DoGood — How They Abuse Good Cause to Make Money
I just came across this website, DoGood, which provides a browser plugin called DoGooder that swaps website publishers’ banner ads with DoGood’s banner ads. Their rationale is that the banners they serve are all Green-related or philanthropic. I just published an article about documentary filmmakers who exploit good causes to promote their own careers. This is another example of how people exploit their association with good causes. The trick is to use the cause as a disguise so that the audience does not notice the exploitation.
What they are doing is stealing. They are stealing the contents (intellectual properties) that the advertisers paid for. Whether the advertisers are “good” or evil (or “generic”) is besides the point. Even if the products that they are selling are not “good” or “philanthropic”, these advertisers have the right to make their own decisions about the good causes they may want to contribute from their profit (or not). Advertising is a way for them to increase that profit.
DoGood accepts website publishers’ requests to be on their exemption list if they too serve Green-related banners. This would basically mean that most major publishers like New York Times would be exempted from it, which in turn means that DoGood will be stealing mostly from the little guys who barely make money from their websites.
On their website, DoGood assures publishers that they will still get paid for their ads, presumably because the plugin will still act as though it is requesting the real ads from the ad servers. But if the ads are not displayed, nobody will ever click on them. For the publishers, these clicks are the real sources of their income.
If DoGood was a plug-in written by some college student who makes no money from it, I wouldn’t have any problem with it, but DoGood is a private business. Even though they claim to donate 50% of the profit, they are still pocketing the other 50%. Even if DoGood was a non-profit organization, they would still be paying salaries to themselves. There are plenty of web-based projects where unpaid volunteers pitch in their time to keep them going. That would be an acceptable solution too. But DoGood is a business. Let’s not get fooled.
Any money that DoGood receives from their advertisers (not just their profit, I mean any money they receive) equates to the value of the goods (banner impressions) that the advertisers were supposed to receive for the money they paid, but were stolen by DoGood. And, also the clicks the publishers lost. Remember: DoGood does not provide any content. There is nobody working hard at DoGood writing articles, creating artworks, or shooting photographs. So, they have zero cost for generating contents.
It’s like the music sharing programs. There is a big ethical difference between those that make no money and those that do. I have no interest in protecting the music industry but if any music sharing services were making profit from letting their users share MP3 files without paying any licensing fees to the music publishers, I would find it unethical too. If such a service were to donate 50% of their profit, would it make their business ethical? I’d say no. If donating 50% of the profit makes anything OK, hell, let’s sell drugs or steal other people’s properties, and donate half of it.
Furthermore, the problem with this type of Robin-hood-esque self-righteousness is that it disregards the rights of others and disrespects the differences in opinion about what constitutes good and bad. They put themselves up on a moral high ground and force others to eat their moral standards. To add insult to injury, DoGood is making money from that process. I would question the integrity of any organizations that pay DoGood to deliver their ads.
Let’s not get fooled by these shrewd people who abuse good causes for their own benefit.
UPDATES AND CORRECTIONS:
In the discussion that follows this post, the founder of DoGood Faisal Sethi and I debated the details of this post. I initially said that I did not misunderstand anything, but there is one thing I did misunderstand and should correct. The criteria for being on their exemption list is not based on what banners the publishers serve. They are evaluated by the content of their sites, and this evaluation is “subjective”, meaning DoGood decides what passes as “good”.
They actually do not discriminate the banner ads they are swapping. That is, even if the publishers are serving philanthropic banners, DoGood will replace them with their own philanthropic banners, essentially depriving the publishers of their rights to decide what is “good”. He tries to argue this by saying the users can at any point view the original banners by a mouse click, but this is clearly a disingenuous answer. Who would deliberately choose to see banner ads?
Faisal emailed me and said that he no longer wishes to continue this debate, so the discussion is closed. The reason why he does not want to continue is because he believes I’m accusing him of deliberate misconduct. I’d like to clarify that. From the tone of my writing above, I admit that the readers could interpret it that way. So, I should clarify: I do not believe what they do is a deliberate misconduct (like Spammers). I think they are blinded by their own self-righteousness. This is why I described them as “Robin-hood-esque”. Their “good” intensions are misguided and therefore have grave consequences for many publishers and content creators. This is what I’m concerned about and tried to debate about.
