Re: Insertion of adverisements

Thank you! A minor quibble would be that the wiki name 
HTTPS-and-Advertising seems to scope the discussion to a particular item in 
a possible threat matrix rather than to the deeper set of issues which seem 
to be along the lines of:

* What sorts of content manipulation by proxies should be appropriate,  and 
when?

* What is the correct role for possible more widespread deployment of TLS 
(or other encryption/signature technology) in limiting the ability of 
proxies to inappropriately modify content?

* To what extent would that more widespread deployment of TLS also hamper 
more legitimate modification of content by proxies (if any such 
modification is legitimate)?

* To what degree will more widespread deployment of TLS cause those who run 
proxies to inappropriately spoof certificates in an effort to retain their 
ability to modify content?

I may not have the above exactly right, but scoping only to advertising 
seems a bit off the mark. I do realize that my retitling of the e-mail 
thread did use the word "advertisements", so possibly the problem traces to me.

Thank you again for acting on my concerns!

Noah

On 2/2/2015 11:41 AM, Daniel Appelquist wrote:
> Thanks, Noah.
>
> I agree this is an area that needs more scrutiny. In my discussions web developers this issue comes up again and again. I have created a wiki page here:
>
> https://github.com/w3ctag/wiki/wiki/HTTPS-and-Advertising
>
> …where we can hopefully collect some of the issues and see if there is scope for a future TAG deliverable on this topic.
>
> I will send this URL out to some of the web community members who have engaged me on this topic so we can hopefully bring some real-world feedback to this discussion.
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
>
>> On 28 Jan 2015, at 18:05, Noah Mendelsohn <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Whatever the other issues, I think it would be good for the TAG to focus particularly on the importance of complying with specifications.
>>
>> The specifications for HTTP and associated supporting protocols (TCP etc.) either do or do not make clear whether insertion of advertisements is conformant with the specifications. I would like to believe that such content alteration is non-conforming, but HTTP does allow for some transformations, and provides a header to prohibit such transformations being done [1]. In any case, I will leave it to others who are more expert in HTTP to decide whether insertion of advertisements is or is not conforming to the pertinent specifications.
>>
>> I'm suggesting that the TAG's analysis (if any) should start with that question, though I can see the TAG going further to discuss other questions relating to ad insertion as well.
>>
>> Noah
>>
>> [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.9.5
>>
>