Danny
Sullivan: My own view is that trying to come up with some
type of universal guidelines for content modification tools
isn’t going to be successful. I think there’s going to
be a variety of lines that we draw over time, and those lines might
even change over time. But for me, right now, adding links is a
clear and simple line we can start with. If you make a tool that
adds links to a page, you should give the publisher an ability to
override that feature.
Danny is right about the first part. As to the latter part,
open source changes the dynamics.
Thought experiment: build an open source version of the code
with an opt-out feature. Now, imagine a “fork” of
the code which does not include this “feature”.
Question: highlighters, pens and scissors can all be viewed as “content modification tools” when it comes to books we buy, newspapers we subscribe to, etc. Do we need to establish rules for how individuals use those on books/newspapers/etc that they are consuming? Hardly. Yes, rules need to be in place for commercial entities that want to content modification like things.
I wish people would fight the urge to use bad physical world analogies in this discussion.
A highlighter is content neutral — it can be used to mark up anything — and operated at the absolute control by its owner.
Autolink is content dependent — it requires specific kinds of information to be present in order to add links to it — and operated at the control of Google, aside from the notion that the user clicks a button.
Not the same thing. Not even close.
Eric Goldman, an intellectual property professor at Marquette and the former general counsel of Epinions.Com, believes that Google may be illegally creating a derivative work, under present law.
Has anyone read an attorney enter the fray who doesn’t believe it’s an infringement?
This was my point, I appologize if I wasn’t clear. Things that can be operated at the absolute control of the owner are not evil. Things like what Google is doing are evil (in my opinion). I agree with the notion that Google Autolink is creating a derivative work.
If the economics of toolbar creations were such that every mom and pop bookstore could make available a toolbar that directed traffic to their store, and users were free to chose which toolbar to install, would this be so bad?
Or what if there were a charity toolbar that allowed you to pick your favorite charity and then modified all Amazon links to include that charity’s affiliate ID?
Rogers, I’ve wanted to touch on the “derivative works” angle but haven’t had a chance to work it up yet.
However, the essence, I believe, hinges on whether it is purely mechanical (ie. pattern matching independent of the original work) vs. some action by the third-party that is specifically tied to the original work.
AutoLink is purely mechanical. Someone creating a “patch” against someone’s work, and just distributing the patch, is tied to the original work. Butler appears to be quite a bit of the latter.
James: If you agree with me, then that changes everything.
The charity-affiliate rewrite is a good edge case. Though it rewrites page links to deprive publishers of affiliate revenue, as a publisher do I really have the right to insist that a user leaving my site for Amazon give me a cut of their purchases?
As a consumer, if I wanted all of my Amazon purchases to benefit a tsunami relief fund, that seems like a reasonable user expectation.
As a person who often works with lawyers, I would not recommend that anybody look to lawyers for cut and dry or black and white answers.
Consider BitTorrent. Is BitTorrent good? Is BitTorrent evil? On this question, people may differ. (I personally believe that software like BitTorrent and the DOM is amoral).
Is BitTorrent legal? You would think that that would be a simple binary question. And ultimately, a court case may have to decide such a matter. If such a thing comes to pass, undoubtedly there will be no shortage of qualified lawyers who can eloquently argue both sides of this question.
The answers will ultimately depend on such matters as to whether or not there are substantial non-infringing uses. And practical matters such as whether or not the matter is unenforceable.
Rogers: How’s this.. I’m somewhat certain I agree with you ;-) I think that any modification the end user wants to make is good. Any modification some third party wants to make without permission from the content provider is bad, especially if that third party of receiving any form of financial reward for doing so. I mean think about it. What do you think George Lucas would do if someone bought a copy of the Star Wars Triology from Amazon and found out that Amazon had gone through and spliced in advertisements and commercials throughout? Now if I, as an end user, want to make a modified copy of one of the films for my own consumption, for whatever reason — so long as I am not attempting to use that modified version for commercial gain — it is a perfectly acceptable and ok thing to do.
Regarding the statement from Roger Benningfield above, it’s not about who picks the color or the chemical qualities — that is, it is not about who builds the tool — it is about who yields the power to use it and who decides how it will be used. I don’t get to pick the chemicals used in the ink in my favorite pen, but I do get to determine how that pen is used. It’s all about who is in control — who has control over what content is modified; who has control over how that content is modified; etc.
Regarding Sam’s question: “If the economics of toolbar creations were such that every mom and pop bookstore could make available a toolbar that directed traffic to their store, and users were free to chose which toolbar to install, would this be so bad?” If users were free to choose which toolbar to use and were free to determine how it is used, then no, it would not be bad.
And Mark’s: “Or what if there were a charity toolbar that allowed you to pick your favorite charity and then modified all Amazon links to include that charity’s affiliate ID?” Again, if the user was free to determine how that toolbar worked, then no, it would not be bad.
Third parties that create tools that allow end users to control how content is modified are not evil. Third parties that creates tools that modify content in ways that the user cannot control for the sole commercial benefit of the third party are evil.
I hope I’m not just adding noise to the conversation but, if I were Barnes and Noble I’d have filed a suit already. I guess what bothers me is not so much the content modification per se, it’s the arbitrary choice by Google to point ISBN numbers to Amazon etc. Interestingly enough, if you look at the Options for the toolbar and go to autolink settings, Google allows you to select the provider for maps. Your choices include Google Maps, MapQuest and Yahoo Maps. There is no such option for ISBN numbers. It really wouldn’t have been all that difficult to add a configuration wizard to the installer so that the user had to select providers for Maps, Books, etc. Including all the top providers by default, and having a program where non-default providers could request to be added would go along way toward making the toolbar less of a firestarter. The awesome power Google wields in sheer terms of distribution amplifies the bad taste left in your mouth by exclusionary practices.