—posted by Dyske » Follow me on Twitter or on Facebook Page
Dyske,
Many thanks for your thoughtful opinions and insight. Having an open and challenging dialogue is the only way we can continue to evaluate our model and do better. I appreciate your concerns and find your points of view intriguing and full of passion. That being said, I think it is important for you to do your due diligence before making assertions that may or may not have any merit. Any concept / story can be spun in a negative or positive manner, and I suppose, only we and we alone can know our motivations.
“Let’s not get fooled by these shrewd people who abuse good causes for their own benefit.” I assure you, I am far from shrewd
I actually have no academic business background. In fact, quite the opposite– I have a sociology degree and have been a Creative Director / Designer/ Musician / Writer and self proclaimed Renaissance Man for the better part of the last 15 years. I actually am, by all accounts, a starving artist.
Many of the campaigns we run, specifically for charities and non-profits are in fact pro-bono. We even often donate our creative services to create compelling campaigns for them. I am not so sure this reflects an exploitative nature– the feedback from organizations has been exceptionally positive, and extremely humbling. We are a Social Enterprise, and as such, are not bound by traditional capitalist conventions. Our bottom lines are people, planet and on a tertiary level, profit.
In terms of intellectual property, we are in fact doing the opposite to what many ubiquitous ad blockers are doing today– literally changing the HTML of pages to cut out ads, therefore effecting the publishers bottom line. That is an important distinguishing factor between ad blocking technology and ours. In addition, you fail to mention that at anytime an end user can see the original ads on any site by simply right-clicking a web page. They can also allow any web site to ignore the DoGooder altogether for said browsing session. The notion of giving the end-user control of their consumption habits on the Internet is at once wholly unique, and extremely vital for maintaining our independence from the corporate machine. Everyone has the absolute right to see the world and web how the choose to, and by placing limitations on that right, we are prancing down a path of dangerous proportions.
CTR are a moot point in this context. You have to remember, a DoGooder end-user explicitly chooses to see a particular genre of ads, and therefore, a generic ad has little value and relevance to them, the publisher, or the advertiser. In other words, they would be seeing an ad they would never click through anyways– statistics are not effected, and in fact– both little guys and large guys are effected equally, which is to say not really at all.
There are actually many of us working hard, for little or no pay, creative compelling campaigns for clients as well as informational ads about social issues / statistics and environmental issues to help educate and inform end users about concerns that our plaguing our planet and people. Ask my family if they have enjoyed having a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches for the last 14 months while we try and get the goods off the ground. Sure, they are on whole wheat, but you know.
The basis of your argument stems from the notion of a profit being made on the concept. This type of argument is difficult to articulate. We live in a capitalist infrastructure, and as such, we are bound by it’s conventions. When a technology comes out that seemingly disrupts the status quo of the system, even though it is well within it’s legal mores and values, and even more compelling, for the greater good, it becomes “unethical” or an “abuse of the system”. How curious, indeed. Capitalism is brutally efficient, but only benefits the few. Our model suggests that we can work within the limitations of the system to benefit the many.
We are not presumptuous enough to assume that “this” cause is better than “that” cause, and therefore, would never claim to make such a distinction. In terms of ethics, I completely and without hesitation claim that our motivations are most definitely sincere, and in each and every decision we make, in the infamous words of The Mayor from Spike Lee’s classic, we try and “Do The Right Thing.”
Again, many thanks for challenging our own status quo. It is important to question our motivations, our model and our technology from time to time. Unfortunately, what often is lost in these types of debates is the that DoGooder in and of itself will have little or zero effect on publishers or advertisers bottom lines, but it will have a massive impact for the people, communities, and organizations of this dear planet that actually need it the most. And that, we do believe, is most definitely a “good” thing.
