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

I strongly agree. See my post from earlier today [1], which I think is 
pretty much aligned with what you've just written, Tim.

 > This community should move from crystal-ball gazing as to how courts
 > might interpret laws and regulations which are out there
 > toward defining a protocol, where
 > necessary including policy pieces as well as the technical bits.

Yes. I do wish it were clearer from the RFCs that inserting adds violates 
the technical bits of the protocol. However, the provision for transforming 
proxies makes that a bit unclear to me.

Do we have a clear answer on the technical bits: does insertion of an 
advertisement violate the technical specifications for HTTP? If so, where 
is the pertinent specification text? Thanks!

As you say, we could also deal with this as a "policy piece" instead or in 
addition.

Noah

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2015Jan/0199.html

On 1/28/2015 7:34 PM, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
>
> On 2015-01 -28, at 17:48, Eric J. Bowman <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> 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.
>>
>
>
> This community should move from crystal-ball gazing as to how courts
> might interpret laws and regulations which are out there toward defining a
> protocol, where
> necessary including policy pieces as well as the technical bits.
> So for example, along with the TCP protocol that a byte stream is broken up
> into packets, routed, retransmitted, and reorganized into the original
> stream byte for byte,
> we now need a legal corollary that anyone who breaks the protocol as part
> of any nefarious
> commercial scheme is breaking the law.  "Code is law" in that it determines
> the way people
> interact much like law, but also Law is Code, in that it is part of the
> system design and also needs to be got right and
> worked out in mailing lists and github.   We need to work more closely with
> people who make laws.
>
> Just as Larry Lessig points out (I hope I attribute this right) that there
> is no justice in
> obeying unjust laws, so maybe the corollary to that is that there is
> injustice in breaking
>   things which ought to be laws even though they are not (yet). So if you
> are working for
>   a project which injects javascript into hotel user's web pages, think
> about pushing back
> on the project or finding a better job.
>
> Jus sayin.
>
> Tim
>
> Director hat off but not far away
>