“Here’s a stating-the-obvious news flash: legal problems require legal solutions, not technical ones.”
Fred von Lohmann of the EFF ( http://www.eff.org/ ) has recently updated his paper “Unintended Consequences: Four Years Under the DMCA” ( http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/20030102_dmca_unintended_consequences.html )
It’s a good read. EFF is fighting the DMCA on many fronts, since it’s a huge beast.
Thanks, Patrick. I was looking for that article but couldn’t find it on the first pass.
— Mark 
I concede… Mark is right! I am a dangerous idiot!
http://www.peerfear.org/rss/permalink/2003/02/06/1044567236-I_am_a_Dangerous_Moron.shtml
Didn’t see commments enabled on Kevin’s site. Perhaps I missed them. The only issue listed here that I’m familiar with even remotely is the DMCA issue. Unfortunately, the Verizon move is a different aspect of the DMCA (forcing the ISP to reveal the customer’s information as opposted to the ISP must cut access until/unless a response from the assumed guilty party has been received). This is fairly clear given a cursory glance. Could SBC have fought it? Sure, but they could be the first to take on this aspect, but certainly don’t expect or count on that.
I think it sucks that Mr. Burton’s connection was severed, it’s another incarnation of just how horribly awry the DMCA is. However, stating, “It quickly becomes obvious that you can’t screw with the CoS” seems a tad behind the times. No shit, why do you think the archives went down the first time? The CoS doesn’t give a rat’s butt about fair, they’re going after Mr. Burton because he’s an easier target than Xenu. Given their dithers, they seem rather intent on sending all who question them down in flames.
I hope Mr. Burton fights it, and I hope he wins. But expressing surprise at any of the situation doesn’t get my hopes up real high…
— an ardent stone
I was not aware that viewing a website in an alternative manner was illegal. If the transformation is completely client-side I really can’t imagine it being illegal. Would Lynx be illegal based on how differently it might display a website in comparison to IE6/Mozilla/the author’s intent? Maybe you mean illegal in the “British Telecom hyperlink-patent, laughed out of court” kind-of-way.
On a related note:
If a website tries to keep me out because I don’t have browser/plugin-X or scripting turned-on and I view source and get what I want have I broken the law? Maybe the view-source button should be made illegal.
— MikeyC
Mark, you may have some good points about kevin (though I’m with mikeyC on the legal issues)… But a lengthy name-calling rant can hardly have been the right thing to post. I think it’s a genuine shame that a great many new visitors who will find you through yesterdays News and Observer article will have their first taste of your blog be childish name calling. Many will click through to kevin’s rightfully-indignant defense, and probably come to some unhappy conclusions about this blogging thing they’ve read about in the news. Sad, really.
“Here’s a stating-the-obvious news flash: legal problems require legal solutions, not technical ones.”
I believe it was Martin Luther King, Jr. that said it is a person’s duty to not only ignore, but break laws they truly believe are morally wrong. While I don’t necessarily believe the right thing was done in this case, I still believe in the idea. It’s called civil disobedience. It worked for Ghandi. It worked for MLK. Hey, even Eric Raymond keeps a copy of DeCSS on his website. Just because *somebody* thinks it’s a legally “right” doesn’t mean you have to.
I think this is very relevant today, with the current downward spiral of the DMCA and copyright law.
— Adam
Maybe Mark should take more than a weekend off. Between the tantrum about XHTML 2 and this unjustified attack, I think the stress is getting to him.
— Jeremy
You guys seem to misunderstanding Civil Disobedience. It is not a solution. It is a means to a solution, but it is not the solution itself. The only solutions to a bad Law are:
1. A new, better law
or
2. A judge willing to declare the Bad Law bad and strike it down.
You may bring pressure upon those institutions via civil disobedience, but you are pressuring for a legal soltution. That is what worked for MLK.
To MikeyC, which part of “We do not endorse any scripts or products that pull our headlines off our site, nor the use of our headlines on any other sites. The content of this site is (c) Copyright 2003 by Onion, Inc. and may not be reprinted or re-transmitted in whole or part without the express written consent of the publisher” do you not understand?
http://www.theonion.com/onion_help/faq_web_links.html
— Mark
To Adam: yeah, that’s all great, and those who practice civil disobedience should be prepared to accept the consequences. MLK spent a lot of time in jail for his protests. Kevin has admitted that he expressly started mirroring the xenu.net content to bait the CoS, but once he gets bumped offline, he turns around and professes complete ignorance about how either the CoS or the DMCA works. This is not the sort of martyr we need in this fight.
— Mark
“To MikeyC, which part of “We do not endorse any scripts or products that pull our headlines off our site, nor the use of our headlines on any other sites.”
So what if they don’t “endorse” something. How does that make it illegal. It sounds that they used that particular wording because they know they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
“The content of this site is (c) Copyright 2003 by Onion, Inc. and may not be reprinted or re-transmitted in whole or part without the express written consent of the publisher” do you not understand?”