Take care, and again, thanks for fighting the good fight. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our door is always open for a good, honest debate. Cheers.
–
Good on you,
Faisal Sethi
Hi Faisal,
I wrote this post on my blog and contacted you partly to learn more about what you guys do, and if I do have wrong assumptions, you have the chance to correct them. But from your response, it appears that my assumptions were all correct.
You say CTRs are a moot point. That is too convenient for you to say. If you were to ask me what “genre” of advertising I would NOT want to see, I would check all of them. After all, who consciously want to see banner ads? But, what happens in reality is that I sometimes come across banners that intrigue me, and I actually click. And, what intrigues me can vary a lot. Sometimes I click because I find the copy funny. Sometimes I click because I just happened to be looking for that particular type of product. Yet, if you ask me if I want to see any type of ads, I would answer no.
This is how most ads works, and how most people respond to ads. We would rather not see them, but we accept them because they are paying for the contents that we are enjoying. Without advertisers many publishers would go out of business and many content creators would lose their jobs.
What you are shrewdly relying on is the so-called “Free Lunch” phenomenon where the loss is spread so widely that the profit appears to come from nowhere. Your business model appears on the facade to have little or no effect on each publisher, so the money you are receiving looks clean. But let’s not get fooled by that; there is no such thing as free lunch, as the economist Milton Friedman said.
To see how your business model impacts the Internet, let’s take it to the extreme, so that the cause and effect become obvious. Let’s say that all Americans decided to install your plugin. What would happen? The advertisers would know that nobody is actually seeing their ads, so they would not bother advertising on the Web. This means that all advertising-driven websites will die. Now, this is just a hypothetical scenario, so it would never happen, but this example allows us to see the entire spectrum of the effect of your business model. We can now consider what happens in-between.
Suppose half of the Americans decided to install your plugin. What would happen then? The advertisers would then know that only half of the impressions are actually being seen by the visitors. So, they will pay for only half of it, which means the value of impressions for all banners will be slashed by half. If the number of visitors do not change, the publisher will lose half of their income.
Now, we can see what happens at any point in this spectrum. However small the percentage of the visitors with your plugin is, you are still stealing money from the advertisers and the publishers. We just cannot quantify it. This is exactly what the “Free Lunch” phenomenon is; profiting at the expense of invisible many. And the same mechanism is at work for most pyramid schemes.
The fact that you are currently poor does not justify your exploitation of Free Lunch. Every evil corporation donates money to philanthropic causes. Even criminals like Bernard Madoff did. This is why I’m concerned about people who abuse good causes to cover up their exploitations. There are many others who are poorer than you and would not do what you do out of principle.
“Our model suggests that we can work within the limitations of the system to benefit the many.” This statement strikes me as hypocritical and ironic. Your model, as I explained above, is taking from “the many” to benefit the few of you and your employees. In this economy, many people would take any jobs, however hard they might be. You’ve created a job that lets you feel good about yourself, earn respect from the unsuspecting do-gooders, and make money at the expense of thousands or even millions. To me, this is all self-serving.
“We are not presumptuous enough to assume that “this” cause is better than “that” cause, and therefore, would never claim to make such a distinction.”
This too is hypocritical. Suppose you swapped an ad for Toyota Prius for one of your ad. By doing so, you are indeed making a judgment that your ad is better than that of Prius. Suppose you swapped an ad for a BMW. Like most other corporations, BMW too supports many worthy causes. Why shouldn’t they deserve an exposure to the site visitors? Why should you be in a position to decide showing your ads are ultimately more beneficial to the world than showing BMW’s ad? Doesn’t BMW deserve to have their opinion too?
Never mind these big corporations. The Internet is filled with banner ads from small businesses too. How do you know that what these small businesses are doing with their money? What if many of them are donating part of their profit to worthy causes also? What if they are not donating any money but they are using many Green technologies to minimize the footprint in their manufacturing? What if they see it as part of their duty and they don’t even advertise that fact? Why should you be in a position to decide whose banners are worthy and whose banners are “generic”, therefore to be swapped with yours?
