Commercial Sites follow up

In the last week or so I posted about commercial sites capturing free sites in frames under their sign-ins, advertising banners and site logos.

I'm happy to say that the main offender, 3dcadtips.com, has reconsidered his format and now links directly to external sites such that the external site is seen in its intended context. Most web browsers have a "back" button if you choose to use it.

Here are some of people who post here (or have in the past), companies, resellers and even competing commercial forums who had their sites or data hijacked in this way:

Rob Rodriguez Scott Baugh Paul Salvador Sean Dotson Sean Adams Ed Eaton Matt Lombard SolidWorks Corp CAP Inc (SW Reseller who I'm sure was thrilled to have their name under the Autocad ad banners) CAD Digest Fisher/Unitech (another SW reseller) GoEngineer Eng-Tips (a competing commercial forum) Design Point (SW reseller) Amazon.com MIT

3D content central

In many cases he is still linking to sites that require sign ins. It gets silly after a while. Why would you sign in to a site that is just re-posting what you can get from the original source without the spam and spinning flash ads? Anyway, he removed the offending frames.

These guys that run these ad-ridden commercial sites all make the point that the sites are expensive to maintain, which I understand, but adding advertisements is their choice, and going elsewhere is my choice. They also all make the point that the sign in is to avoid spammers, but how is unwanted commercial advertisement ok when its on a website and not ok when its in an email? I guess I fail to see the difference. Plus, they just spam your email address anyway once you sign in.

Reply to
matt
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I am glad to see that 3DCADTips has chosen to take the high road and display the sites and tutorinls int their own browser window the way they should be displayed.

While I agree that signing into 3DCADTrips just to get to a link is silly and he might be selling the addresses to other companies, I don't agree that all logins are ill natured.

Take for example my forums. The reason I require a sign in is to keep the spammers from POSTING to the forums. It's a moderation technique. No one wants to view posts that make no sense directing you to the latest "male enhancement" product. So I require a login to post (not to read, just to post). I don't catch them all but it deters most. Have you seen forums where they do NOT require logins? They are ridden with garbage. Even this newsgroup falls prey to it.

And by the way, with most webforums, you can hide you email address once you sign in to avoid getting mail spam.

Reply to
Sean Dotson

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