- From: ashok malhotra <ashok.malhotra@oracle.com>
- Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:51:38 -0700
- To: Noah Mendelsohn <nrm@arcanedomain.com>
- CC: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>, "www-tag@w3.org" <www-tag@w3.org>
Let me argue the other side. If I make my living serving copyrighted content, allowing unrestricted copy/paste is handing out a license to steal/plagiarize. So, how do I protect myself? -- disallow copy? add a hidden watermark that can be used for legal prosecution? All the best, Ashok Noah Mendelsohn wrote: > Tim Berners-Lee wrote: > > > This I think seriously violates the function > > of Copy, and the user's rights. > > Yes, I agree completely. It's obnoxious, unhelpful, and contrary to > the spirit of the platform specifications for copy/paste. > > > Should browsers ensure that Copy is always a > > read-only operation, unless they have INSTALLED code to do something > > different? > > I agree with the spirit of what you're asking for, but I'm not sure > the words "read-only" capture the essence of what's needed. Copy is, > of course, an operation that identifies data for transfer, and the > corresponding paste is necessarily an update operation on the target > document or system. > > My deeper concern is that in fact certain sorts of data manipulation > are expected and useful, particularly when doing format conversions as > part of copy/paste. So, for example, if I am reading an HTML document > and I select multiple paragraphs of text, it might well be appropriate > for a copy operation to put at least two versions on the clipboard: > > HTML Clipboard format: > <p>Text of para1</p> > <p>Text of para2</p> > > Text Clipboard format: > Text of Para 1\n > \n\n > Text of Para 2 > > I think it's important that whatever rules we set for browsers not > prohibit such helpful re-expression of the same information using > different formats. We need to find a formulation that encourages such > useful reformatting, but prohibits the sort of inappropriate updates > that are described in the Daring Fireball posting. In any case, it > doesn't seem to me that the term "read-only" quite captures what we > want. Thank you. > > Noah > > > > > > Tim Berners-Lee wrote: >> Example on MSNBC: >> http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/29875493/ns/today-green/ >> Very frustrating -- but a violation of the user interface. >> >> It is discussed by John Gruber on: >> http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks >> >> "the site uses JavaScript to report what you’ve copied to an >> analytics server" when you perform a copy. >> This I think seriously violates the function of Copy, and the user's >> rights. >> >> Should browsers ensure that Copy is always a read-only operation, >> unless they have INSTALLED code to do something different? >> >> Tim >> >> >> >> >> >
Received on Wednesday, 2 June 2010 21:54:35 UTC