As I said, if what you are doing is completely volunteer-based, and if you are not making any money from it, I would not object or criticize. There are many such thriving projects on the web. Why couldn’t your project do the same? Just Open Source the whole project. In fact, I think it would be more effective if nobody was making any money from it. Even though this scheme would have its own negative impact on the publishers and advertisers (sort of the way Craig’s List killed the whole classified business for the publishers), at least it would not be the case where the few are benefiting at the expense of many.
Another suggestion:
If the people who install your plugin really want to see your banner ads, why don’t you put them all up on your website and let them come to your site and look at them all? Why do you need to alter other people’s websites?
Even though your ads are for Green-related and philanthropic causes, what if I do not agree with the positions or the business models of some of your advertisers? You would not know that, so your system will swap the banners on my sites and display ads for organizations that I do not approve, or even oppose. What right do you have to alter my websites and disrespect my opinions and values?
You would probably say I can go to your site and request to be on your exemption list. The vast majority of the publishers do not even know your service exists, but their rights are being violated by you. Besides, why do I have to do anything? What makes you think that you are in a position to tell people what to do? Even if it takes 5 minutes to file a request, that’s 5 minutes of my time that I lose to you. Again, the Free Lunch phenomenon, because each loss is so small.
You might also say that you have the permission of the viewers. The silent agreement between the publishers and the viewers is that the former offer free content in exchange for the latter viewing some ads from their sponsors. This is not a one-sided agreement; you need permissions from both sides. It is not up to you to decide whose permissions you need.
To address your suggestion, I am not sure you understand the mechanisms we are trying to counter. There are several barriers to social action that we acquiesce to on a daily basis– searching for relevant social issues/ causes/products and services is not a daily habit of most, but not necessarily for lack of want or need. One of our goals is to break down those barriers.
I’ll try and address a few of your concerns in point form (and please do not take anything below as antagonistic in way shape or form):
- Your sample size is currently one, you cannot in good faith extrapolate your opinion to quantify a substantial claim
- We have no idea what ads are showing on what site, and therefore, again, do not choose to show “this” ad over “that” ad; no self-righteous conscience decisions are being made– we exercise “no right” — our primary focus in this context is the end user, not the destination site
- We (society) do not (generally) accept ads– we have PVR’s, we have ad blockers, some of us even have Beta Max and VHS– we turn the page, we change the channel
- You are painting very broad strokes with semantics without any intimate knowledge of our company, the individuals involved, and their motivations; we’d kindly request you tread with literary caution–the notion of hypocrisy is something I hold with great disdain, and without any real knowledge of who we are, and what we are trying to do, making such statements comes off as very opinionated (which is much different than having an opinion)
- Your general argument again appears to be based on the notion of profit– you clearly would have no issue if we were making zero cash– this completely undermines your other presumptions and arguments– it’s okay if you do what you are doing, but only if you don’t make any money… huh
- Do not so quickly disregard the impact our model will have on the many lives that will benefit from our funding; to continue to suggest it is for the benefit of the few is irrational, and obviously not our motivation– to continually suggest otherwise again suggests that you do not value our responses with sincerity
- The logic behind some of your assertions also suggests circumstances that have no practical reasoning (which you do acknowledge somewhat)– what if the entire world used ad blockers, or PVR’s, or watched TV on their computer instead of their TV’s–yes, that would fundamentally change an industry– but it would never happen, and even if it did, without disruptive technologies, there would be little innovation
- So, it was cool that Craiglist disrupted and killed the whole classified businesses for publishers, but still makes a profit– it’s cool that Google scrapes information from news sources and makes a profit et al — curiously, would you discontinuing using Google products and services (and perhaps you already do)– it’s very “convenient” to criticize others
- Have you ever downloaded an MP3, or watched a movie online, or let a friend burn a CD, or made a mix tape, or many countless examples of a similar vain– my good man, you are indeed “stealing”– I am not suggesting this is good or bad, I am suggesting that you need to be more selective with your semantics / accusatory stance
- I’ve been in and around the creative business for over 15 years, I assure you, that is not how “ads work” and how “people respond to ads”– it is much more calculated than that, I assure you
- I’ve created a job for myself? Sure, but I don’t get paid.
