Slashdot Mirror
"Smart Tags," Round Two
A few more stories about "Smart Tags" (see round 1 if you missed it) -- Liza writes: "According to Newsbytes, a new feature in IE 6.0, "Smart Tags," which inserts hyperlinks into pages so that users can get more information about a concept or company, could violate both copyright law and federal rules prohibiting deceptive and unfair business practices. Microsoft says site operators could insert a metatag disabling Smart Tags, so concerned publishers could avoid them. Interesting questions!" Meanwhile, ZDNet has a nice piece examining smart tags in action.
Yes, it absolutely does create a derivative work.
It has always been understood that a link appearing in an HTML document implies that the author wishes to offer the user the opportunity to "follow" the link in order to find more information related to that word. This invitation is based upon the meaning attached to the word by the author. The author establishes this relationship knowing that it will serve his particular interests, whatever they may be. Software that adds link relationships that the original author has not explicitly defined changes or alters the meaning of the content and could very easily establish relationships that would be harmful to the author's interests (others have already made this case with the "Acme Widget Co. site having links to ABC Widgets, Inc.'s site inserted" example).
The descriptions of the implementation that I've read make this feature sound a lot sexier than your run-of-the-mill hyperlink. I imagine that your average luser would be inclined to use the Smart Tag links rather than the less attractive standard links. This will lead to confusion on the part of users, which will result in lost traffic (and in the case of corporate sites, lost business) for web publishers. It's easy to imagine that a user who didn't understand the difference between the two types of links would find most web sites virtually worthless since instead of allowing him to follow a series of links to gather increasingly detailed information on a particular subject, he would be lead through a series of sites with little relationship to each other or to the information has was seeking in the first place.
The basic idea, looking at the content and providing the user with links to sites with more information, is a good one, but the implementation is awful. Microsoft would scream bloody murder if a competitor's browser did the same thing with their content. Communicator and Mozilla offer a similar feature called "What's Related," but it lists related sites in a separate list. Something like this, which separates the third-party's links from the original content, would be much better since it wouldn't effectively add unintended relationships to the original author's content.
slashdot broke my sig
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
You're confusing content with presentation. The web was always about separating the two out....well..for a while anyway. Today, you can still change the colors of links and font sizes and whatnot. But the content is still the same.
Until now. MS is intending on changing the content of a web page. This is no longer about changing how it looks, they're changing how it acts. Links that you as an author did not want are now popping up in your site, changing the flow of the content. This is very different from changing a font size.
That ZDNet article is one of the funniest things I have ever read in a Ziff publiction (intentionally funny, anyway).
sPh
The redirects are defined in a client-side file called msdnodc.xml with a clearly defined and well-documented DTD and plenty of documentation on the MSDN website.
/. readers considered themselves to be fairly competent with computers, and perfectly capable of editing a text file without Federal Court supervision.
Ahh...but you see...we're still in the XP *beta*. Before that sucker goes live, MS will *probably* encode it into an encrypted (aka: DMCA-protected) DLL file that you can't remove, because they threw a couple of "vital" IE functions in there as well.
I can't see MS leaving something like this user-editable - it's just not like them. They play the control game -- maybe the first version will actually be accessible - but at some point, they're going to close it off - under the guise of "innovation", or "ease of use".
Certainly, there will be a default set of redirects installed with XP, and I have no doubt that these will be chosen to M$'s advantage.
BWAHAHAHAHA - sorry. EVERYTHING MS does, is done because it gives them an advantage. Whether it's a financial one, or a marketshare one - it's all a game for control. MS wants to control your computer, the apps on it, your 'net access, what you see, what you read - everything. That's what they want. That's their "vision" of the future. It's scary as hell.
But I was under the impression (what!) that some
Look at how many people out there don't bother changing the default start page in their web browser. Do you really think Grandma is going to learn XML so she can deduce exactly what MS is feeding her? Doubtful she'll even realize they're feeding her anything - what little she knows of the web tells her that links on webpages are a part of the page - so if that link goes to an order form for Office XP, or to a favorable MS story, or to anothe MS-owned site - well, that must be what was meant by the author of the page!
