4 ms·

I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to. I can't be sued fo

I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to. I can't be sued for not watching commercials. Actively circumventing access restrictions is another issue entirely, but if I'm sent data, there is no reason or guarantee it must be displayed as intended. What about blind folk, or those who don't run JavaScript? Is turning off just now illegal? What about not downloading images? If a site can't make me pay, and doesn't want it's content to be viewed unless I pay, simply don't send me the content. Again, circumventing access control, even terrible ones, is one thing, but if you send me the data, then you sent me the data, what the issue?

hunter2_ 9y ago
> If a site can't make me pay, and doesn't want it's content to be viewed unless I pay, simply don't send me the content. I'm fully on your side here, but to play devil's advocate, I think it's fair to consider an analogy like "if a restaurant doesn't want its food to be consumed unless I pay, simply don't serve me the food." You ask a server (of the web or the hospitality variety) to serve you the usual. The server gives it to you and reminds you that the deal hasn't been fully executed yet: you're to next [ask the cashier by the door to ring you up || ask the ad server to serve you an ad], and then [pay when asked || render the ad amongst the rest of the content]. Sure, you could forego talking to the [cashier || ad server] instead. Again, I don't like that one bit, but I think it's the kind of "reasonableness" that holds up in court. IANAL.
- heretoo 9y ago
  So, they serve you the food, and you pay for it. But, you choose not to eat the raw onions they've served with the meal. This would be the analogy of choosing not to render html/javascript content.
  - hunter2_ 9y ago
    At the risk of destroying my efforts at being reasonable, suppose it's an "if you eat the whole thing, it's free" situation, except there is no "$19.99 if you can't finish" else clause. You know that they didn't offer an else, yet you eat anyway, and you slip your onions into the plant in the corner.
    - codedokode 9y ago
      Then they can make other ridiculous rules too, for example "you should pay 100x the price in menu unless you can stand on your head for an hour". That would probably increase the income dramatically.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  But there is no expectation that a restaurant will serve you without paying. There is an expectation that a website will ask for payment/authorization if required, otherwise I'm not required to pay. Moreover, there is no way to know if the content you're requesting will require a transaction (unlike a restaurant where the prevailing expectation is payment for service, even if prices are left off the menu). It has always been the case that I need to request the resource and then be told if it costs money, otherwise it's given to me. Likewise, there has never been, and I would argue can't be, an expectation that a user agent render all content as expected. Would custom style-sheets violate the law? Do Lynx, Links, Links2, w3m, mutt, and pine all of a sudden become illegal? How does a screen reader render an ad? How does a braille interface render an ad? Am I now legally required to run a graphical interface otherwise I'm playing legal roulette? What happens if the adserver malfunctions and doesn't send me an ad? Am I now put in a legally bad spot? What if an ad is sent in swf and I don't have flash installed? I also feel like there are legal implications to forcing someone to execute code sent to them. Do ad servers all of a sudden become responsible for drive-by malware? Can we sue them for damages? I feel that the crux is that there is no way to know if "payment" is required before requesting a resource. You can't send me something and then say, "oh, yeah, hey, you need to pay me for that" when the (vast) majority of the time I'm sent things without any expectation of payment.
  - hunter2_ 9y ago
    Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box. Except the honesty box isn't visible on the way in, it's located on the back of the enter sign so you only see it on the way out, and the driveway is so long that surely you've already started munching on the fruit while starting to leave. Since I'm still on a food kick the whole expectation-of-paying thing is still clouding the analogy a bit, but at least this is closer to the situation than a sit-down restaurant analogy. Oh, and of course our hypothetical farmer needs to have primarily fixed costs, little or no variable costs based on the amount of fruit taken. It may very well be more common for such hypothetical farmers to forego having an honesty box hiding where you don't see it until you've consumed the fruit, but for those who do choose to have one, are you stealing the fruit if you don't drop in a few bucks? More on topic: I also think courts would see quite a difference in intent between using a mainstream graphical browser with an ad blocker vs using things like a text mode interface, a screen reader, a braille display, or libcurl. The former is like driving past the honesty box while chuckling; the latter is like not even knowing it was there.
jerf 9y ago
"I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to." This is an assertion that is commonly made on the internet, but I see no reason to believe it carries any legal force, or even necessarily any moral force. In fact it's not that hard to read it as an argument made solely to come to the desired predetermined conclusion rather than any sort of principled argument. It implies that the sender loses all rights to anything they send to you, which is definitely legally untrue; I gave examples above already. Also, if you win on this point, you will not experience a glorious utopia in which ad blocking is OK and you can save whatever streams you want and so on... you'll experience a world in which all this content gets removed from the web and locked behind even more proprietary clients that will come with what the publishers want. What may seem to you to be a simple bugbite back in favor of what you believe your rights to be may cause a much larger allergic response than you'd anticipate. "I can't be sued for not watching commercials." You haven't signed a contract saying you will. That may not be the case online. The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion. However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up. There's too many rights and rights-holders that won't stand for it, and even if you did somehow win that case, they'll simply retreat and retrench in whatever it takes to recover those rights for themselves. If you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything."
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  > The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion. But you can't accept a contract just by visiting the site. Especially since the in the same action as becoming aware of the exist of the contract also makes you breach the contract. > However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up. Why? This has always been the purpose of the user agent and it's difficult to impossible to actually make sure things will always look the same in all browsers. Could viewing a site in FireFox or Edge become illegal? Again, how would I know that _before_ taking the action. What about systems such as links2, w3m, elinks, and lynx? > f you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything." Which terms? The UA has always been the agent of the user, not the site whose content is being displayed. I just find it very difficult to believe that the court will accept that I've broken a "contract" I can't know exists without breaking it.