- We have no idea what anyone is doing with there money, but to suggest that the world doesn’t need more is not an accurate, or just statement or defence (if it didn’t, then there would be a whole lot less issues for us to deal with)
- You seem to be missing several points or disregarding them altogether– doesn’t anyone have the fundamental right to choose how they consume media? This is an absolutely vital position that should not be disregarded so cavalierly– we don’t disregard the rights of others, we are doing the literal opposite– empowering them to choose what they want to see, and when they want to see it– you are clearly missing this point
- Do you honestly think that our company is based on the notion of some pyramid scheme, a shrewd concept developed to destroy an industry and devour all in our path for riches and glory? If you do, than all I can say is your are simply misinformed, and leave it at that
- Please do object and criticize– I think it is important to polarize– Hugh Prather once said something along the lines of ” It is better to be hated than ignored. If I am hated, than I know I am making a difference.”
Cheers good man.
F
Hi Faisal,
It is obvious that you did not carefully read what I wrote, or you misunderstood much of what I said. Instead of replying to your misunderstandings, I want to take just the first two points you raised, and I’ll wait for your reply.
“Your sample size is currently one, you cannot in good faith extrapolate your opinion to quantify a substantial claim.”
You have concluded that CTR is a moot point because DoGooder end-user explicitly chooses to see a particular genre of ads. I take this to mean that people who consciously say they only want to see a particular type of ad would never see or click on ads that are not of their type. If this is true, those people would not recognize any brand names, product names, or logos of the types that they are not interested in because they can somehow block them out. Now, where is the data to prove this?
It’s true that I don’t have data for my claim, but I did not proceed to build a business to steal other people’s content by extrapolating my opinion.
“We have no idea what ads are showing on what site, and therefore, again, do not choose to show “this” ad over “that” ad; no self-righteous conscience decisions are being made– we exercise “no right” — our primary focus in this context is the end user, not the destination site”
I was not speaking about “this” vs “that” among your own ads. I was speaking about the ads that you are replacing. That is, I’m talking about the “generic” ads versus your “good” ads. How you justify your business model is that you replace “generic” ads with “good” ads. Are you saying this is not a value judgment? Who is deciding which ads are “good” and which ads are “generic”? Do you mean to say, you would accept any advertisers as long as your users ask for them? Also, who decides which sites are acceptable for your “whitelist”? And, how do you decide it?
Thank you.
Hey D,
We cannot speak in absolutes, this I agree with. The Internet is only one of several mediums we access data from, and definitely not the primary one. We gather visual information from a plethora of resources.
Again, our technology does not decide what ads we are specifically being “replaced”, I can’t be any more clear than that. Regardless, the end-user has absolute control over what they consume.
As always, a pleasure. Take care. Cheers.
F
It’s not quantum physics my good man. “Generic” and “Good” are simply semantic references.
What do you mean by “semantic references”? On your site, you said it’s “subjective”.
I understand that you are not aware of what you are replacing, which is also troubling because you could be replacing ads that are worthy, or in fact “good” by your own standards. If you are not making any value judgment, why do you call them “generic” vs. “good”? Why is your company called “DoGood”? If these are just matters of “semantics”, you actually have no standard by which you determine what is “good”? You mean you would accept any ads on your network and call them “good”?
As for the issue of CTR, your answer is too abstract for me to understand. I need you to elaborate. Are you admitting that you are indeed making a convenient “extrapolation” based on an unsubstantiated opinion?
Like I said, it’s not quantum physics.
Nope, we don’t accept any ads on the network.
I was suggesting that your truth is a fallacy– don’t assume because someone chooses to see a particular genre of ads on the Internet that they would be ignorant about brands or products and services in general. We gather information from a variety of mediums. This is not an unsubstantiated opinion, this is a social fact.
