subscriber is frustrating to say the least), I do like keeping free websites running. I find using ABP to be somew immoral , violating the contract with which you're looking at someone's content. I have less sympathy for people who are basically showing stolen content (not technically stolen , but still), though...

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They are pretty common on program download sites, not just on pirate sites.

http://marc.durdin.net/2012/08/rant-of-the-day-the-big-green...

> the fact that I get so many ads on NYT's site despite being a subscriber is frustrating to say the least

Have you never seen the print edition of the NYT (or any other newspaper)? Since they just use news to fill in the otherwise blank areas between ads the motto really should be all the news that fits, we print.

"they just use news to fill in the otherwise blank areas between ads"

That is pretty much literally true. When I worked on a student newspaper, it was pretty common for the advertising manager to rush in to the editorial offices and say things like "I've just sold another full-page ad, so we're going to be printing extra pages - do you have any copy to fill them?"

> When I worked on a student newspaper, it was pretty common for the advertising manager to rush in to the editorial offices and say things like "I've just sold another full-page ad, so we're going to be printing extra pages - do you have any copy to fill them?"

Perhaps at a student paper, though that's considered a pretty huge ethical breach. I can attest that the New York Times definitely does not do that; they take this separation very seriously. Even at their headquarters, as of relatively recently, business and editorial enter through separate elevators, as they are on opposite sides of the building.

There definitely are publications without such strong and heavily enforced senses of editorial ethics, but the New York Times is not one of them.

I agree about the Times, but what in the story about the student paper constituted an ethical breach? The ads were not influencing copy, just allowing more to be printed.

That's bollocks - it's not in the slightest an ethical breach to do that. It's just advertising working with production to make the product. We're not talking about running advertorial or anything.

The papers I've worked on usually had a little flexibility in terms of extra copy or advertising to populate pages as required.

> it's not in the slightest an ethical breach to do that. It's just advertising working with production to make the product.

Well, that by definition would be considered an ethical violation at a paper like the Times. Not at a student paper, no, but at the New York Times, definitely.

No, it wouldn't. By definition, the advertising department has to talk to production to establish runs and page counts. I guarantee that this happens at the NYT, because a paper could not possibly be produced without this process.

What possible ethical issue is there?

They're not asking for any adjustment to the content, but for extra content, eg a feature piece that isn't tied to a particular date. Bear in mind that a full-page ad only covers one side of the paper so you need something for the reverse side, and newspapers are generally printed on folding sheets (ie 4 pages to a sheet), so that means 3 extra pages to be filled. It's not like the advertising department content is suggesting which content to use. Every newspaper has a variable pile of feature material whose exact publication date depends on the size of the print run, which is highly variable.

I'm curious about what you think the ethical breach here is. Advertising and editorial departments have to coordinate on practical matters like page layout.

No, that's entirely wrong. That's how the layout for a newspaper is established and the news budget (meaning what will fit in the paper) is set — it's mostly based on the size and requirements of the ads that will run in that day's paper. If you have a really important story (or a dearth of advertisers), you might add pages for editorial content without regard to ads and fill the layout holes with house ads, but the actual size of the paper is determined by your advertising. That's literally what's paying for the paper you're printing on.

I recall having bad experience with these things on (or via?) sourceforge. It's probably the main reason why sourceforge dropped to last resort for me.

cnet.com is a particularly egregious offender - I also stopped DLing anything from there because they started bundling things inside a wrapper of crapware.

They're a plague on SourceForge.

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