Google has said it definitely plans to add more choice when the toolbar comes out of beta, so that you could go with B&N, for instance, if you wanted to.
I really can’t stress enough that to me, it’s not about altering content overall but specifically about the issue of adding links to pages, which some publishers have real fears might deprive them of income.
Legally, we don’t know. Gator was able to continue showing ads that actually covered up other ads on pages, if I recall correctly, after some court cases.
I don’t see it as a legal matter. I think it’s something a tool maker needs to consider from a “getting along” perspective. Do you want to respect the concerns of publishers about this particular issue, adding links to their pages?
I think makers ought to voluntarily give the publishers a way out. But you can be innovative. The opt-out could do things like let the user know the publisher itself has disabled the functionality and encourage the user to deal with the publisher direct. Let those two have the conversation and see if the publisher decides to change their mind. In Google’s case, the opt-out could also mean that Alt-Click functionality would still work but would be something I think far more acceptable to publishers.
It’s not a case of being completely right or wrong. It’s a case that there are concerns on both sides and that we might want to make compromises. Want to change my font size and style? Have fun — not a hot button to me or to many other publishers. But adding links clearly is.
The final issue is the size of the tool vendor. Mark’s tool is actually pretty cool, but despite that, it probably won’t have that wide of a take up. Historically, we’ve not seen these type of things take off. The Google Toolbar? Millions of installations already.
Google is also in a very special situation. Mark doesn’t have relationships with publishers. Google depends on them entirely. Publishers either buy ads on Google or carry ads for Google, which earn it virtually all of its money. It simply cannot dismiss what I think is reasonable to say is a significant outcry from publishers, when it is supposed to have relationships with them as well as with its searchers. If opt-out is voluntary for tool makers, some will decline. But the bigger people like Google might actually find that in the longrun, this is the best way for them to gain acceptance for a link adding tool.
“I think that any modification the end user wants to make is good. Any modification some third party wants to make without permission from the content provider is bad, especially if that third party of receiving any form of financial reward for doing so.”
I presume that you find TiVO and ReplayTV (or any DVR) abhorrent then? They allow you to skip ads (the revenue model for commercial TV) and time-shift (which in and of itself obviates many ads). They get paid either a monthly fee by the end user, or a one time buy out of said fee - so they gain revenue in return for this service.
James Robertson: Not sure if the analogy holds. That would depend on how the Neilsen set-top boxes interact with DVR (I don’t know). A station’s commercial revenue is tied to ratings by demographic/time slot. If the DVRs are subtracted from the equation when the box is installed, then it doesn’t count toward ratings, which makes sense because you’re not really watching at the designated time slot anyway. Maybe one of Sam’s readers who’s actually had a DVR + Neilsen Box can shed some light.
AOL has a feature for AOL dial-up users that optimizes images (presumably) based on the bandwidth that user is pulling. I first noticed this when visiting a friend, I checked a photo gallery I had put up and the images were horrible, filled with artifacts from over-optimization. Those images were the content on that site, they were the only reason the site existed, and AOL had ruined them.
But it is the web, I accepted that fact and got over it.
From that example to something like a “blink” tag, when something is put on the web, authors either put up a PDF or they know that their work will be interpreted in ways they do not control. If I put a blink tag around something, I did it for a valid (in my mind) reason and removing that tag changes my content just as much as adding a link to an ISBN does.
Bad things can (and will) happen as companies extend the functionality of browsers, but we write for the web, we know we have no control over that. And we usually fight when publishers try to extend their control boundaries farther than they should. The current uproar is an example of this. I’ll be glad when it is over, I’m looking forward to the coming toys.
“Don’t over-think this; if you don’t like AutoLink, you don’t like pop up blockers and DVR’s either.”
As you know from our long email conversation, I completely disagree. I think that talking about specifically not adding links to a page isn’t the same as universally not wanting any type of content manipulation on the web or off it.
The philisophical debate over that issue is interesting, but it’s not going to yield any agreement nor solve concerns. In fact, it is overthinking it.
Instead, starting off on specific issues are another thing, which is what I think should be done here. This particular type of content manipulation is a big issue to publishers. Can’t we consider their concerns and see if they can be accomodated somehow.
Back to Sam’s original point, it will be interesting to see how things fork. As I said, I’d hope something voluntary can be established for adding links. Someone might build that into the open source tool they create, while others won’t. Whether they do I think will depend largely on their relationships with publishers.
Whether they do I think will depend largely on their relationships with publishers.
Forgive me, Danny, but frankly that sounds backwards to me.
I would have thought that the basis for most of the objections to the Google Toolbar is that it enabled the author of the tool to propagate their relationships with publishers, and thereby surreptitiously establish themselves as valuable intermediaries.
My thesis is that, given enough choice, users will choose tools that either disintermediates such relationships, or tend to reflect the relationships that benefit the user, not the publisher.
Interesting debate here. On my blog a few days, I posted ago about Google AutoLink and relationship and basically suggested that one option that could be explored more are ways features like AutoLink might keep the original site in the loop.
These web technologies allow relationships (e.g., between website and visitor) to be refashioned--sometimes, that is seen as positive (e.g., most folks have warmed up to RSS/Atom as being not too terrible). Sometimes, not so much.
But, rather than trying to prevent the mutation of site contents, it could be interesting to look at ways these changes can plug back into the site--e.g., AutoLink could feedback to the original site in some way that is useful to both the site and the site visitor.
If a content producer is worried enough about the specific types of content modification that the google toolbar does that they would add the opt-out meta tag, it seems like an easier solution would be to just put their ISBN numbers and street addresses inside <a> tags.
And if google did actually implement support for an opt-out mechanism, does anybody really think that someone wouldn’t immediately release a google toolbar patch that circumvented it?