Apologies: I don’t know for how long it has been the case, but the game is now loading for me in a separate window – this could have been a change at their end or a browser bug at my end. Please disregard all that follows.
Every Friday, b3ta send out their newsletter – a newsletter that goes out to many thousands of people and is known world-wide. The newsletter contains links to fun things made by B3ta people as well as to cool things send in by members of the public…
Except this week it’s different. The b3ta newsletter contained a link to a game described as follows:
“>> Stroke the Kitty Game <<
“I’ve made a new game”, writes Jibbed, “I’ve
named it Kitty Stroke. The cat needs your help.
She’s in dire need of some serious stroking
action. Stroke that cat as if your life
depended on it.” TIP: The aim of the game is
to follow the cat with your cursor. Great.
http://www.magic-carpet.freeserve.co.uk/thb/kittystroke.html
When you click through to the page, however, the game isn’t there at all. It has been replaced with a button that claims to launch the game, but instead launches an affiliate link to Sky Digital. Also on the page is an advert for OneTel. Now, as far as I can make out, there are two explanations for this state of affairs. 1) The people at the other end changed the page “accidentally” or 2) The people at the other end decided to co-opt the mailing list and use it as a cheap and easy way of making some money.
Which leaves us with the question: Given that we don’t want our cool mailing lists and independent bits of cool and homegrown content usurped by unscrupulous idiots – how do we make sure that they make no revenue out of this? Presumably neither Sky nor OneTel wish to have their affiliate programmes abused in this kind of way…