Now, you or I could be perfectly happy editing a text file - whether it be HTML, XML, BASH, PERL, or whatever. Grandma wouldn't be. Grandma thinks editing a text file is "too hard". Grandma isn't going to do it. Then again, she probably wouldn't even know that she could, unless it was all gussied up with a GUI editor with a little pulldown field for which MS-owned site you want the word "is" to link to...
I can't really see the problem with smart tags. One of the tenets of the web one which I expect most Slashdot readers strongly agree with - is that you cannot control how your site will appear on the user's machine.
If they choose to view it in an unusual font, that's their choice. If they disable JavaScript, that's their choice. If they run a program to filter out banner ads, it's none of your business. The same applies if they decide to run a program which adds new links to the page that you wrote.
Of course, you do have to question the common sense of the user who runs such a program, given that the standard set of links is unlikely to be impartial. But if you carefully choose which sets of smart tags to import, it could work.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
There is none yet. Microsoft hasn't decided on what it'll be.
They'll spring it on us at the last possible moment, so that we'll all have to scramble to "opt-out" of their little game.
Without you I'm one step closer to happiness without violence.
Microsoft says site operators could insert a metatag disabling Smart Tags, so concerned publishers could avoid them.
Yeah, and concerned car owners can lock their doors, and concerned grocery store oweners can get video cameras, but that doesn't make stealing an open car or robbing an unguarded store alright... This all sounds pretty horrible to me. I don't want somebody sticking ads or other links onto my pages for me, making it look like I am endorsing something I may know nothing about. But since "IE won the browser war," I guess they can do whatever they monopolistically want...
Posted from the wireless couch.
"Microsoft says site operators could insert a metatag disabling Smart Tags, so concerned publishers could avoid them."
Its like when you can reply to a spam and you'll be removed from the list. No-one cares that I didn't want to be on the list in the first place, and I don't want to work in order to be not screwd. The same applies here I think...
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
Anyone actually played with this yet, or is this idle blather?
As a technology, it's a nifty one that's been done before, but this would be the first time it would get wide distribution. And it seems like a nice enough new developer feature for Office/VBA apps. However, the way it's being rolled out in IE, with Microsoft-selected kerword/link databases, is a nasty bit of hijacking.
Besides siphoning users away from everyone's sites and effectively placing text ads on everyone's pages without payment, there are privacy issues to be addressed. Do smart-tag clickthroughs send a referer request header? If so, MS or its marketing partner(s) will be able to collect traffic and even some user data that can be used to extrapolate usage patterns on other organizations' sites just as an ad agency could, only, again, without any kind of contract or compensation.
Boo, hiss.
I first came across flyswat installed on my mom's computer. She uses the NeoPlanet shell for IE, something I set up for her in 1998. As it works, and because I can't figure out how to convert all of her email to Outlook, she is still using it. Anyway, I came to visit a year ago and found a bunch of brownish-green links on all her web pages. Links that were really commercial. After some investigation I found them coming from a program called flyswat running in the background. She didn't know how they got there, and didn't use them, so I uninstalled flyswat.
Let me say right away, the idea isn't bad. I would really use it if it didn't change the look of the document with ugly brown lines... if I could right-click on any word and get a contextual menu on it. Even information on where to buy, or similar things commercial.
And as long as it isn't turned on by default in MSIE 6, and it doesn't *replace* any functionality or links in a page I write, I'm not going to worry about it, and will likely be glad to have it as a browsing option.
On a side note, I've always wanted to set up some post-processor for adding contextual links to documents I serve. I'd especially like for all names in my Intranet web documents to be linked to people objects, and projects to project objects, etc.
josh
Dammit, I hate being on the side of MS and against EFF, but it seems like some people just don't understand what the WWW is.
