There seems to be a bit of mixing apples and oranges here. Changing a search page or home page by use of an active x component is child's play compared to the commercial use of adware. Adware isn't some kid sneaking a script onto a freehost tgp gallery or even a freehost sneaking a script into all the galleries.. Adware is the next big thing supported by the entire mainstream online advertising industry. It's being used by just about everybody offering free software (freeware) on the Net. When you download a tool to let you swap music files or accelerate your connectivity or put a news ticker on your desk top, etc., etc., you also get a file bundled with it that generates pop ups. Just setting your IE security setting to "prompt" won't prevent this the way it prevents changing a home page.. Upgrading to IE 6 won't prevent it either. Nor can you sue them because they disclose it in the terms and conditions of the download. Everybody reads the terms and conditions, right?
It sucks for you Hun. Everything you try to do by not allowing gallery pages with scripts is rendered useless. Surfers are going to visit your page and get a pop up and it's not your fault.
It sucks for gallery builders because their page will be on the browser when a pop up launches and they'll get reported as cheaters and banned - even though they didn't do anything.
It sucks for the surfer's privacy. The file that launches the pop up also transmits data about the surfer (where they go, etc.) back to the marketing firm and whoever else pays to read about it.
If you want to take a look at some of the firms producing the adware and selling space on the hated pop ups themselves check out sites like
http://www.web3000.com/ http://www.radiate.com/ http://www.onflow.com/ http://www.cydoor.com/Cydoor/ http://www.webhancer.com/ http://www.whenu.com/
Ect., etc. There's a million of them. Too many to img source them all I'd think. If you want to help your surfers point them to a site like
http://www.spychecker.com so before they download that file sharing tool they can check the freeware database. They'll most likely find the freebie they want isn't quite so free. And they'll learn where those dammed pop ups are coming from.