Apathetic

[Qui Gon Jinn]

If a network or merchant was found to be in association with adware or spyware again, do you think the affiliate community would be as vocal as they were before or do you think affiliates are "generally" becoming more apathetic? Happy enough that they are earning their own money, so really see no need to bother about the industry as a whole?

For example this latest class action lawsuit:

http://www.cjclassaction.com/

http://affiliatefairplay.com/newsblo...and-merchants/

Now I haven't checked to ascertain whether this is pertaining to alledged current or previous incidences, as nobody has been found guilty or innocent yet. But I do wonder if it all came to the fore again, how proactive and/or vociferous we would be inclined to be pertaining to any network or merchant (or affiliate for that matter)?

[hpops]

I think that the community at large is considerably more apathetic in comparison to two/three years ago. Partly because of its increased size and influx of newcomers who are yet to experience the effects of these issues on there own businesses. Partly because a lot of us feel that we've spent years shouting at the wind.
I would imagine that if some of the newer networks worked with adware companies, it would be easy to hide, and easier to shrug off.
Shame on us

[Ronald Marva]

Its still to early to give a verdict on the guilt of the everyone who is involved in this fiasco. But I agree that many affiliates are "generally" becoming more apathetic to this issue.

We need to strongly address issues relating to network or merchant found to be in association with adware or spyware. We have to get away with the mentality of ambivalence for matters that dont affect us directly. Because if it does happen to hit you...its gonna be a hell of a lot aggravation.

[drivetowin]

Personally I think this class action is dangerous - let's accept the basic assumption that the judge in the case will not understand the first thing about how affiliate tracking works (like 99.9% of the population).

OK, if he agrees CJ and Valueclick are in the wrong, he fines them a few million dollars and everyone continues their stance as now - great

BUT - and it's a big BUT - what if he rules CJ and Valueclick have done nothing wrong? - suddenly any network can work with adware saying "yeah, but, it's been established in law, we're doing nothing wrong"

[moredial]

I don't know too much about affiliates using adware.

What is now more apparent is that more and more 'advertisers' are using ppc and ppv programs to get unsuspecting webmasters to display scripts that contain malware. And the malware is now detecting IE FF and Opera browsers to enable downloading passed the filters - at least you get the option to disable downloading any content which is not hosted on the same domain, but that does leave a lot of empty holes in many sites and if everyone started doing the same, there would be little money left for those of us who rely on displaying advertising to get the sites to pay for themselves.