8 comments

• 

  Ed Felten

  4 years ago

  You're right on the merits here. But you would convince more people if you stuck to arguing the merits and toned down the ad hominem attacks.
• 

  matt

  4 years ago

  yes, this is very reminiscent (damn near identical) of the tool that microsoft tried to implement some time ago. and yes, that was met with all kinds of hysterical rhetoric as well. i haven't investigated the tool yet, however i think that as long as three criteria are met that no one should be able to complain.
  
  1. have an off button on the tool bar settings. this is the simplest solution to nearly any type of problem of this nature.
  
  2. permit some sort of meta-tag on an HTML page that will permit content creators to disable this feature.
  
  3. have some way to distinguish between the hyper-links that were "automatically" added from the ones that are in the original HTML.
  
  three fairly simple steps that should negate any logical argument one can come up with. as i've said, i haven't looked in detail at the function in question, maybe it already does this, if so this is just another example of a lot of noise for nothing.
• 

  dmarti

  4 years ago

  What about Linspire HotWords? Similar functionality, but it's from a company that got sued by Microsoft instead of co-sponsoring Nathan Myhrvold's evil patent bandit gang with them. I suspect that online chatter about being "evil" is just a reflection of the company's apparent closeness to MSFT.
• 

  Parallels

  4 years ago

  "In the end, though, isn't it bizarre that so many paranoid souls would campaign for government restrictions on what you can do with data that's on your own computer?"
  
  
  You could restate the question as: "In the end, though, isn't it bizarre that so many paranoid souls would campaign for government restrictions on what you can do with data that's on your own DVD? Or TV? Or CD? Or TiVo? Or _insert technology here_?"
  
  Seems like the Copyright Ã?Å?ber Alles meme is highly contagious.
• 

  NRT

  4 years ago

  Yes, some of the rhetoric has been overheated, and some of the objections bogus, but my objection to AutoLinks is highlighted by your final sentence:
  "But if AutoLink is what users want, isn't that a good thing?"
  
  That's a fair point, but unfortunately disregards content-providers in favour of convenience for visitors. I, as site owner, provide some links from my pages, and withhold others. It's my decision, not that of a visitor, and certainly not that of a third-party.
  
  
  
  
  
  Imagine I had some objection to a certain online bookseller, and had specifically, quite deliberately, avoided linking from, say, a book review on my site to the corresponding entry at that retailer's site. If AutoLinks then linked to the retailer anyway, my site would be generating traffic and revenue for that company, directly against my will. Personally, I don't regard that as acceptable.
  
  
  Visitors to my site mightn't agree with my objection to the bookseller, but the point is that it's my website, and I'm not asking the visitor to agree. I wouldn't be preventing the visitor from going to the retailer's website via a different route, but I'd certainly object to my web content - my intellectual property, to get a little precious about it - being used to assist the process, without my permission.
  
  
  
  
  
  I fully agree that the user needs there to be an 'off' button (and Google provide it - AutoLinks aren't displayed unless specifically requested), but the content-provider needs an opt-out too, as Matt said.
  
  
• 

  Jason

  4 years ago

  NRT, would you argue that content providers need opt-outs to popup blockers, too?
• 

  matt

  4 years ago

  in response to jason, there are a number of people who would want an opt-out for pop-up blockers. when pop-ups are used effectively they can be beneficial to both the provider of content and the consumer. true, some providers abused this feature creating what are commonly referred to as "mouse-traps" (those never-ending recursive pop-ups). i know for a fact the the "blur" or "exit" console was actually quite good for content providers, and therefore must have been appealing to many of the consumers. for more info on this you can read this article by Stephen Yagielowicz.
• 

  Jason

  4 years ago

  I agree, Matt, but that doesn't answer the question. So, to state it again: should site providers have the ability to put a META tag in the header of their pages that turns off all popup blocking in the browser?