Re: lynx-dev LYNX: "... to foil watson-like programs ... that avoid advertising (notices)???"

[David Woolley]

> 
> I noticed this in newsgroup comp.emacs -- any relevance to lynx?

Only in terms of collateral damage.  Lynx isn't really important 
enough in the market for many sites to take counter measures.
Some, like altavista, seem to want to become dominant to the extent
that they will forego advertising in text only mode, to the extent
that their advertisers aren't prepared to provide text only adverts.

I suspect, in this case, we are talking about programs that try and
extract only the important parts of the page, or which submit to
multiple search engines and consolidate the results.

Note that it is a breach of the terms of use of some sites (e.g.
IMDB) to use automated tools to access the site, including tools which
simply delete adverts.

The other attack that people use on adverts is to redirect known banner
URLs to a local placeholder at their proxy.  This is done for speed reasons,
normally.