An inappropriate business model.

One might think that Yahoo would be one of those organisations that have a pretty good understanding of the Internet. You know, what it is, how it works, that sort of thing. Apparently not:

A couple of days ago Yahoo sent me a notice stating they'd revised their Publisher Policy. Item '11.l' stated that I will not "display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US". In other words, I can't allow users outside of the United States to view my pages if there is a Yahoo ad on the page!

This seemed insanely limiting, to say the least, and I wrote Yahoo to clarify this. Here is their reply:
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Mar 21 2006 16:18 PT

In regards to your inquiry, as per section 11.l of the Terms and Conditions, you are in violation if your ads receive traffic from sources outside the United States. However, there are scripts and programs which you can initiate to block international users from viewing or encountering your Yahoo! Publisher Network ads. We do not recommend or support these methods, but we do suggest finding a method to block this kind of traffic so you remain in compliance with the Terms and Conditions.

I suspect that the only reason Yahoo have any pay-per-click customers left is that most of them can't be bothered trawling through the new terms & conditions to find out about this change. But I'm sure word will spread. I wonder how long the eejits will keep this up before they realise how disastrously stupid it is.