You don't have any guarantee of how your page looks or acts. You might have typed in some Javascript that does something annoying, included an image tag that happens to be an advertisement, linked to a Nazi or porno site, and written your textual content in English, and included a bunch of tags that you believe specify a physical appearance and layout of exactly how your page should look. You may even believe that your web page should only be viewed on a video display screen, and never be read aloud to a blind person or displayed on a pocket pager. But you don't have any guarantee that any user agent will respect any of your wishes.
It is not a copyright violation for the user agent to heavily process your document prior to displaying it. If it were, then we wouldn't have web browsers (we would just use "wget" and "more" and read raw HTML). This is the nature of the web, and you know what you're getting into when you put a server on the Internet that replies to HTTP requests. Because the social convention for replying to HTTP requests is "anything goes" and everything is merely advisory. If the possibilities frighten you, then the WWW isn't for you. Run a dialup BBS instead, where people download PDFs. (And just hope that PDF-viewing developments remain stagnant.)
It's fine with me if Microsoft gets bitchslapped in the marketplace and press over this due to everyone simply hating it (after all, Smartlinks is a rather cheesy idea). If you don't like it, don't use it. But it's not unlawful. If we change the law (either by passing legislation, or having a judge "clarify" (*cough*) the existing law) to make this illegal, then there some other things will be theatened as well. Just off the top of my head:
- People's right to use translators
- People's right to link a web browser to a dictionary so they can easily look up
words that they don't know the meaning of
- People's right to use third-party annotations, such a Third Voice
- People's right to filter out ads or anything else they don't want to see
- People's right to use style sheets
- People's right to turn off Javascript, frames, ActiveX, Java, etc.
- People's right to use any browser that doesn't render a page exactly the same
way as whatever the market leader happens to be at the time
- And a little more indirectly (but not much): People's right to use caches,
anonymizing proxies, encrypted tunnels, or anything else that increases security
or performance
I hope Robin Gross rethinks this issue, because EFF is wrong this time.---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Of course, $HTTP_USER_AGENT is just fiction anyway. You just filtered out a lot of other users too since everyone tells their browser to spoof as MSIE, due to incompetent web admins going to extra trouble to exclude non-MSIE users.
Due to a long history of abuse, that field has been rendered meaningless. Thus making any decisions based upon it, is always a bad idea.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The redirects are defined in a client-side file called msdnodc.xml with a clearly defined and well-documented DTD and plenty of documentation on the MSDN website.
Certainly, there will be a default set of redirects installed with XP, and I have no doubt that these will be chosen to M$'s advantage.
You are aware that the default installation of any software under windows is the same case and that it is of enormous value even for a company like AOL that its software is part of that default?
We are talking of a unprecedent editorial power over the majority of internet users, not about the fairly competent minority
The article linked in the story is a good example of how a piece of information could be subverted using Smart Tags:
But then again, what if someone went through this entire column and underlined words, without my permission (link to unflattering photo of author) and then put in the links to Web sites and pages that made a mockery or subverted everything I wrote (link to photo of Karl Marx)? Yes, I could see how that would really be annoying (link to high school yearbook photo of author).
Frankly, if I write a story and post it on my website, I don't want Microsoft deciding what gets hyperlinked and what doesn't. I consider the hyperlinks to be part of the content that I "approve" for my article.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
What, has everyone forgot the point of the internet?
So there's a meta tag. And when company X makes another new feature I don't want my site to participate in, I'll need yet another meta tag, and another meta tag, ad infinitum. Why can't there be a meta tag to TURN IT ON instead of turn it off. Isn't that what meta tags are for? To give browsers extra information?
Retrofitting the entire internet IS NOT going to make friends. This should be more of an opt-in than an opt-out. They're assuming that by default, everyone wants to participate when the exact opposite is probably true.
::sigh:: Embrace and extend. Yay.
