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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 requi

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.
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  > Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box The issues is that there is normally a expectation of paying for things like produce. Unless there was explicitly a "Free Produce" sign, I would expect to have to pay. There is no expectation that you need to pay for the data sent to you later; if payment is required for access, you're told so and need to provide it to continue to the resource (or otherwise provide proof that you had paid, e.g. logging in). There hasn't historically been and can't be an expectation of payment later because that would be untrue for many, if not the vast majority, of websites. Additionally, there has never been an expectation that the client will render everything you send to them. All browsers have the option to disable JS and images, and always have. It's these differences in expectation and culture that I believe provide the difference between your examples and the web. Violating these constraints would cause legal issues in the vast majority of systems, would mean running old software would be illegal (Chrome preloads links under certain circumstances, but doesn't render them), and would also end up forcing users to run code they didn't choose to run (there is no expectation or knowledge of what code the server will send and choosing to not run harmful code would be illegal), which would be an interesting thought experiment as a civil rights violation. It would also force me to, say, accept a EULA for Flash, even if I disagree with it because I visited a site that randomly sent me a flash payload. Or what about something without a linux runtime; I would have no ability to avoid committing a crime, because I don't have the choice to accept the rest of the content that came with the content I can't run, but am legally required to run. Violating the very assumptions of how the web works would have terrible ramifications. > 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. Why? They're all the same thing. I'm deciding how I want to consume content; I'm not circumventing a access control mechanism.
  - jrochkind1 9y ago
    Because what a court does isn't always logical or even reasonable. Especially on IP stuff, especially on IP stuff involving software. Did you pay attention to Oracle v. Google?

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.

jimktrains2 9y ago
> Perhaps the better analogy, then, is that it's kind of like an unattended farm stand with an honesty box The issues is that there is normally a expectation of paying for things like produce. Unless there was explicitly a "Free Produce" sign, I would expect to have to pay. There is no expectation that you need to pay for the data sent to you later; if payment is required for access, you're told so and need to provide it to continue to the resource (or otherwise provide proof that you had paid, e.g. logging in). There hasn't historically been and can't be an expectation of payment later because that would be untrue for many, if not the vast majority, of websites. Additionally, there has never been an expectation that the client will render everything you send to them. All browsers have the option to disable JS and images, and always have. It's these differences in expectation and culture that I believe provide the difference between your examples and the web. Violating these constraints would cause legal issues in the vast majority of systems, would mean running old software would be illegal (Chrome preloads links under certain circumstances, but doesn't render them), and would also end up forcing users to run code they didn't choose to run (there is no expectation or knowledge of what code the server will send and choosing to not run harmful code would be illegal), which would be an interesting thought experiment as a civil rights violation. It would also force me to, say, accept a EULA for Flash, even if I disagree with it because I visited a site that randomly sent me a flash payload. Or what about something without a linux runtime; I would have no ability to avoid committing a crime, because I don't have the choice to accept the rest of the content that came with the content I can't run, but am legally required to run. Violating the very assumptions of how the web works would have terrible ramifications. > 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. Why? They're all the same thing. I'm deciding how I want to consume content; I'm not circumventing a access control mechanism.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  Because what a court does isn't always logical or even reasonable. Especially on IP stuff, especially on IP stuff involving software. Did you pay attention to Oracle v. Google?