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Re: more breaking privacy news (from Wall St Journal via NewsScan)



> question: isn't ad-blocking at an ISP level a barrier to free
> speech? remember that in the past ten years, commercial speech is
> protected speech too.

Well can't one buy TVs that have that feature where you can set it up to
automatically mute the sound on commercials? That's not total ad blocking
but it's certainly close.

They don't close caption commercials do they? Maybe I am wrong but I
though they only close caption some TV shows but never commercials. Isn't
that ad blocking? 

> a little background: in 1996, a chapel hill start up called privnet which
> had a product called "internet fastforward." IF basically killed anything
> that looked like a banner ad. Not that it ever worked quite right, but
> they did get to be an offical plug-in to netscape 2.0 and they were
> immediately threatened with suits from various advertizing organizations.
> They were immediately thereafter bought by Phil Zimmerman and made
> wealthy. IF disappeared completely and so did the suits.
> 
> ==========================================================================
>                              Paul Jones
>    "We must protect our precious bodily fluids!" General Jack D Ripper
> http://MetaLab.unc.edu/pjones/ at the Site Formerly Known As SunSITE.unc.edu
>   pjones@MetaLab.unc.edu   voice: (919) 962-7600     fax: (919) 962-8071 
> ===========================================================================
> 
> 
>