--
Shaun Thomas: INN Programmer
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
From the information I've seen:
:-(
(i) If links are part of the content of a page, then the whole DeCSS case is sunk. You have to choose what you believe. Smart tags may indeed be the EFF's best friend here because if Microsoft can convince the courts that they are permitted to add whatever links they like because they are not part of a web page, then by implication you also have the right to link your page wherever you like and not be responsible for the content at the other end. So, either Microsoft and the EFF are both correct, or both are wrong. You can't have it both ways.
(ii) Smart Tags may or may not be included in the release. Microsoft is testing the waters to see people's reactions and if it is too bad then they are likely to can the idea.
(iii) Smart Tags will probably be disabled by default, or at the very least be an option in the Internet Connection Wizard. This means the end user is actually defining how they want to parse your web site - whether they want the tags or not.
(iv) Third parties can provide their own smart tag filters to link wherever they like. This isn't a Microsoft-only club. You can even have a Slashdot smart tag if you like that links to articles on the subject.
(iv) This isn't about publisher's rights. Microsoft isn't changing what is published, they are effectively providing reference material on what is published. As I stated in (i), links aren't content - they are just references to other content.
...and I wasted all those moderator points I would have loved to spend on this thread to bring you this.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Or better yet, an ActiveX thingy that'd overwrite msdnodc.xml (the client-side file that controls smart-tag appearance) with "appropriate" smart tags.
Wouldn't be a trojan, technically speaking. You'd just pop up a dialog box saying (in typically Microsoftian language):
"This link will upgrade the file that contains your smart links. Do you want to upgrade your smart links? (Yes/No)"
(OK, I'm in an evil mood today. Deal.)
Ok. So, can I apply the GPL to my website? If so, and if it turns out that M$ is creating a derivative work of my website, can I then force them to release the source code to that derivative work? And if so, what exactly would be the source code to the derivative work?
--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Some people have made much of the fact that html is designed to allow different presentations. This may be true, but the web page design serves as a specification. Presentations of the page must vary within those bounds, other wise a derivitive work is created. In general, creation of a derivitive work is copyright infringement unless it is authorized by the copyright owner. An "opt out" strategy is not availing -- an explicit affirmation is required by law.
There can still be a defense of fair use. For example, if I write a script to add links and run it in my own browser, I haven't done anything that affects the market value of the page, because my affect as a single user is insignificant. Also such a personal script is noncommercial in nature.
Not so for Microsoft. They have been found to be a monopoly specifically in the browser market. As such, when they change your web page, it will be changed for the masses and it will alter the statistics significantly of your click patterns, which clearly affects your ability to profit from you copyrighted content.
Additionally, Microsoft is attempting to profit from this feature, whereas an individual user is probably not doing so. Thus two critical factors of the fair use equation weigh against smart-tags, however this does not mean that all modification of web pages are infringing. Fair use is a case by case analysis.
(i) If links are part of the content of a page, then the whole DeCSS case is sunk. You have to choose what you believe. Smart tags may indeed be the EFF's best friend here because if Microsoft can convince the courts that they are permitted to add whatever links they like because they are not part of a web page, then by implication you also have the right to link your page wherever you like and not be responsible for the content at the other end. So, either Microsoft and the EFF are both correct, or both are wrong. You can't have it both ways.
Real Fact: DeCSS case, I put the link on MY page.
"Smart Tags", somebody else put the link on MY page.
(i) Is saying that the whole thing is about where the link goes. The "Real Issue" is not where, but who put the link their and who controls where it goes.
(ii) Smart Tags may or may not be included in the release. Microsoft is testing the waters to see people's reactions and if it is too bad then they are likely to can the idea.
Real Fact: The code is written, works, and exists in Office XP already.
(iii) Smart Tags will probably be disabled by default, or at the very least be an option in the Internet Connection Wizard. This means the end user is actually defining how they want to parse your web site - whether they want the tags or not.
Real Fact: Probably
(iv) Third parties can provide their own smart tag filters to link wherever they like. This isn't a Microsoft-only club. You can even have a Slashdot smart tag if you like that links to articles on the subject.
Real Fact: Since these filters are XML files on the local user's machine that the user can edit, IE is making the user's hard drive available to third parties!
