Re: Copy to Clipboard - ambush and abuse by javascript

Nathan:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Attribution_Helper_Browser_Extension

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




On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 18:26, Nathan <nathan@webr3.org> wrote:
> mike amundsen wrote:
>>
>> 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)).
>
> and creative commons are offering $10k grants at the minute for just this
> kind of research and work [1] - could be very interesting for somebody to
> look at.
>
> [1] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Grants
>
>> 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 23:52:00 UTC