Using advertisements as a CAPTCHA

[pne]

Apparently, Microsoft wants to patent a method to use advertisements as CAPTCHAs (article in German).

Meaning that in order to post an anonyous comment or create an email account or whatever is now guarded by a "type the distorted letters" barrier, you might have to look at an advertisement and answer, "Name the product advertised here". Meaning that you can no longer adblock the advertisement, whether through technical means or through "banner blindness", since you'll need to read the ad in order to pass the CAPTCHA.

My first reaction was "evil", but I suppose it's not really evil per se, though annoying for a fair number of web users.

Comments

[kareila]

It would definitely make CAPTCHAs doubly annoying, in contrast to my experience editing the DW wiki. There, I find I don't mind the CAPTCHAs because I know they are helping to digitize scanned books. (http://recaptcha.net/learnmore.html)

[azurelunatic]

Ohhhhh, you're still not in the group that doesn't get 'em yet?

Some of us can fix that. Fey is usually the one who does it as it's her wiki.

[kareila]

Heh, that's okay. I don't do a whole lot of wiki updating so I never actually created a login for it. :)

[azurelunatic]

I was wondering, when I didn't see your name on the list.

If you do create a login, holler in IRC so someone can grant you rights.

[ex_rising236]

The biggest problem with this is of course the problem with captchas in the first place, that they are inaccessible to a not-insignificant segment of the population as it is. If this advertisement as such is a video, it'll make the captcha even less accessible than it currently is. Just, annoying isn't the even beginning of it.

Any video that involves moving stuff or audio or even text that doesn't necessarily stay still becomes entirely inaccessible. I can pay attention to one element of the video at the time and no more, which is much the way that I use the internet, by focusing on and often blowing up to fit my screen only the part of a webpage that I am using.

Anyway yeah.