(iv) This isn't about publisher's rights. Microsoft isn't changing what is published, they are effectively providing reference material on what is published. As I stated in (i), links aren't content - they are just references to other content.
Real Fact: So far, it's links to stock quotes on MSN and where to by sports memorabilia on MSN.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Perhaps I'm just a lousy reader, but I have yet to see somebody who actually tells me what meta tag I have to use to disable this - I want to put this on my web site, but I'm unable to find out how. Getting the SDK for this from microsoft.com failed miserably as well on both my Mac and NetBSD machines, so if there's a kind soul on /. that can help...
This is wrong, just plain wrong. Not because of copyright, not because of unfair competition, but because it gives someone else control of content I created(but not in a copyright sense).
What I mean is, let's say I make a website dedicated to exposing Scientology for what it really is, a sick twisted cult that extorts money from people.
Now, with Microsoft smart tags, if someone visits my site there will possibly be links to pro-scientology articles. What's really scary is that Microsoft actually does have an affiliation with some Scientology-owned companies.
This is the ultimate example of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" strategy, using their web browser monopoly to create a monopoly on, well, the web as we know it.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
off-topic, I know, but...
It's almost the same as someone loosing a worm or other virus onto the net.
Someone using the term 'loosing' properly! Not a mistaken spelling for 'losing'! On the Internet! On Slashdot, no less! Yikes!
[
...because this stupid feature is disabled by default*. In Microsoft-land this means that 99.99% of users will never enable or even be aware of it - ala the "Don't spam everyone I know with e-mail virii" check box in Outlook.
* - This, of course, could change. That would be something to fight about.
G.H.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
...because this stupid feature is disabled by default*. In Microsoft-land this means that 99.99% of users will never enable or even be aware of it - ala the "Don't spam everyone I know with e-mail virii" check box in Outlook.
Heheheh...I'm surprised you haven't realized yet what Microsoft means by "default." They're not going to spend millions of dollars in time and development just to have something "disabled by default."
What that means is this: you install Windows XP, and near the end, you get this dialog box: "Microsoft has furthered its internet innovation in pushing the limits of technology by bringing to you a new technology known as Smart Tags! With this option enabled, you will have the power to further your web-browsing experiences by being provided with new links on existing websites, expanding your browsing capabilities within the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0! Push OK to enable this feature."
And as you said, for the 99.99% of users who aren't "aware" of any possible web options, they're going to absent-mindedly click OK, thinking that it's some required part of the internet.
...of course, it's still disabled "by default."
this is EXACTLY like spam. why not go in from the other direction? disable your "smart tags" by default and allow a meta tag to ACTIVATE them.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
"Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation"
:-)
Despite your optimistically high opinions of the population, 80% of them are not able to change screensavers without help desk assistance. More than 50% don't even know that screen savers can be changed. A giant screaming banner at the top of every modified page saying "DANGER: THESE LINKS ARE ADDED BY MICROSOFT, AN EVIL CORPORATE MERCHANDISING MACHINE! BY CLICKING ON THEM YOU WILL EXPOSE YOURSELF TO MICROSOFT SELECTED ADVERTISING! CLICK HERE TO CHANGE THESE LINKS" will go unclicked by that same 50%.
Any time you have a default setting, count on it being used, and used heavily. Believe me, Microsoft does.
I certainly don't want to be as offensive as barneyfoo, but you really need to leave acadamia and get out into the real world. Take a summer intern job on a help desk. Answer a few phone calls from people who are not stupid, but uninformed to a degree you cannot ever imagine until you've experienced it first hand. Go home that night shaking your head in disbelief at the questions you're asked. Then answer that phone every day for the next three months.
AOL exists for a reason. Most people simply cannot ever expand beyond what they're spoon fed. That's why Microsoft will "own" these links.
