[IP] more on how popups can brand you a pervert or a crook
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jonathan Zittrain <zittrain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 13, 2006 10:28:49 PM JST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: more on how popups can brand you a pervert or a crook
Dave and IP,
I'm troubled by Lauren's advice even though I understand its logic.
Prefetch is a useful function; it'd be a shame for people to think
they should avoid it (or more important, that software architects
should stop building tools that use it) lest legal authorities
mistakenly think that surfers are voluntarily visiting every pre-
fetched site. The more this is a standard behavior, the less
sensible that assumption is. Consider news articles mistakenly
advising people how "dangerous" it is to run an open (or Fon-enabled)
wi-fi access point -- when in fact I think running open wi-fi
legitimately would give rise to doubt that any site visited by the
owner's IP address could be tied to that owner without further
evidence. Mileage might vary in places where the rule of law is
weaker, and people want to appear as innucuous as possible, but in
free societies we should not avoid crafting good tools for fear of
mistakenly being branded a crook. ...JZ
At EST 04:14 PM 12/12/2006, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
I'd like to point out a potentially much more serious problem
related to pop-ups that can access arbitrary Web sites -- they could
be used for purposes that could get innocent Web users into major
legal problems.
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