[thelist] More Smart Tags

[aardvark]

> From: <martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com>
> 
> I'm wondering whether the more effective legal avenue
> is one of intellectual property - the right to not have your IP
> changed by a third party without your permission.

what's being changed?  your content?  your code?  no, just the 
presentation... and guess what, all browsers affect the presentation 
anyway, based on rendering quirks and rules...

MS parses coded into MSHTML, which you'll see if you save your 
web page from IE... NN shows rendered pages when you view 
source... hell, there are sites like pornolizer that completely re-
write your content... and somehow, those are so far safe from IP 
lawsuits...

> HTML is very clearly covered by IP, and I would strongly expect
> that the links (or lack thereof) is part of your expression.

where is HTML clearly covered by IP?  this isn't part of my point, 
but i'd like to see some documentation on that since everything i've 
seen says HTML is too generic to be covered by IP...

and those aren't links, those are highlights inserted by the browser 
with meta-content... yes, it's reserve from which it draws the URLs 
is unfortunate in its MS-ness, but hey, what did you expect?  
would Netscape not use Netscape sites if they didn't have to?

> Therefore, adding links to your web pages without your explicit
> permission (ie you would need to opt *in* to the concept, and
> even then would probably have right of veto over links (or at least
> categories of links) added) could very much be intepreted as a IP
> dispute.

well, they aren't adding links, they are highlighting words... 
however, if that META tag were strictly opt-in (instead of opt-out), 
this would all be moot... so we should be focusing on that, 
instead...

> Hell, if sites feel the need to lawyer-approve *incoming* links
> (ie links on other sites which don't change the site in question, only
> its context) what's the comfort factor with changing the actual
> presentation of the site?

sorry, but i view most of those lawyers as languishing on job-
security... the need to approve incoming links is just lame and 
assumes the audience are idiots (even though i tend to agree with 
that assertion)... they will argue this, but i think that only hurts the 
issue... they'll argue the wrong points...

> Also, will the underlines be amenable to CSS control? Otherwise
> it could end up f-ugly. And if a third party wants to make my site
> f-ugly, that's another IP issue.

i don't give a rat's ass about fugly, but knowing how you can control 
them via CSS is a very good question... how can you ensure they 
aren't confused with other parts of your design?  that the colors 
don't mix oddly, that the overall usability isn't affected?  having to 
add custom CSS attributes would suck, but perhaps it will take the 
properties from <a>?  we don't know yet, but we should be asking 
that instead of bitching about how we all hate MS...