New DivX Adware

March 5, 2002

Wiccabilly used our newssubmit to tell us that the new DivX 5 professional is probably using Gator to get it's revenues.

As you may know, the new DivX 5 codec comes in a free version that appears to offer little advancement over 4.x and a $30 Pro version which boasts all kinds of neat stuff I haven't yet been able to test. There is also a "free" ad-supported distribuition of the Pro version. The ad serving software is known as GAIN. Following a link supplied by DivX networks at the bottom of this page (http://www.divx.com/divx/divxpro.php) we find that GAIN is actually part of the despised Gator network. Here's what the DivX site says:

In summary:

You WILL only be shown advertisements while you are surfing the web. You will only be shown a limited number of advertisements per week, and you will be able to set a maximum number of ads (as few as 5) to be shown per week.

You WILL NOT be shown advertisements while you are watching videos (unless you happen to be surfing the web at the same time).

The ads WILL be targeted to you, so hopefully they will actually be interesting.

You WILL be able to uninstall the ad-supported software at any time (though you will have to uninstall DivX Pro at the same time). "

I'm willing to trust DivX to a point and their side of the story seems plausible. On the other hand, I don't trust Gator one teeny tiny little bit.

Offering "free" software to manage PASSWORDS but also talks to their ad network is a vile conflict of interest and a sneaky thing to pull on users. If this is where DivX is headed, best intentions or not, we need to start thinking about new codecs.

Well, well, well. Personaly i hate Gator, so i'll cope with the Basic version

Source: Gator