Question for Michael Sullivan:
Is it different when the _business_ sets out deliberately to impose unnecessary or unwanted costs (however minor) on the _individual_?
Suppose while passing by Cartier's front door on my way back to work I drop into their store to make a quick good-faith query about one of their products.
I discover after doing this, however, that they won't let me back out their front door again. I can only leave via a rear door, which forces me to walk through an arcade filled with display windows for their mechandise or other related merchandise and then dumps me out on the next street, a block in the opposite direction from my initial destination. Turns out they get paid small amounts by the other merchants for doing this.
Is the analogy to certain kinds of hidden pop-up window ads clear enough? Would retaliatory actions on my part be justified? (e.g, if there were pushbuttons in the arcade to serve me with catalogs, could I justifiably push several of them and dump the catalogs on the floor?)
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your point is a *very good one*. I have even had some bozos (but in fairness, they are usually the sex purveyors) not let me leave at all, dumping one new window after another at me without any absolute way out short of recyling power on the computer. PAT]