transparent adsense unit on copyscrape site

the dudes here http://www.comptoys.com/ have a copyscrape site that transparent 720x90 adsense block on the top.
how is that possible?

 

Wow!
How DID he do that?

 

It has to be a CSS class within a tag or something...there is an opacity value you can play around with...ToS violation im assuming tho..

 

Found it -

#TB_overlay {
position: absolute;
z-index:100;
top: 0px;
left: 0px;
background-color:#000;
filter:alpha(opacity=60); <------------------
-moz-opacity: 0.6;
opacity: 0.6;
}

 

should I report those guys to Google? they are stealing content and try to make money of it using css techniques.
lets go get them

 

they placed transparent image on the top of the ad unit right?

 

It turns anything within that transparent, so essentially its the ad being transparent itself...i think..

 

seems like TOS violation as what it comes down to is altering the code. smart way of doing it tho, not altering the google code itself but using CSS

 

Wrong code. This is ThickBox. The real code used for this ad transparency is:

table.linkcontainer td
{
	background-color: #000000;
	filter:alpha(opacity=70);
	opacity: .7;
	-moz-opacity: .7;
}

Code (markup):

 

Very nice, but againts TOS

It would be great to have those... I have a few sites that would profit from that, specially with 100% transparent units

 

Did he change the actually adsense code? If not, then how is it against the TOS?

 

Transparency is CSS3 supported. Not sure it works with all browsers. Besides, it looks dumb anyways. The point is to let your ads look like they want to be clicked.

 

you are correct, but same point, the opacity filter

 

can someone confirm that it is a violation of TOS or not ?? as i want to use it for my site.

 

Only google can say for sure, but from my perspective, i would say yes. why? because opacity is meant for hiding, and by drawing less attention to an ad than it was initially supposto, it devalues the advertisers dollar. Just my thoughts.

 

The Google Ads must not be distorted in anyway.

 

Google TOS says that the code can't be altered. The code in that website is not altered. Although it's transparent, user is still be able to recognize the difference.

Regardless the scrapy content it has, but I think it's not against TOS.
Of course, Google judges is the final veto on this

Anyway...

 

Nice find.. I wonder if its ok with TOS.

 

i think google recently asked publishers to place a border around any image close to the post ..

so i think this Opacity thing might be a violation of the TOS