Internet.com: EarthLink Shuts Down Pop-Ups

Internet service provider EarthLink this morning launched an upgraded Pop-Up Blocker designed to combat unwanted rich media ads. […]

"Pop-up ads are evolving, and EarthLink is the first major ISP to include a rich media blocking feature that stops this annoyance from becoming a problem," said Rob Kaiser, an EarthLink vice president.

In addition to standard pop-ups, Kaiser said the tool also surpresses animated and audio-enabled cartoons that move across Web pages. It does so by preventing Macromedia's Flash, a common technology used in most rich media advertising, from appearing on users screens. EarthLink believes these "screen stealing" ads will constitute almost half of all Web ads served by year's end.

That seems a little harsh to me. Whilst I'm all in favour of banishing pops from our world, this goes way beyond that.