[ NNSquad ] Re: mangling payload

[Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>]

On Apr 3, 2008, at 5:25 PM, Barry Gold wrote:
> Stefano Quintarelli wrote:
> > Just said that it is illegal in Europe...
> > I'd bet someone will challenge Vodafone in court.
> > I've been notified of this of which I was not aware
> > http://tinyurl.com/2ba6ao
> > what "Giancarlo" says is that Vodafone replaces web pages content  
> > in order to deliver something that looks quite the same but uses  
> > less bytes.
> > the network apparently changes the javascripts embedding them in  
> > the pages (rather than oading thm from specified URL) and images  
> > that get scaled down in resolution and provided by a server which  
> > is not the source one.
>
> In the US I suspect _any_ change in the page is a violation of  
> copyright (a "derivative work").  That said, I suspect nobody is  
> going to object if an ISP:
>  . squishes the Javascripts into fewer bytes and/or puts it inline  
> in the page, as long as the actual code remains the same and  
> continues to function.
>  . serves up images from a local cache instead of going to the  
> remote host every time(*).
>
> However, serving up a lower-resolution image is a definite no-no --  
> again, it's a derivative work, and one that degrades the quality of  
> something the originator went to considerable effort to make  
> attractive, useful, or whatever other desiderata drove the page  
> design.  Not going to make Google, IBM, Toyota, or M$ happy.  And  
> they have at least as much to spend on lawyers as Vodafone does.

AOL used to (still does?) do this for images in their client -- http://webmaster.info.aol.com/compgraphics.html

As far as I remember there was some legal issue where a company that  
sold posters online claimed that the re-encoding of the image lowered  
the quality and so hurt their sales. I think that it went to trial and  
the ruling was in favor of AOL --- I cannot find the references now  
(and for all I know it got settled out of court), but there have been  
others...

W


> (*) caching images and other parts of a web page is a win-win-win  
> situation -- as long as you don't change it:
>   . the originator pays for less bandwidth, because some of his most  
> biggest items get served up locally instead of from his host.
>   . the ISP also pays for less bandwidth from its upstream provider,  
> because they only have to fetch the image once -- after that they  
> provide it from a host within their own network.
>   . the user gets the page faster.

--
It's a mistake trying to cheer up camels. You might as well drop  
meringues into a black hole. -- Terry Prachett