hunter2_ 9y ago

> If a site can't make me pay, and doesn't want it's content to be viewed unless I pay, simply don't send me the content. I'm fully on your side here, but to play devil's advocate, I think it's fair to consider an analogy like "if a restaurant doesn't want its food to be consumed unless I pay, simply don't serve me the food." You ask a server (of the web or the hospitality variety) to serve you the usual. The server gives it to you and reminds you that the deal hasn't been fully executed yet: you're to next [ask the cashier by the door to ring you up || ask the ad server to serve you an ad], and then [pay when asked || render the ad amongst the rest of the content]. Sure, you could forego talking to the [cashier || ad server] instead. Again, I don't like that one bit, but I think it's the kind of "reasonableness" that holds up in court. IANAL.

heretoo 9y ago
So, they serve you the food, and you pay for it. But, you choose not to eat the raw onions they've served with the meal. This would be the analogy of choosing not to render html/javascript content.
- hunter2_ 9y ago
  At the risk of destroying my efforts at being reasonable, suppose it's an "if you eat the whole thing, it's free" situation, except there is no "$19.99 if you can't finish" else clause. You know that they didn't offer an else, yet you eat anyway, and you slip your onions into the plant in the corner.
  - codedokode 9y ago
    Then they can make other ridiculous rules too, for example "you should pay 100x the price in menu unless you can stand on your head for an hour". That would probably increase the income dramatically.
jimktrains2 9y ago
But there is no expectation that a restaurant will serve you without paying. There is an expectation that a website will ask for payment/authorization if required, otherwise I'm not required to pay. Moreover, there is no way to know if the content you're requesting will require a transaction (unlike a restaurant where the prevailing expectation is payment for service, even if prices are left off the menu). It has always been the case that I need to request the resource and then be told if it costs money, otherwise it's given to me. Likewise, there has never been, and I would argue can't be, an expectation that a user agent render all content as expected. Would custom style-sheets violate the law? Do Lynx, Links, Links2, w3m, mutt, and pine all of a sudden become illegal? How does a screen reader render an ad? How does a braille interface render an ad? Am I now legally required to run a graphical interface otherwise I'm playing legal roulette? What happens if the adserver malfunctions and doesn't send me an ad? Am I now put in a legally bad spot? What if an ad is sent in swf and I don't have flash installed? I also feel like there are legal implications to forcing someone to execute code sent to them. Do ad servers all of a sudden become responsible for drive-by malware? Can we sue them for damages? I feel that the crux is that there is no way to know if "payment" is required before requesting a resource. You can't send me something and then say, "oh, yeah, hey, you need to pay me for that" when the (vast) majority of the time I'm sent things without any expectation of payment.
- hunter2_ 9y ago
  Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box. Except the honesty box isn't visible on the way in, it's located on the back of the enter sign so you only see it on the way out, and the driveway is so long that surely you've already started munching on the fruit while starting to leave. Since I'm still on a food kick the whole expectation-of-paying thing is still clouding the analogy a bit, but at least this is closer to the situation than a sit-down restaurant analogy. Oh, and of course our hypothetical farmer needs to have primarily fixed costs, little or no variable costs based on the amount of fruit taken. It may very well be more common for such hypothetical farmers to forego having an honesty box hiding where you don't see it until you've consumed the fruit, but for those who do choose to have one, are you stealing the fruit if you don't drop in a few bucks? More on topic: I also think courts would see quite a difference in intent between using a mainstream graphical browser with an ad blocker vs using things like a text mode interface, a screen reader, a braille display, or libcurl. The former is like driving past the honesty box while chuckling; the latter is like not even knowing it was there.

jerf 9y ago

"I understand I'm arm chair lawyering, but the purpose of a user agent is to display what the user wants it to, not what the site wants it to." This is an assertion that is commonly made on the internet, but I see no reason to believe it carries any legal force, or even necessarily any moral force. In fact it's not that hard to read it as an argument made solely to come to the desired predetermined conclusion rather than any sort of principled argument. It implies that the sender loses all rights to anything they send to you, which is definitely legally untrue; I gave examples above already. Also, if you win on this point, you will not experience a glorious utopia in which ad blocking is OK and you can save whatever streams you want and so on... you'll experience a world in which all this content gets removed from the web and locked behind even more proprietary clients that will come with what the publishers want. What may seem to you to be a simple bugbite back in favor of what you believe your rights to be may cause a much larger allergic response than you'd anticipate. "I can't be sued for not watching commercials." You haven't signed a contract saying you will. That may not be the case online. The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion. However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up. There's too many rights and rights-holders that won't stand for it, and even if you did somehow win that case, they'll simply retreat and retrench in whatever it takes to recover those rights for themselves. If you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything."

jimktrains2 9y ago
> The questions about whether such contracts should be something that even can be offered, or whether simply clicking through a EULA or accessing a bit of content can bind one to a contract, or the nature of what such a contract may be allowed to be, are all separate matters of interesting discussion. But you can't accept a contract just by visiting the site. Especially since the in the same action as becoming aware of the exist of the contract also makes you breach the contract. > However I don't foresee any world arising in which the "the purpose of a user agent is to display me what I want to see and therefore any manipulation of the content other people own the rights to is within my rights" is going to hold up. Why? This has always been the purpose of the user agent and it's difficult to impossible to actually make sure things will always look the same in all browsers. Could viewing a site in FireFox or Edge become illegal? Again, how would I know that _before_ taking the action. What about systems such as links2, w3m, elinks, and lynx? > f you rewrite the terms of the contract, you have to account for the other side of the contract reacting to it, not just passively sitting back and going "Oh, gosh, I guess I'm stuck then, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing without changing anything." Which terms? The UA has always been the agent of the user, not the site whose content is being displayed. I just find it very difficult to believe that the court will accept that I've broken a "contract" I can't know exists without breaking it.