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From: (The Path Of Rage)
Date: 06 Feb 1999
Time: 08:52:23
Remote Name: 209.240.200.62
Group: alt.discuss.webtv.hacking Date: Fri, Jan 29, 1999, 4:43am (EST-1) From: Ecwfrk2@webtv.net (The Path Of Rage) Re: ANY LAWYERS OUT THERE?
First of all I want to remind everyone, and correct me if I'm wong, that those annoying POPUP ads from the Fall 97 Upgrade were pulled I believe because WTV lawyers did not do their homework. That was a different ssubject though. It didn't have anything to do with how the browser handled internal page links. That was an issue of the browser overlaying it's own content on copywritten pages. It wasn't an issue of how the browser read the pages, it was an issue of what the browser "placed" on those pages that the owners didn't consent to. If it is, then they can make mistakes. Of course. Lawyers always make mistakes. What is illegal as far as 1 judge or jury is concerned could be perfectly acceptable to another. None of us are lawyers and to state our opinions as legal fact our is of little help. Lawyers are just people who study Law and pass an exam. I know of several people who know a huge amount about law but have no desire to take the bar. I know 2 who were competent enough to defend themselves in court and win (although I believe in the old lawyer motto: "A person who represents themself has a fool for a client") I am an expert when it comes to California drug law (I did a consult for a lawyer once), and I also know a great deal of property law as well (what constitutes theft, tresspassing, robbery, ect...) The lawyer I helped used to say that "A lawyer is just someone who uses the crap in old law books to convince a judge that their client wasn't doing anything wrong." As for the claim that disabling code does not effect content...the web is based on hypertext. Well, the content you are lnking to is wholly owned by WebTV, not us or the web. Since their taking away the ability to access internal URLs doesn't affect anything that they don't own, there's no claim. The TOS says that they can add or remove features from the service at will. JS in goto, accessing internal URLs and such are technicly features. According to the TOS if they wan to take them away, they can. No matter how much it sucks for us. To claim the right to selectively disable links does effect content. The standards arguement does not seem to apply since we are not talking about having use of specific IE or Netscape HTML extensions... only to have access to WTV URLS. Afterall, we are subscibers. "I'm a US citizen. I pay taxes. I want access to the the Pentagon computers." Yet, obviously WTV has options to secure the network other than the methods they have chosen. But those options may not be viabe due to time, resoures, ect... WebTV like most companies goes for the fast, cheap way out first. If that fails then they will go to the next, and the next, and so on until they get it right. In fact some wtv-services are apparently exempt... such as wtv-content and wtv-tricks. Tricks addresses are apparently meant to be accessable for everybody on a webtv. The main reason for them is so pages like infoseek, talk city, and E-Greetings can put links to the home page or whatever without WebTV having to host their web sites on trusted servers. As for conten, I figure it's like wtv-tricks. The want their testers to be able to reach those URLs ith as much ease as posible. Since the testers would have to have access to them on unrestrcted accounts like ours, they have to ffset need with risk. Which means for them to have them, we have them. but it just seems highly questionable for WTV to delibrately prevent our accessing a fully functioning HP that in essence is our intellectual property. wtv-tricks:tricks would fall under WebTV's copyrights (both the page and the URL). I doubt they have given anyone permision to use it. So first, just putting the link on a page is infringing on WebTV's intellectual property rights. Second, they aren't doing anything to restrict access to your pages. Their restricting the ability to reach their pages from yours. Their once was a page at Tripod with all kinds of wtv URLs and stuff on it. But it was found that people thaat weren't wanted were viewing and exploiting those pages. The pages were consequently moved to a different site and protected from further exploits. Now if I had set up a page with HTML links to the pages on that site, could I have sued you for moving it? You moving the pages would have caused links on my site to no longer function. Now I'm going to go gargle with gasoline while smoking and building a fire to get this nasty taste out of my mouth I got from actually defending the rat bastards at WebTV.