p2pnet.net news view:- The MPAA and Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, which own it, reckon we’ll put up with anything. And the likes of Reuters agrees.

Buried under the video intrusion ad on the right is a story which goes, “An Internet watchdog on Tuesday accused Ethiopia of blocking scores of anti-government Web sites and millions of blogs in one of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest cases of cyber-censorship. Web monitor, the OpenNet Initiative, said the Horn of Africa country was stopping citizens from viewing opposition-linked Web sites, and blogs hosted by Blogger, an online journal community owned by Internet search engine Google Inc.”

But, “Ethiopia dismissed the report as “a baseless allegation,” says Reuters.

Ironically, the headline is: Ethiopia blocks opposition Web sites …

… and so does the ad if you accidentally move your mouse upwards (or downwards, if you’re at the top of the page), because the story is immediately obscured by a video for a Hollywood movie with a very loud, and equally obtrusive, soundtrack.

And the ad isn’t even about Ethiopia. It’s “about the relationship between Nelson Mandela and James Gregory, one of his prison guards, based on the allegedly fraudulent book Goodbye Bafana: Nelson Mandela, My Prisoner, My Friend by James Gregory,” says the Wikipedia.

I guess they figured since both countries are in Africa, it’d be OK.

“I landed on a CNET page carrying a Reuters wire piece on the subject,” I posted in March, going on:

But I didn’t get around to actually reading it, thanks to this stupid and intrusive Mac idiot ad.

How the hell are you supposed to properly take in a story with that kind of drivel churning away beside it?

But I guess these kinds of video ads are marginally better than the floaters which suddenly appear in the middle of a page, or other ’smart’ advertising gimmicks which serve only to turn people off and do zip for the product or media carrying it. And they must be effective or the advertisers wouldn’t bother. Would they?

The clip on the upper right is an example of a floater.

Will the Hollywood/Reuters vidi-ad make me go to Goodbye Banana, or whatever the flick is called? Not.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Reuters – Ethiopia blocks opposition Web sites -watchdog, May 1, 2007
posted – Tacky Apple ads wreck stories, March 27, 2007

If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.

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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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