The stealing of traffic from independent Web site publishers has become the biggest threat to the survival of the Internet to date.
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FIND INFORMATION FOR THE ONGOING FIGHT
- eZula
The advertising agency that sells the TopText stolen traffic.
- KaZaA
The new file sharing system designed to infringe on the music industry's copyrights. This software, when downloaded, installs several other pieces of software on your computer to spy on you, one of which is the TopText virus.
- FastTrack
The software company that developed the KaZaA file sharing system and the company that makes money by installing SpyWare and ScumWare on user's computers each time their KaZaA software is downloaded and installed.
- Gator
The software company that developed the Gator system which is now covering up the legitimate advertising on web site not associated with them and inserting banners to completely cover the legitimate banners on the web page as it was designed by the webmaster. They do this to steal money from the webmaster victims and the legitimate advertisers who are paying the web sites to show their banners that Gator is covering up in a desperate attempt to stay in business. Their software also has access to most user's credit card information that is stored on the user's desktop computer. That should make you very nervous.
- FileMix Surf+
The software company that developed the Surf+ system which turns words on web pages into ugly green underlined links leading to their advertiser's web sites, many of whom are pornography related content and products. ScumWare has educated all of their advertisers with the result that they have no advertisers left and have turned off their green scum. However, their software is still active on millions of desktop computers and is doing some very dangerous things to spy on and hijack the browsers on those computers.
- Spedia
This "media" company is the ad sales arm of the Surf+ ScumWare system. They arrange deals with Pay Per Click engines usually by misrepresenting the nature of their stolen traffic. PPC engine Ah-ha.com is the only one desperate enough to still be doing business with them. They also have an arrangement with Commission Junction which allows them to send their useless traffic through Commission Junction's system and they both share in the money generated from the useless traffic.
- Information Week
An article from July describing the Dutch company FastTrack's entry into the copyright infringement business.
- Copyright Search
Use this new search site to research copyrights.
- The United States Copyright Office
This is where the law currently in effect in the USA can be read and research into issues related to copyright.
- Better Whois
This Whois is a lot smarter than the average and can dig out data from all of the new registrars.
- Nolo Press
An excellent series of articles on copyright and trade maeks.
- IFPI
An association of recording industry companies. Excellent copyright news and information.
- c/net News.com
Korean song-swap creators indicted
- University of Denver in conjunction with the Privacy Foundation
The Privacy Practices of Web Browser Extensions
- ZDNet UK
Excite@Home snoops on user downloads
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