Technology News Article | Reuters.com About 20 years ago, and fed up with intrusive advertising I wanted to start a company that put ads at the men’s urinal. Some years later I found someone actually did it in Europe. It’s out of control.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple’s latest iPod, a video-enabled music player that serves up some of the season’s hottest television shows without commercials, will likely prod advertisers to get serious about finding a foothold in portable media players, media buyers said.
I’ve pissed on several advertisements in urinals over the years. The same places also have ads directly in front of you when you are wizzing also, so you can’t look down, you can’t look straight ahead, and in a truck stop you never look at the guy pissing next to you, nor do you close your eyes, so…now I pee sitting down.
They’ve got ads over the urinals at a restaurant nearby. I boycott the advertisers that appear. (The place has the cheapest buffet in town and the quality doesn’t suffer so I’m willing to live with it.)
It’s only a matter of time before content for the iPod is infected with commercials. That’s exactly why Apple went with its own DRMed standards in audio and video formats. Under the DMCA it’s illegal to bypass encryption. All files sold via iTunes are encrypted. Thus, it’d be illegal to bypass any protection that forbids skipping for fast forwarding.
In about two years the TV shows and the podcasts you download from iTunes will have commercials and it’ll be illegal to skip them. And of course the Apple-heads of the world will praise the decision.
And at least with TV you could get up and leave the room during the commercials. But when you’re carrying the player around and it’s connected to your head, you’re basically forced to listen. Advertisers will LOVE it!
Fish — you must be the only person in America more cynical than I am. The apple-centric websites I wander through, every now and then, have no info to match your certainty about commercials appearing. A couple of those have a pretty good track record for sniffing out the future.
TiVo owners just about ALL know how to skip commercials with single button pushes. Some PVR hardware had it built into the remote. Even those manufacturers who ignore the media barons — but, have their own profit structure committed to some means of retaining control of content [like Apple] — pretty much have to have a “fast-forward” mechanism built-in.
People will use it.
About ads over urinals. I see it evrey day. I go to the University of Ottawa and I have noticed that over the last year or so they are steadily adding more and more ads over the urinals.
It seems that about 90% of the time I go to take a piss now Im seeing an add for Virgin wireless 3 inches away from my face. Not to mention the fact that weve allready sold out to Coke and are supposidly a Coke only campus (thats all they will sell, in the caferterias or vending machines). Talk about selling out.