Re: Copy to Clipboard - ambush and abuse by javascript

One possible solution is to engineer user agents in a way that will
prevent the "copy" action unless the content/context contains the
proper rights metadata (via Creative Commons or some other agreed
standard(s)).

I think that is compatible with the spirit of CORS, UMP, PICS/POWDER,
etc. where it's the responsibility of the content author//host to
explicitly "enable" the possibly "harmful" user agent action and the
responsibility of the user agent to prevent that same action unless
specific meta data is provided.

mca
http://amundsen.com/blog/
http://mamund.com/foaf.rdf#me




On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 17:51, ashok malhotra <ashok.malhotra@oracle.com> wrote:
> 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 22:19:09 UTC