A brilliant friend of mine sums up these types of debates very well, so I’ll leave it at this:
“While it’s easy to play devil’s advocate to just about anything and come up with rare exceptions when a good thing could go wrong, I do think it’s quite narrow to focus on these parts of the equation, and let them completely consume the bigger picture, the large-scale good that is being done on a day-to-day basis.”
Cheerio.
F
OK, then. Let’s talk about “the large-scale good”. I’d be happy to do that, although all large things in the end rely on the integrity of its fundamentals. If you would rather discuss the marco issues, I’d be happy to accommodate that.
Here is what you said:
Now this is a huge assumption you are making. Suppose I’m a thief who goes around stealing money from my neighbors. But, I’m not an ordinary thief and I actually donate half of the stolen money to what I consider as worthy causes. I look at my neighbors and they do not seem to be doing anything worthy or donating to any worthy causes, so I believe that I’m doing greater good.
Everyone has his or her own right to do “good” or not do “good”. We all have different ways that we contribute to our society. You may not agree with how I do “good” things, or you may not support the organizations that I would support. You may even object to some of them. We all have our differences, but we try to respect one another and our differences.
The company whose ads you are replacing may not on the facade to be doing anything worthy. So, you feel that you want to replace them with what you deem as “good”. But, as I said above, the appearances can be misleading. There are many companies that do “good” but would not advertise every good thing they do. So, their ads may in fact look “generic”. By swapping their ads with yours, you are simply making them less successful and less recognized in order to give your advertisers more recognition.
Furthermore, you do not discriminate which ads you are swapping, so you are making a sweeping generalization about the ads that the publishers are serving, and calling them “generic”, and using it as an excuse to swap them with your “good” ads. This is nothing short of prejudice. It’s like saying let’s just assume that all Muslims are terrorists, and treat them accordingly.
In other words, the overall result of what you are doing is that you are making the world a better place by your own definition at the expense of others.. The greater good that you speak of are according to your own values. Meanwhile, others who bought their ad spaces are being silenced by you. Their rights to contribute to our society in their own ways is violated by your plugin. You then take half of that money and spend it on what you deem as “good”.
I find this disrespectful and also, I see no overall societal gain from your practice.
That is to say, you are simply stealing other people’s rights and adding your own twist to them. All we are gaining is your personal bias. Well, we are not “gaining” it. You are stealing the rightful opportunities of others and using them for your own personal bias.
I want to respond to the following also:
You seem to have a lot of double standards. You have no idea what the motivations are of the businesses whose ad banners you are replacing. Yet, you are quick to label them as “generic” and call your own ads “good”, and have the self-righteousness to replace them.
Hypocrites generally do not know that they are being hypocritical. That’s almost implied in the definition of the word. Hypocrisy is something that needs to be pointed out by outsiders, which is what I’m trying to do. Calling someone a hypocrite is not necessarily a personal attack if the hypocrisy is clearly explained. You could have all the good intentions but still be hypocritical because you may be seeing things in a biased manner. That’s what “Open” debates are for. And, you encourage open debates prominently on your website; so that is exactly what I’m doing. I’m not assuming anything about you as a person. All I’m doing is pointing out the hypocrisy I see just within what you present on your website. I am not speculating anything beyond that.
Yes, I have no problem with Craig’s List because he beat the competition fair and square. He did not steal or alter anyone’s content. Nothing parasitic or unethical about what they do.
I’m not sure why Google News has anything comparable to your service. Google News simply prints the headlines and links to the publishers. That is a fair use of intellectual properties. Besides, if you want to be removed from them, you can request. They make no value judgment in doing so. Anyone can be removed. In your case, you decide who is worthy of being exempted; it’s a “subjective” process where you stand on a moral high ground. Most publishers actually want to be on Google News. In your case, what publishers will come to your site and ask you to swap their banner ads with yours? You are comparing apples and oranges.
