Re: Draft finding - "Transitioning the Web to HTTPS"

Mark Watson wrote:
>
> Eric J. Bowman wrote:
> 
> >
> > Assuming those missing participants have any clue where "here" is,
> > or if they do, that their participation is actually welcomed vs.
> > dismissed as giggle-worthy or whatever else. ISPs and Web
> > Developers who *do* know where here is, tend to be discouraged by
> > an ivory-tower attitude which derides what they do to make a living
> > as misguided, technically the same as theft-of-services, outmoded,
> > etc.
> >
>
> ​I think it's unfair to characterize my earlier comment as derisive.
> 

Oh, wow, what I said was so totally _not_ targeted at you. I found our
1-on-1 debate in this thread constructive, as the issues at hand aren't
cut-and-dried by any stretch, therefore worthy of passionate debate.

Rolling the clock back a few years, input was welcomed on this list a
lot more than it is now, is the point I was making. Which is easily
backed up by looking at who doesn't participate anymore, what type of
input they used to make (architectural), and recent discussions about
deprecating the relevance of www-tag in favor of more-limited input
specific to editing feedback of documents on github, the existence and
focus of which can't be debated in such a forum -- which comes as no
surprise to any of us who may have been offended (without bringing it
up *on*-list) by a certain "usual suspects" comment here a couple years
back.

>
> I pointed out that outright ad-replacement was considered by some as
> theft-of-revenue. I hope we can agree on that.
> 

I can agree if we're sharing an opinion. As a fact, I must disagree as
it hasn't been adjudicated, and I am not in posession of any crystal
ball showing me what the courts must certainly find if it were to be
adjudicated. As more years pass without adjudication of this issue, it
becomes harder to rule against, if the defense is established custom and
practice.

> 
> I would go further and claim that all non-standards-compliant
> handling of traffic can cause loss-of-revenue, because it introduces
> untestable scenarios for the site operator. There will be bugs.
> UX-impacting ones.
>

Yeah, but what's compliant where the standard is SHOULD/SHOULD NOT?
Many of the uses now found objectionable, never violated MUST/MUST NOT.
Making it difficult, in legal terms, to now decree violations of SHOULD
NOT to be black-hat. When we used to call it innovation, pre-Snowden.

> 
> You made a point about the legal status of the practice of
> ad-insertion​, but that is not at issue here: in this forum we must
> decide what are reasonable practices that should be protected /
> maintained / alternatives found in the drive to improve security and
> privacy on the web.
>

And yet the uptake of any such decisions, at this point in the life of
the Web, depend on the legal ramifications to the "long tail" of Web
developers who aren't employed by multinational corporations. Which
makes it a problem when those ramifications aren't discussed, or are
dismissed on an assumption of illegality that isn't backed up by any
legal precedent.

>
> If a practice were illegal it obviously doesn't factor.
>

But violating SHOULD NOT, or even MUST NOT, != illegal.

>
> This is a question of balance and my point was only that whilst you
> point to the consenting business arrangement between ISP and user
> there is a third party who does not consent and suffers loss.
>

My point, regarding balance, in bringing up Google's URL forwarding, is
that much of the status quo of the Web could be shown to damage some
third party or another. Which begs the question, that if the Web had
been less open throughout its history, would it still exist? For better
or worse, such business models have been economic drivers for years.

>
> The TAG are the people we have elected to make a judgement on this
> balance and it seems they've sided with a standards-compliant network
> where data travels between user and site unmodified.
> 

Which would be easier to swallow had the debate been more informed, or
less driven by special interests as opposed to the general interest of
what's best for the Web. Which is maybe why those opposed won't just
shutup and go away.

-Eric

Received on Wednesday, 28 January 2015 22:49:13 UTC