4 ms·

The problem that Perplexity has that ad blockers don't is that they're an independent site that is publishing content based on work they didn't produce. That ru

by __loam 2y ago

The problem that Perplexity has that ad blockers don't is that they're an independent site that is publishing content based on work they didn't produce. That runs afoul of both copyright laws and section 230 which let's sites like Google and Facebook operate. That's pretty different from an ad blocker running on your local machine. The ad blocker isn't publishing the page it edited for you.

lolinder 2y ago
> they're an independent site that is publishing content based on work they didn't produce. What distinguishes these two situations? * User asks proprietary web browser to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does * User asks proprietary web service to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does The technical distinction is that there's a network involved in the second scenario. What is the moral distinction? Why is it that a proprietary web service manipulating content on behalf of a user is "publishing" content illegally, while a proprietary web browser doing the exact same kind of transformations is not? Assume that in both cases the proprietary software fetches the data upon request, does not cache it, and does not make the transformed content available to other users.
- quectophoton 2y ago
  I don't have a horse in this race, but: > * User asks proprietary web service to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does That sounds like Google Translate to me, when pasting a URL. Bonus points if instead of pasting a URL directly, it is submitted to one of the Internet Archive-like sites; and then submit that archive URL to Google Translate. That would be download and adaptation (by Google Translate) of the download and adaptation[1] (by Internet Archive) of the original content. [1]: These archive sites usually present the content in a slightly different way. Granted, it's usually just adding stuff around the page, e.g. to let you move around different snapshots, but that's still showing stuff that was originally not there.

by __loam 2y ago

lolinder 2y ago

> they're an independent site that is publishing content based on work they didn't produce. What distinguishes these two situations? * User asks proprietary web browser to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does * User asks proprietary web service to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does The technical distinction is that there's a network involved in the second scenario. What is the moral distinction? Why is it that a proprietary web service manipulating content on behalf of a user is "publishing" content illegally, while a proprietary web browser doing the exact same kind of transformations is not? Assume that in both cases the proprietary software fetches the data upon request, does not cache it, and does not make the transformed content available to other users.

quectophoton 2y ago
I don't have a horse in this race, but: > * User asks proprietary web service to fetch content and render it a specific way, which it does That sounds like Google Translate to me, when pasting a URL. Bonus points if instead of pasting a URL directly, it is submitted to one of the Internet Archive-like sites; and then submit that archive URL to Google Translate. That would be download and adaptation (by Google Translate) of the download and adaptation[1] (by Internet Archive) of the original content. [1]: These archive sites usually present the content in a slightly different way. Granted, it's usually just adding stuff around the page, e.g. to let you move around different snapshots, but that's still showing stuff that was originally not there.