5 ms·

You seem to think technical implementations matter for some reason. I find that rather odd. Do you think that someone leaving their front door open entitles you

by darawk 8y ago

You seem to think technical implementations matter for some reason. I find that rather odd. Do you think that someone leaving their front door open entitles you to the contents of their home?

mikestew 8y ago
Whether if it's the contents of a home or the contents of a text file sitting on a web server, if I ask, "can I have the contents of that, please?" and they answer in the affirmative then the answer to your question is, umm, yes? And should I decide to leave items that I don't want, I don't see where the homeowner has reason to complain.
- darawk 8y ago
  So, you consider a GET request to be the equivalent of an unconditional request for content. That's an interesting perspective. What if the GET request delivers you the terms of a contract, that then requires a POST request containing "agree=yes" to the terms of the initial GET request to obtain the actual content, and the terms of that first stage GET request say "You must not use an ad blocker when viewing the second stage GET request".
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    YES! That would start to make sense. With such a setup, if I answered POST "agree=yes" and proceeded to GET your content while using an ad blocker, you'd have a right to call me an asshole breaking a social contract, and - if the content of that initial GET with contract met appropriate legal standards - you could probably even sue me for misuse of computer resources and win. Might be a hard case to win, given that nothing on the Internet is built with expectation of users having to fetch more than they want, but at least you'd have a basis for a case, because I did enter a contract with you and didn't held to my end.
  - mikestew 8y ago
    What if a frog had wings? It wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. I'm talking about today, as it is currently implemented. You seem to think that if you keep moving the goal posts, you'll "win" the internet. "That's an interesting perspective."
politician 8y ago
The analogy is closer to having a butler permit entry to a visitor. The website operator has delegated authority to the webserver to issue their content to visitors. If the operator doesn't like what their webserver butler is doing with the operator's content, that's on the operator.
danShumway 8y ago
If they put up a public sign in front of it that says "come on in and take anything you want" then... kind of. It's not that access implies consent, it's that the technical standard is the methodology by which a company grants consent. The fact that there's ink on a piece of paper is meaningless by itself, but if it forms my signature on a contract, then it does have meaning. The fact that I can get to a server is meaningless by itself, but if the server returns a 200, explicitly designated as "yes, you can access this", then that's a different story. Of course there are gray areas there. If someone faked my signature, or if someone accidentally made their server return a 200 code without meaning to or understanding what they were doing... then fine, I'll concede that they haven't really offered informed consent. But that's not the position that any news site is in. No news site is accidentally returning a 200 code when my computer asks "can I have this content?"
- darawk 8y ago
  > If they put up a public sign in front of it that says "come on in and take anything you want" then... kind of. Do you believe that putting up a website is the equivalent of that sign?
  - danShumway 8y ago
    Yes. https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-status-codes.xml https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-stat... It's hard to describe an HTTP status as anything other than a sign. If it was purely technical, we wouldn't distinguish between 402 (payment required) and 403 (forbidden).[0] While HTTP status codes can be understood by a machine, they're also designed to be highly semantic and understandable by humans. I would argue that the burden is on people who argue that they are not contractual to justify why, in the same way that I would expect them to justify why a handshake isn't contractual. Edit: Potentially interesting as well is a semi-recent court ruling about web scraping[1], where courts effectively ruled that once LinkedIn made their information public, they couldn't block web scrapers from accessing that information, which suggests that the law also agrees with the web community on this one. > "But Judge Chen concluded that the issue isn't so simple. When you publish a website, you implicitly give members of the public permission to access it, he ruled." [0]: Although admittedly, nobody really makes much use of 402. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-linkedin-claim-that-unauthorized-scraping-is-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...
dingaling 8y ago
Analogy time! It's more like a robot that the householder has placed at their front gate that responds to arbitrary requests from visitors "Can I have a table lamp?" "AFFIRMATIVE OK" "Can I have a list of all retrievable objects?" "AFFIRMATIVE OK"
- darawk 8y ago
  What if they put a sign up next to that robot that says the robots answers do not constitute a legally binding agreement to ownership transfer of any property herein?
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    It's fine as long as the robot, when asked "Can I have a table lamp?", doesn't fetch that lamp, give it to you and say "ok, take it". If it does, then the whole example breaks down, and the judge would just laugh and tell you it's your own fault that you got your apartment cleaned out.

