Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinEdwards
They will hopefully be posting a statement in due course.
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I await not just a statement filled with "PRspeak" but a rebuttal of some of the suggestions in this thread.
I would also like to further question of Phorms attitude to RIPA. On Phorms website they have a link to
The law of Phorm | OUT-LAW.COM which they claim is "a very thorough, realistic and ultimately positive assessment of Phorm’s system from an informed legal perspective" To quote from the out-law article "In most cases, the other party involved is a website, not an individual. Can you imply the permission of websites? In most cases I think you can."
In most cases I would have thought you can't assume permission.
The article goes on to cite Google's claim to implied consent to trawl webpages as an implication that Phorm should be allowed to do so also. But there are three major differences between Phorm's intrusion and Googles indexing.
1/ Google does not alter the contents of the webpage.
2/ A webmaster can opt out of Google by adding google to robots.txt
3/ Google drives traffic (revenue) to a website - Phorm steals traffic (revenue) from a website
At a meeting between Richard Clayton (Treasurer of the Foundation for Information Policy Research) and Phorm
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/080404phorm.pdf Phorm claimed "we work on the basis that if a site allows spidering of its contents by search engines, then its material is being openly published. Conversely, if the site has disallowed spidering and indexing by search engines, we respect those restrictions in robots.txt"
I contend there is a great difference between a site being indexed and a site being cannibalised. I'm sure the Phorm's technological expertise could pick up the use of a pseudo-user agent to explicitly disallow Phorm robots.txt just as I would disallow any other spybot.
RIPA states that both sides of a communication must agree to an interception of the communication. I'm sure that the majority of internet users are unaware of the interception (BT makes no mention of the "service" in their T&Cs) and if they are aware the opt-out system is not at all easy. The majority of webmasters remain unaware of the way Phorm works and the opt-out system is nigh on impossible.
Bob