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.

 

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.