Who, me? (Or the other people who’ve come in clarifying — or is it muddying — these issues?)

“What Phorm have not explained is how a browser requests the robots.txt file when the header data is asking for a completely different file off the server.”

For Robots.txt to work at all, it would HAVE to be “seen” by anything — somebody’s web-browser, or an automated crawler like Phorm was using.

Otherwise it would be completely useless.

Moreover, it’s not UP to Phorm to “explain” how Robots.txt works, in that the information is freely available elsewhere.

Jon:
“Several times over. ”

Actually, I’ve made several different points about several different issues. It just so happens that they all “dovetail” nicely together.
Plus (and this is probably the root of the whole deal) I’m on one of my weird obsessive kicks again.

“The UK government should be ashamed of its dealings with Phorm, for it should be protecting its citizens liberties and rights to privacy, not supporting parasitical companies like these.”

Heh. Governments may be good for a lot of things (providing critical infrastructure like roads and public utilities and such), but they don’t have — and never have had — a particularly good record either at “protecting their citizens privacy” (”Patriot Act”, anyone?) OR about not supporting “parasitical companies like these” — or (in the case of the U.S.) repressive regimes that just happened to call themselves “anti-communist”.
Not to mention that the UK opted to be part of Bush’s “coalition of the willing”. What does THAT tell you?

Several times over.

Cheers!

I don’t know about Pirate Bay – I have heard that they are a search engine that finds music and video files on the internet.

They don’t sound any different from a lot of other search engines that find a lot of images and videos on the internet and make them easy to find.

I do know how to opt in to having images harvested off the internet: don’t add the following line to robots.txt

Disallow: /images/

When it comes to something like Phorm harvesting content off the internet it would be quiet useful to have a mechanism that content providers can use to opt in as well, i.e. by not adding the following lines to the robots.txt file:

Useragent: phorm
Disallow: /

Now, Phorm claim that they won’t harvest content if the robots.txt contains the lines:

Useragent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

What Phorm have not explained is how a browser requests the robots.txt file when the header data is asking for a completely different file off the server.

Don’t you wish you had not asked about website opt in?

Musicians/labels didn’t have to “opt in” to having “their” stuff linked from the Pirate Bay.
Apples and oranges? I dunno, I honestly don’t.

I’m still aware that corporations are entirely too powerful (corporate “personhood” is bullshit).
I’m also still firmly aware that copy”right” and patents are coercive monopolies granted by the state.

But if that last one is true, the how do you “own” your search habits? Is this like how the Amish don’t want to be photographed because they figure it “steals their soul”? Somebody clarify this, because I’m really puzzled.

Wikipedia’s article about http://www.textfiles.com:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textfiles.com

Salient part of the thing:

“According to Jason Scott, the site has frequently been threatened with legal action. Its legality is questionable, because most of the material that it hosts archives of are presumably copyrighted by their original creators. Its legal status depends on interpretation of fair use provisions in copyright law. Scott argues that the records of the BBS era would be lost, were it not for his and others’ preservation work. As of 2004, most of the files in the archive are not expected to legally pass into the public domain for decades (since most files originated in the US, where copyright is for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years), and the continued public availability of the archives could be considered electronic civil disobedience if not fair use.”

So I gotta ask again: if we don’t like the current IP scheme, and we recognize that such monopolies are bad, then why do some of us suddenly fall back on this “It’s MINE!” line of thinking when Phorm or somebody does something we don’t like?

I’m not accusing anybody of anything here, and I’ll leave this alone now (lest I be accused of being obsessive again).
But somebody clarify this, because it’s really making me ask questions I’d really rather not be asking.

Where do the absurd accusations end?
One of the funniest things out there right now (and this tells you how crappy my life is lately), are those lists of “odd search terms” that some people get from their site logs. Does THAT constitute a violation of “privacy?” After all, if everything that happens to originate from you is your “property” such that YOU get to stipulate what happens to it, then there’s obviously grounds for suing websites that dare to publish search strings.
I really want to know where the difference is, here. Is there any kind of “fair use” exemption for this stuff?

You think I’m crazy in how I’m interpreting this one?
Look at
I could maybe see this making sense, IF Phorm was still installing spyware on people’s computers without their consent, that wouldn’t remove itself. But getting all weirded out over what amounts to passive observation?

You think I’m misinterpreting here?
Look at AdelF’s comment earlier in the thread:

“Kent, when are you going to realise that it is wrong, morally wrong, unethical and a whole load of other words meaning WRONG, as well as illegal to use other peoples content for your advertising model!

Unless you actually contact EVERY SINGLE website owner in the world, there is no way people can opt-out of their website content being used for your advertising system. It is simply a breach of RIPA, nothing less. And…. It shouldn’t eve be opt-out! It should be opt-in!

Where do people claim their royalties for you using their content? Hm? Where? It is wrong in every way. Whats next Kent? You going to be using my e-mail content too? Then my snail-mail?”

I just LOVE double standards, folks, I really do.
This whole site is about defending p2p and the folks who use it to “share” with one another, and we also spend a significant amount of time questioning (or outright repudiating) “Intellectual Property” monopolies.

We get all preachy about how awful it is for big-name celebrities and corporations to complain about what they consider unauthorized use of “their” content, but then when Phorm even LOOKS at “our” packets, the catterwauling doesn’t end.

Ya gotta love the double standard here, folks.
If you “own” the packets that Phorm was observing, the did that spammer posting as “Jon” to tell me to shut up “own” the reply YOU edited?

Please don’t misunderstand me here: I’m not trying to start another flameout (I’m trying to be a good little boy, everybody.)
It’s just — I can’t quite wrap my mind around this stuff lately.

We complain about the “issues” raised when a company injects “highly relevant advertising” into websites, but then some of us cheer when the RIAA site gets “punked”. What’s the deal?
I’m really genuinely perplexed, now.

Why?
1. A lot of people have distorted notion of what constitutes “private” data. I’m all for REAL privacy protection, not some kind of “Youtube knows I searched for Miley Cyrus videos! Oh my god, they know I like Miley Cyrus!!!!”
Booooooring.

Phorm is a shit company to the extent that one of their earlier programs was spyware, and wouldn’t uninstall itself fro people’s systems.
But all this “Kent, when are you going to realise that it is wrong, morally wrong, unethical and a whole load of other words meaning WRONG, as well as illegal to use other peoples content for your advertising model!” — so now at least SOME of us (when we need something to get offended about) — decide that people really DO “own” content?

What’s next? A global movement against people who put together those funny “odd search terms that lead to my site” lists?
After all, by the thinking exhibited here, I “own” everything I type into Google, so how DARE that son of a bitch use my “nuns-being-spanked-by-midgets” query for HIS OWN amusement? Heaven Forfend!!!!!)

Nope.

Like Pirate2Pirate.net?

Cheers!

Alex

Unless you actually contact EVERY SINGLE website owner in the world, there is no way people can opt-out of their website content being used for your advertising system. It is simply a breach of RIPA, nothing less. And…. It shouldn’t eve be opt-out! It should be opt-in!

Where do people claim their royalties for you using their content? Hm? Where? It is wrong in every way. Whats next Kent? You going to be using my e-mail content too? Then my snail-mail?