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.
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.
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...
"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.
josh
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?"
The problem is that for the first time, Microsoft is fielding a browser that is not content neutral.
By that I mean it doesn't just alter the appearance of the web page based on its syntax (i.e. because of tags the author has provided), but its semantics (what the author is saying).
It's really easy to come up with all kinds of ways in which Microsoft can abuse this unique privilege it arrogates to itself, so I won't. Make up your own nightmare scenario. Personally, I'm not against this because of the various kinds of outrageous abuses Microsoft could theoretically undertake. I'm against it because it itself is an outrageous abuse. My works, as an author, are a matter between me and my readers. Microsoft has no business "improving" upon them.
If this is such a valuable service, then the meta tag they propose should be an opt-in tag, not an opt-out one. Authors of web pages would gladly opt-in if the feature is as valuable as Microsoft says it will be. Of course, if practically nobody but Microsoft opts-in, then we know who this feature really benefits.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
...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."
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 $100 per occurance
--CTH
---
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
And just how many users are going to understand what is going on?
And just how the hell are you going to know which links belong to the author and which were generated by M$?
And what makes you think that M$ will do anything other than have sets of links that favor them explicitly?
You're forgetting that this is already fully controlled by M$, there is no room for 'how it should or could be used properly' because Bill hasn't asked and isn't going to. He already knows what he's doing and he's relying on people like you to help him 'show everyone else' what a good thing it is.
Don't you get it? This will allow M$ to turn ALL internet content into M$ content.
No Comment.
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 :)
Uhm, just curiosity here, and keeping in mind that I haven't read through the specs... If I read through what everyone is saying about the file msdnodc.xml correctly, you can change it to customize the redirects presented to you as SmartTags on webpages. What I want to know is, wouldn't it be a waste of time to add sites that you *already know about* to this file? So, you're going to add custom links to a webpage using certain keywords you already know the definition of, to information you already know about? The only way these SmartTags are useful is if they present information that you didn't already have/take you to places you didn't know about. And the only way you can get that, that I see, is by using the defaults. And doesn't MS control the defaults?