No, I’m not missing the point. You just misunderstood or ignored what I said. I repeat: the relationship between the publishers and the audience is not a one-sided agreement; you need permissions from both sides. You are only looking at one side and conveniently disregarding the rights of the other side: the publishers and the advertisers. Our rights come with responsibilities. Just as the audience has the right to “see”, the publishers and the advertisers have the rights to show. I do not disregard anyone’s rights cavalierly. But you obviously do, unless you are suggesting that the audience has the right to see everything for free, which would be ridiculous. Content creators work hard to produce the contents we all enjoy. The least we can do is to let them have ads.
No I do not. I do not think you are even aware of the implications of what you are doing. I’m debating this here with you so that you see what I see, which is unconscious hypocrisy.
You are not explaining how this completely undermines my other arguments. In fact, I’m puzzled as to why you cannot understand this. It’s common sense. There is a big difference in implications when something is freely given away and when something is paid for. For example, the act of paying can transform generosity into business; very different concepts, the only difference being the exchange of money.
In the US, I am allowed to take pictures of anyone in public space. If you were here on the street, I could walk up to you to take a picture; there isn’t much you can do about it. I have the right to take a picture of you in public. But this right no longer holds if I were to use the photo in a piece of advertisement. At that point, I would be using the photo to make money, and there is a law to prevent that. Whether you agree with this law or not, I personally think this is fair. Not being able to take a photo of people in public would be a big pain because strangers will most likely be in your photo no matter where you take pictures in New York. But, using a photo of you without your permission to make money would be unfair. Again, making money here too becomes the key issue. I do not see how this undermines my arguments.
In your case, if you are not making any money from your project, your theft or violation of other people’s rights would not be for your own personal gain. In fact, it would no longer be “theft”. So, it becomes more acceptable. It’s sort of like political activism (especially the hardcore ones that infringe on other people’s rights). You mentioned that you do not pay yourself, but you have to keep in mind that, as a private business owner, whether you pay yourself salary or not is a moot point because you own the value of the whole business. Many business owners choose not to pay themselves, but this does not mean that they are not making money from it.
I do not understand what you are saying here. Show me the data which proves to the publishers that they are not losing any click-thrus. It sounds to me like you just “extrapolated” your own opinion into “social fact”.
Also, keep in mind that your demographic is very specific. People who would install your plugin have specific values, tastes and preferences. For instance, it is unlikely that they would frequent websites with right-wing agendas. This means that, ironically, these websites would be spared, meanwhile, the sites with more left-leaning contents would be affected.
I have been in the same industry as yours for just as long. So, your assurance does not prove any of your arguments.
Yes, I have. But, now that I’m older and can afford it, I always buy music from iTunes. It’s much easier, and saves me time. But this is besides the point, because I’m certainly guilty of stealing music in the past. I would not deny it. But I have never stolen music and sold it to others to make money. Never. Furthermore, I have never done such a thing with a claim that I’m doing something “good” because I donated half of the money to a charity. In such a scenario, the money (both my 50% and the 50% to the charity) actually belongs to the musicians (and their labels). I would never abuse a good cause to cover up my crime in this manner.
You misunderstood what I said. I am saying that the extreme scenario would never happen. Nothing is completely black and white in this world. Everything is a matter of degree. So, any example at the extremes would only be hypothetical, but everything in-between is not. I provided that example so that you can see all the shades of gray in between. You are starting near the other end of this gradation, but this does not mean that what you are doing is harmless. It is still harmful, but in degree. And, it could potentially become very harmful as you move towards the other end. This is not hypothetical as I explained in my argument about “Free Lunch”.
No I do not “hate” you at all. My impression of you is that you mean to do good but lack the ability to see things more objectively, so you interpret and perceive everything with your own strong bias, and do not see how your actions affect the rights of others with different opinions. In other words, your good intensions are misguided. This is often the case with passionate political activists; they infringe on the rights of others because their self-righteousness blinds them, which ultimately causes harm to the very cause they are trying to support, especially in the long run.
I’ve received an email from Faisal saying that he no longer wish to continue this debate, so this discussion is closed.