I don’t understand how that relates to client-side transformation. Sounds like a standard, ‘do not reprint our stuff on your website’ blurb that really has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
By the way, should deep-linking be illegal, Mark, just because they say so? The web predates The Onion. If they don’t like the way the medium operates, they should get the hell out. Its called the WEB for a reason…deep linking was always meant to be apart of it. I hate these companies who come online and start making demands about how the medium must operate.
— MikeyC
Actually, MikeyC, it’s their content, and in response to the FAQ question “do you provide an RSS feed”, they said that no one has the right to redistribute their content without their permission. I personally think it would be in their best interests to provide a title + excerpt + link feed (I think it would drive traffic), but it’s not my call. Maybe they’ve run the numbers and decided it’s not in their best interest. Maybe they’re just being stubborn. I have no idea. But it’s their content, and they have a right to specify how it can be distributed and republished, and that’s exactly what NewsMonster is doing.
You’re right, though, I misspoke. It’s not illegal; it’s simply against their terms of service. It’s probably just a civil matter, not a criminal one. (IANAL.) So Kevin is not setting himself up to be prosecuted (as he is in his CoS tilting-at-windmills quest), just setting himself up to be sued. I’ll make the correction.
Don’t like it? Make your own content. Nobody has a monopoly on satire.
Or civilly disobey… and be prepared to take the hit.
Your choice.
— Mark
this site use dot be educational and fun to read. now it’s a headache.
— alison
Thanks for sharing, alison. Some days it’s educational; some days it’s fun but useless fluff; some days it’s petty little rants. Re-reading my archives, I can’t find a time when it was any different.
— Mark
Re: Legal issues surrounding client side transformations
The terms of service Mark mentions cover _redistribution_ only. Anything done client side is completely and totally legal. If you are redistributing these client transformations over the internet to remote clients you are then in legal trouble for _unauthorized distribution_ and not because the content was transformed.
Re: Headache
About the “this site gives me a headache” complaint, I think the problem isn’t the content, it’s the background image. If the browser window isn’t wide enough, that Big Orb Of Zen really hurts the eye. I think it’s a worthy candidate for the painful background page, http://members.cox.net/lxix/ithurts/ (link from jwz’s livejournal).
- Dotan
Re: “anything done client-side is completely and totally legal”. Except that it’s not completely client-side, it’s using server-side resources first. NewsMonster is similar to those “prefetching” proxy programs that follow all links and download them in idle time, just in case you follow them. Combined with a style stripper, and an ad blocker. Oh, and The Onion was specifically targeted for this treatment.
There’s no point going around in circles debating the nuances of their two-sentence FAQ answer. I’ve contacted The Onion asking for fuller clarification on this behavior. If I hear back from them, I’ll post their reply. (I’m not saying their position will necessarily be tenable, but it will at least put to rest the question of what their position is.)
— Mark
Mark, the point is that it doesn’t actually matter what the onion thinks. It’s their content, so under copyright law, they can restrict your redistribution rights. But they have absolutely no control over what you do with it on your client. As stated earlier, they probably use the legally-useless wording “we do not endorse” to shun aggregators like newsmonster, because they know it’s beyond their control. Incidentally, that wording does seem to make newsmonster not even in violation of their terms, but rather just “not endorsed” by them. I don’t see where they endorse any web browsers, so I guess IE and Mozilla must not be endorsed either…
If kevin were publishing an RSS feed of the onion that I could subscribe to with any RSS newsreader, this would be an entirely different situation (and I’d agree he would be in the wrong). However, it seems that he’s just publishing a piece of software that does some text parsing on people’s computers.
When I’m on dialup, I read the onion like this:
$ lynx -dump http://onion.com/redirect.php | less
Is that, in your opinion, a violation of their terms? No? What if I put in a |perl -pe ‘…’| with some regular expressions before piping to less? At what point do I become a criminal, Mark?
I like you, and I like your site, and I wouldn’t ordinarily border on rudeness in your comments, but after seeing how you flamed kevin I don’t feel so bad about it.
I’d like to hear what the onion has to say too :)
— Anonymous
Hey, about the headache thing, you have every right to say whatever you want… it’s your site. That’s why blogs are good.
Personally, I’m much more likely to read a technical blog by somebody who isn’t afraid to express their human side as well as their expertise, than one by someone who focuses exclusively on endless streams of TLAs, etc.
And anyway, I like reading venting too.
Here’s to normality.
— pat
Even if Kevin published an RSS feed, I’m not quite sure he’d be in the wrong. Why am I bound to accept the onion’s terms of service? because I entered their website? I haven’s seen any cases out there enforcing what I term browse read agreements, like the onion’s, but rather only click read/click-wrap agreements like the l.a. times.
*This postings is merely provided as a service to the web community, and does not constitute solicitation or provision of legal advice.
— Kevin
I didn’t find the post as personal as most, maybe because IAAL and am used to vicious arguments.
One little nit to pick though is that “the DMCA requires an ISP to remove the offending content immediately” is not quite right. Section 512(a)-(d) (the heart of the notice and takedown provisions) do not REQUIRE takedown. They merely require takedown IF a service provider wishes to take part in the DMCA safe harbor. I’m sure that is what you meant but it may not have given the impression that the DMCA works by voluntary action of service providers backed up by increased risk.
— anon