Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Yes, it's awful how sometimes they try to make you believe that. It falls in the same street as the RIAA's criminalizing a range of normal user activities, such as making a dump of music CDs that you bought.
An information leaflet by the Dutch organisation against piracy also once stated that "copying software is strictly prohibited". Of course, they totally ignored free software or even the now old-fashioned shareware.
I wonder how to interpret those terms of use. 50webs had a similar clause, and shut down the website I was using for FCEU. But FCEU has no copyright violations--it contains nothing made by Nintendo or any other company. Emulating hardware is perfectly legal--that's why AMD can make chips using Intel's instruction set, for example.
When they list legal things under illegal things, it makes the license very ambiguous. And techinically (my understanding anyway, I'm not a lawyer), if it's ambiguous it's not an enforceable part of the contract.
Grrrr.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Well, when you sign up for their services, you have to abide by their rules. Regardless if emulators are legal or not. Maybe they just want to prevent emulation sites from appearing since they might turn into ROM sites later. They have every right to terminate your account if you violate what you signed to agree with when you purchased their services.
Same with click-wrap licenses and all other forms of disclaimers, agreements and policies.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/05/0139247
Looks like it was finally posted. And there's even a link to the site!
EDIT: I haven't read any kind of a rational explanation for us being thrown out of the program yet. Maybe we need to e-mail Google again.
Joined: 7/17/2004
Posts: 985
Location: The FLOATING CASTLE
How about that? The discussion is good, it seems there are many others all over the world in the same boat. Also, with the size of the /. audience this will definitely reach quite a few people at Google. Now if we can get some mainstream US press then we are guaranteed they will fix things...
An information leaflet by the Dutch organisation against piracy also once stated that "copying software is strictly prohibited". Of course, they totally ignored free software or even the now old-fashioned shareware.
They also ignored you are legally entitled to make a backup of software you purchase.
May 25th, I reapplied to Google Adsense, using another e-mail address I have (because e-mail address = account name), and the newly acquired domain name, http://tasvideos.org/ .
This time I applied in Finnish, with the site language in English.
I checked carefully that all data I entered was correct, and submitted the application.
June 1st, I received a reply from Google Adsense, in Finnish, saying this (translated to English by me):
Google Adsense wrote:
Hello Joel Yliluoma,
Thank you for your interest towards the Google AdSense program. Our experts noticed, that your application does not concord with our program rules. Therefore we cannot accept you into the program.
We use certain rules, which we believe they guarantee that Google advertisements are effective for both the publishers and the advertisers. We verify all publishers and reserve the right to reject applications. When our program evolves, we may be able to broaden it for the use of even more and even bigger web-publishers.
Remember, that we might be unable to answer your questions regarding the reasons of our decision. Thank you for understanding.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
This response was certainly ambiguous. It left a huge gaping hole for interpretation what they considered "did not concord with the program rules".
So I filled the form again, and reapplied, reading the rules many times carefully and checking carefully that all the fields I filled were correctly filled. I submitted it the same day, June 1st.
June 8th, I received a response ― identical to the one I received June 1st (quoted above).
So now I sent them a query asking them to explain themselves, telling that I checked dozen times that everything in my application should be allright according to their program rules. I will show that post here later.
Just thought I should share this interchange with the readers of this thread. Yes, I know, I ought to have already buried the wounds from the previous battle, but I am not giving up easily :I
Ps: Reading the posts of this thread once again, certain nerds might be able to deduce how my avatar actually works.
[Edit: Added a sentence of the quoted post that was missing.]
I wonder how to interpret those terms of use. 50webs had a similar clause, and shut down the website I was using for FCEU. But FCEU has no copyright violations--it contains nothing made by Nintendo or any other company.
I thought they shut it down because they said that no executables were allowed, and you bypassed the .exe block.
Wasn't going to post this, but Bisqwit bumped this topic.
Sorry to hear about this. At one point I was running a webcomic and opened a Adsense account. I earned over $400 before they closed my account for "invalid clicks". I guess Google just gets to keep that money. Your lucky if you only lost $21.
Good luck getting anything more than automated responses from Google. Their adsense support is a joke. Even if other people were causing invalid clicks, how can that be my fault (or yours, in this example)?
I signed up for Yahoo's Publishers Network. I haven't used it yet on my personal site because I am too lazy to set it up, but I've actually had a manager from YPN call me and ask if everything was OK and leave me a phone number if I ever need to contact him. Wow. Blows Google away. I would recommend trying them based on that alone, even though I actually haven't implemented the code or received payment.
I wouldn't redo Adsense. Why would you want to relist with them after they closed your account and stole your money before?
(Bisqwit: the size 50% produces an interesting bug in Opera 8.02, causing a massive horizontal scrolling and forcing each word on its own line.)
Interesting, however. It may be that they matched your name to a closed account...
In any case, I would suggest YPN as well. I'm considering using it myself, if only because I'm getting tired of Google's nonsense. For example, some 'classified' (read: Google doesn't want you to share these) adsense reports:
It almost looks as if they're just giving out random numbers with little regard to what actually goes on. (We've had days where the clicks are obscenely low, but profit is higher (sometimes even $10, mostly when we started)... it makes no sense, and they give little in the way of helping to figure it out aside from an "average clickthrough earning".
XKeeper wrote:
> Yahoo is doing this, too
> It could be worth looking into their services, Bisqwit...
Xkeeper wrote:
> I think Yahoo! has a similar service. Perhaps they wouldn't be so trigger-happy?
Xkeeper wrote:
> In any case, I would suggest YPN as well.
Well thanks for pitching YPN, but let me quote:
Yahoo! Publisher Network Beta Program wrote:
Participants of the program must have a valid U.S. Social Security or Tax ID number, and web site content that is predominantly in English and targeted at a U.S. user base.
I am not an USA citizen, and I don't have an U.S. social security number or tax ID. Hence, it appears I'm not eligible.
In other news, I have not yet heard from Google regarding my latest query I sent in Juny 8th.