by darawk 8y ago

You seem to think technical implementations matter for some reason. I find that rather odd. Do you think that someone leaving their front door open entitles you to the contents of their home?

mikestew 8y ago

Whether if it's the contents of a home or the contents of a text file sitting on a web server, if I ask, "can I have the contents of that, please?" and they answer in the affirmative then the answer to your question is, umm, yes? And should I decide to leave items that I don't want, I don't see where the homeowner has reason to complain.

darawk 8y ago
So, you consider a GET request to be the equivalent of an unconditional request for content. That's an interesting perspective. What if the GET request delivers you the terms of a contract, that then requires a POST request containing "agree=yes" to the terms of the initial GET request to obtain the actual content, and the terms of that first stage GET request say "You must not use an ad blocker when viewing the second stage GET request".
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  YES! That would start to make sense. With such a setup, if I answered POST "agree=yes" and proceeded to GET your content while using an ad blocker, you'd have a right to call me an asshole breaking a social contract, and - if the content of that initial GET with contract met appropriate legal standards - you could probably even sue me for misuse of computer resources and win. Might be a hard case to win, given that nothing on the Internet is built with expectation of users having to fetch more than they want, but at least you'd have a basis for a case, because I did enter a contract with you and didn't held to my end.
- mikestew 8y ago
  What if a frog had wings? It wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. I'm talking about today, as it is currently implemented. You seem to think that if you keep moving the goal posts, you'll "win" the internet. "That's an interesting perspective."

politician 8y ago

The analogy is closer to having a butler permit entry to a visitor. The website operator has delegated authority to the webserver to issue their content to visitors. If the operator doesn't like what their webserver butler is doing with the operator's content, that's on the operator.

danShumway 8y ago

If they put up a public sign in front of it that says "come on in and take anything you want" then... kind of. It's not that access implies consent, it's that the technical standard is the methodology by which a company grants consent. The fact that there's ink on a piece of paper is meaningless by itself, but if it forms my signature on a contract, then it does have meaning. The fact that I can get to a server is meaningless by itself, but if the server returns a 200, explicitly designated as "yes, you can access this", then that's a different story. Of course there are gray areas there. If someone faked my signature, or if someone accidentally made their server return a 200 code without meaning to or understanding what they were doing... then fine, I'll concede that they haven't really offered informed consent. But that's not the position that any news site is in. No news site is accidentally returning a 200 code when my computer asks "can I have this content?"

darawk 8y ago
> If they put up a public sign in front of it that says "come on in and take anything you want" then... kind of. Do you believe that putting up a website is the equivalent of that sign?
- danShumway 8y ago
  Yes. https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-status-codes.xml https://www.iana.org/assignments/http-status-codes/http-stat... It's hard to describe an HTTP status as anything other than a sign. If it was purely technical, we wouldn't distinguish between 402 (payment required) and 403 (forbidden).[0] While HTTP status codes can be understood by a machine, they're also designed to be highly semantic and understandable by humans. I would argue that the burden is on people who argue that they are not contractual to justify why, in the same way that I would expect them to justify why a handshake isn't contractual. Edit: Potentially interesting as well is a semi-recent court ruling about web scraping[1], where courts effectively ruled that once LinkedIn made their information public, they couldn't block web scrapers from accessing that information, which suggests that the law also agrees with the web community on this one. > "But Judge Chen concluded that the issue isn't so simple. When you publish a website, you implicitly give members of the public permission to access it, he ruled." [0]: Although admittedly, nobody really makes much use of 402. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-linkedin-claim-that-unauthorized-scraping-is-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/court-rejects-li...

dingaling 8y ago

Analogy time! It's more like a robot that the householder has placed at their front gate that responds to arbitrary requests from visitors "Can I have a table lamp?" "AFFIRMATIVE OK" "Can I have a list of all retrievable objects?" "AFFIRMATIVE OK"

darawk 8y ago
What if they put a sign up next to that robot that says the robots answers do not constitute a legally binding agreement to ownership transfer of any property herein?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  It's fine as long as the robot, when asked "Can I have a table lamp?", doesn't fetch that lamp, give it to you and say "ok, take it". If it does, then the whole example breaks down, and the judge would just laugh and tell you it's your own fault that you got your apartment cleaned out.