Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Google has taken some flak lately for it's AutoLink functionality in the Google toolbar. A lot of it comes from the fact that at a core level it is a technology similar to Microsoft's ad-based revenue driver auto linking service that people got up in arms about. Personally, I don't have a problem with the underlying technology. I myself have been thinking about adding a Firefox plugin to the array of "Social Software" to let you label words as tags to link into friends blogs, delicious, etc by auto-linking tags to pages.

The EFF, however, has a different tact altogether on the subject of content-modification:

Some people (like Dan Gilmor) are viewing this with suspicion. (The Trademark Blog has collected the commentary.) They shouldn't. The issue is simple: Who owns your desktop? You, or the owner of whatever webpage you happen to be browsing?

A meatspace analogy should make this clear: Imagine I have a butler whom I task with going through what drops into my mail slot each morning. His job? To annotate my snail mail. He goes through the advertising circulars and researches whether better prices are available anywhere else. He gets me a map of every return address. Maybe I ask him to anticipate needs I don't even know I have yet. If he does something I don't like, I replace him.

When I visit your website, and you send me a page in response, I should be able to do whatever I like to manipulate it on my end. Display it in purple, suppress images, block pop-ups, compare prices from other vendors, whatever. In the words of my colleague, Cory Doctorow, "it's my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it."

This, of course, addresses another issue. The issue of control of the content. Frankly, the EFF's point is valid. The idea that everyone assumes that the "client is well behaved" is just preposterous. Web publishers need to take a clue from the game publishers, and just accept the fact that whatever information you send to the client, they are going to do whatever the hell they want with it. It is a valid point.

The thing that strikes me about the Google issue, though, is the difference between monopoly and non-monopoly. When Microsoft sell universal links on every page, they are doing it from a position of domination. Google, while dominant in their niche, doesn't controll the browser. For AutoLink to function, the user has to elect to get the Googlebar, they have to elect to turn it on. Would google be having an easier time of it if they had made the linking options for things like ISBN numbers configurable from the get-go? Sure. Frankly, I still hate buying from Amazon. I would ask, however, how many times you see an ISBN number for a book in a web page, rather than just a title that is already linked to Amazon.

You might say that AutoLinking addresses to Google Maps is an exercise in monopolization over the other online map site, and it might very well be a fair point, however, nothing is preventing MapQuest from implementing their own single-purpose AutoLink plug in, with or without Google adding a configuration option to Googlebar. This is something any coder could do in a week or so. This isn't a high barrier to entry like the ISPs that come pre-installed with Windows or trying to compete against MSIE which is the default with both the operating system and the ISP that over half of Americans use.

I do think, however, the EFF's point is a good one and merits discussion in our intellectual property debate. People who publish on the web, while they certainly should expect protection from plagiarism and actual IP theft, certainly shouldn't presume that an individual user must abide by their presentation for looking at the content.

Technically, disabling JavaScript to bypass those "You can't save this image" scripts is a crime punishable by 4 years in prison and $50,000 in fines under the DMCA. Again, though, it simply illustrates the rediculousness of the law in that it not only presumes, but legislates a well behaved client. I think as WoW has demonstrated in the gamer world and Firefox is continuing to show in the web world, the more power over the client you give the user, the more interesting things get.