可攔廣告的瀏覽器Brave遭美報紙警告

US newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are raising the alarm over new ad-blocking software that promises to replace publishers’ advertisements with its own and pay readers in bitcoin to view them.

包括《紐約時報》(New York Times)、《華盛頓郵報》(Washington Post)和《華爾街日報》(WSJ)在內的多家美國報紙，對一款新的、可以攔截廣告的軟件發出警告。這款軟件承諾，它會把出版商們的廣告替換成自己的廣告，並會向觀看自己廣告的讀者支付比特幣。

The ad-replacing plan comes from Brave, a web browser launched this year by Brendan Eich, the co-founder and former chief executive of Mozilla, the web browser. Brave is available on mobile phones and desktop computers and blocks ads and trackers. The company intends to introduce a feature that will replace the ads it strips out with spots from its own advertising network that it says are more protective of users’ privacy and take less time to load.

這一廣告替換計劃來自布倫丹•艾希(Brendan Eich)今年推出的一款網頁瀏覽器Brave。艾希是網頁瀏覽器Mozilla的共同創始人和前首席執行官。Brave既有手機版也有桌面電腦版，它可攔截廣告和跟蹤器。該公司打算推出這樣一種功能：把網頁上原有的廣告移除，代之以來自它自身廣告網絡的內容。該公司表示，它自己的這些廣告可以更好地保護用戶的隱私，加載時間也短一些。

If users elect to see the new ads, they will receive a 15 per cent cut of gross ad revenue. Website publishers will receive 55 per cent, while Brave’s advertising partners and the company itself will each receive 15 per cent. Users can also choose to send their share of revenue to the websites they read.

如果用戶選擇觀看這些新廣告，他們將會從總廣告收入中分得15%。網站出版商將分得55%，而Brave的廣告合作伙伴及該公司自己將各自分得15%。用戶也可選擇將分給自己的那部分廣告收入送給他們瀏覽的那些網站。

But the plan has fallen foul of publishers, who argue that Brave’s business model infringes their copyrights.

不過，該計劃卻觸怒了出版商們，後者聲稱Brave的商業模式侵犯了它們的版權。

“[Brave’s] argument is, I will take $10 out of your wallet and give you $5 and aren’t you happy about that?” said David Chavern, president of the Newspaper Association of America, a non-profit trade group representing 2,000 newspapers in the US and Canada.

美國報業協會(Newspaper Association of America)會長戴維•沙韋恩(David Chavern)表示：“（Brave的）邏輯是，我會從你錢包裏拿出10美元來，然後再返還你5美元，難道你對此還不滿意嗎？”美國報業協會是一家非營利性行業組織，代表美國和加拿大的2000家報紙。

Seventeen NAA members sent Mr Eich and Brave a cease and desist notice on Thursday.

週四，該協會的17家會員向艾希和Brave發出了勒令停止通知函(cease and desist notice)。

“Your plan to use our content to sell your advertising is indistinguishable from a plan to steal our content to publish on your own website,” they wrote.

它們寫道：“您計劃使用我們的內容來銷售您的廣告，這無異於打算竊取我們的內容然後發佈在您自己網站上。

“Your apparent plan to permit your customers to make bitcoin ‘donations’ to us, and for you to donate to us some unspecified percentage of revenue you receive from the sale of your ads on our sites, cannot begin to compensate us for the loss of our ability to fund our work by displaying our own advertising. We expressly decline to participate in any way in Brave’s supposed business model.”

“表面上，您計劃允許您的客戶向我們作出比特幣形式的‘捐贈’，還計劃將您嫁接在我們網站上的廣告的銷售收入中屬於您的那份捐給我們一部分（具體比例不明）。但這一計劃根本無法彌補我們損失的、靠展示我們自己的廣告爲我們的工作供資的能力。我們明確拒絕以任何方式參與Brave假想中的商業模式。”

Brave said in a statement that the publishers’ letter was “filled with false assertions”, adding “the NAA has fundamentally misunderstood Brave. Brave is the solution, not the enemy.”

Brave在一份聲明中稱，出版商們的函件“充滿了錯誤的斷言”，並表示“美國報業協會從根本上誤解了Brave。Brave是解決方案，而不是敵人”。

The company said: “We sympathise with publishers concerned about the damage that pure ad blockers do to their ability to pay their bills via advertising revenue. However, this problem long predates Brave. We categorically reject the claim that browsers perform ‘republication’, and we repeat that Brave has a sound and systematic plan to financially reward publishers. We aim to outperform the invasive third-party ads that we block, with our better, fewer, and privacy-preserving ads.”

該公司表示：“出版商們對純廣告攔截軟件給它們靠廣告收入來付賬單的能力造成的損失感到擔憂，我們對此表示同情。但是，這個問題在Brave誕生之前很久就存在。我們堅決拒絕接受所謂瀏覽器進行了‘再出版’的說法，我們重申Brave擁有完善和系統的計劃來給出版商們帶來經濟回報。我們的目標是，用我們更好、更少且保護隱私的廣告，來超越我們攔截的那些侵入式的第三方廣告。”