John
John
Bad news for JunkBuster, huh?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I already use manual smart tags when browsing the web. Using a combination of lynx, gpm, and Surfraw, I can highlight any word or phrase, switch to another virtual console, type in either "webster" (for a dictionary lookup) or "google" (for a google lookup), then paste in the term I'm interested in. I then hit return, and *BAM* I've got my results. I do this a lot. I would jump at the chance of having a one or two click process to do this for me. I might be willing to switch to IE as my Windows GUI browser for this functionality. I would be willing to start trying Mozilla if it added this feature. I would definitely be willing to install a proxy to filter out the META disabling tag, if it seems necessary. Any web authors out there who have pages that already provide Merriam-Webster and Google search links for all possible terms and phrases in the page can feel free to ignore me. The rest should get off this moral high horse of "I don't want them changing my web page."
What is the main advantage of the web over other networked forms of information? That's right, it's the fact that it is hyperlinked, allowing people to veer off from what they're reading to related sites, and then return when they're done.
People here often complain about how hyperlinks aren't used properly, and yet when Microsoft implement an automatic hyperlink generator, they complain!
Since people writing websites are often engaging in practices such as closed sites (where there aren't any external links, keeping novice users within their system of sites - i.e. AOL or Freeserve) then we should applaud this feature, as it will allow millions to finally venture out into the web as a whole, and increase connectivity massively. No longer will you have to waste valuable time searching for the meaning of an unexplained term on a page - there'll be a Smart Tag leading directly to useful information!
As for copyright issues, well you could say the same thing about proxy services like Junkbuster, which strip certain elements out of webpages before the user sees them. At the end of the day it's less offensive to copyright holders, because it adds value to their pages at no cost or effort to them, whereas Junkbuster removes any chance of them being able to fund their efforts, leading to the closure of many people's pages.
No I think this will work out well for everyone, and I hope that minority browsers like Mozilla and Opera follow suit. No longer will we need to be constrained by the linking laziness of web authors :)
Jon Erikson, IT guru
I expect Microsoft will be forced to shift from the exclusionary tag model to an inclusionary tag model where only sites with an inclusionary tag can be modified in this way. That way content owners have to give their eplicit permission to microsoft to edit their page in ways they would be completely unaware of.
There is some middle ground. Perhaps Microsoft could check the page for the '©' symbol, and if it is found, then search for the inclusionary tag, granting them license to modify the page.
Along the same lines, has anyone thought about how much they want to charge Microsoft for such a content license?
I'll be sure to put a click-thru license (enforceable through the wonders of the DMCA) on my website, requiring Microsoft to pay some reasonable fee per page modification, per user - how about $100 per occurance
--CTH
---
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Seriously, this is soooo close to being a good idea. Slashdotters love everything2.com - just imagine the entire WWW like it.
SmartTags could be a very powerful improvement to the WWW if done properly. And that means no concentrated authority on where these links point to. I'd be interested in it if it used an open directory for the link info instead of some corporate "money word" bucket.
As it is, who the hell wants to always be redirected to Microsoft's web site? Besides the pointy haired bosses. :-)
If an otherwise reasonably intelligent person (who spends 8 hours a day surfing the internet) can get suckered in like this, the affects on Joe Lunchpail really REALLY scare me :(
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
HTTP allows you to determine the type and version of browser that is accessing a page. You could always write a little script that detected whether a smart-tag-capable browser was accessing your page, and redirect it to an "error" page, instructing the reader to get a different browser before visiting the page again. (For good measure you could provide a link to Mozilla and an explanation of why smart tags are evil.)
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What would happen if I looked at one of my web pages with IE 6.0 to determine what words were being smart linked and then added links of my own to those words that would make any resulting clicks go to a site that had absolutely nothing to do with the word? Anyone who clicked on the word Coca-Cola would be sent to a page about rhubarb farming. Better yet, we could rewrite all these words to link to Microsoft's site and see how well their server stood up. Which would take precedence in the browser - the Smart Link or the web page's link? Would people be able to tell if there were two links there? Would it be possible to disguise a regular link as a smart link by copying that little purple line under it?
I say if they're going to shove this down our throats then we should screw it up for them.