Re: Comments on Content Transformation Guidelines?

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 8:01 PM, Luca Passani <passani@eunet.no> wrote:
> Of course, they are successful only as long as their users are happy with
> the service and the service is popular, but this cannot be taken as an
> excuse by operators to steal their content and repurpose it in the name of
> users. Users have a choice about whether they will access the service or
> not.

While Aaron and I know that the overwhelming majority of sites don't
mind, even like the transcoder, I understand that you are more
narrowly talking about certain cases where users are forced to use a
transcoder. (So, I guess there are "good" and "bad" transcoders? hmm,
maybe someone should write a document about what makes one "good"...
perhaps Guidelines of some kind...)

I have good news, and that's the free market. If this is such a
terrible experience, users will flee. And, well, they are. To more
capable phones, to carriers with less restrictive controls over the
browsing experience. I think you are being vindicated at that level.


> Now, having said this, I think a compromise may be found over opt-in
> services (opera-mini, skweezer, google). But placing a transcoder in the
> middle of each HTTP connection is not acceptable. Transcoding HTTPS is more
> than not acceptable. It is unconceivable.

Google is not opt-in -- and we are by definition not evil!

I don't think opt-in is crazy. I do think it's impractical. You are
then placing quite a burden on site owners to opt in to every little
transcoder out there (assuming you want transcoding of course).
Anecdotally, just about every site on the planet wants the transcoder.
People do ask us to not transcode; virtually everyone else doesn't.
Based on that, opt-out seems more sensible. But opt-in is not crazy.

What do you think of letting *users* opt in/out too? as a content
provider I want what the user deems best. I'd let them choose rather
than choose for them (but I don't want to tell content providers they
can't choose -- I fully support the CTG defining ways to force no
transcoding). We do that (you can turn off transcoded links). I think
we wholeheartedly all agree that nobody should be forced through a
transcoder if not desired. The CTG agrees.

We agree about HTTPS, if the user isn't aware of what's going on. I'm
asking you what you think happens when the user does know what's going
on. I don't agree the user should be forced to *not* transcode for the
same reason I agree the user should not be forced to transcode.

Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2008 00:32:34 UTC