Network and Merchants stance on Phorm?

[drivetowin]

Oh dear oh dear this thread drifts further from the sublime to the ridiculous.

That petition so far has 13,288 signatures - so even taking your figure of 10 million broadband subscribers (I think you will find it is closer to 20 million) but lets take 10 million - then so far 0.1% of subscribers are complaining about Phorm - hardly a majority of users then - if it had 132,880 signatures you may have the beginnings of an issue but at 13,288 it's not even going to get a middle grade civil servant to lift a pen.

So if we ignore that distraction, lets look at the breach of copyright angle. Does Phorm really breach copyright - I think there is a real legal argument to be had here - you imply it is copying pages but that is not my understanding of what it does. As I understand it , Phorm reads the content of the webpage and analyses it but does not store the actual content but instead uses its analysis of the content to profile the visitor. Now I may be missing something here, but is that not the same in essence as say adsense does - adsense reads the content of the webpage, analyses it, and uses it to decide what ads to display - yet I don't recall anyone sueing Adsense for breach of copyright?

If anyone gets payment from BT for one of these invoices I'd congratulate you, personally I don't believe any such invoice would stand a chance of getting one penny from BT or any other ISP.

Just had a look at the link to that php script - I see one of the other things that site suggests is ban BT users from your websites - yeah that's going to really help my bottom line as an affiliate - lets spend loads of money getting traffic, and then ban it - well that ought to win the innovation award for 2008

[moredial]

Originally Posted by drivetowin That petition so far has 13,288 signatures - so even taking your figure of 10 million broadband subscribers (I think you will find it is closer to 20 million) but lets take 10 million - then so far 0.1% of subscribers are complaining about Phorm - hardly a majority of users then - if it had 132,880 signatures you may have the beginnings of an issue but at 13,288 it's not even going to get a middle grade civil servant to lift a pen.

The petition has been around for about 3 months and so far only the web techies and very specific sites related to server and site security are mentioning that this is even happening. It has taken you, a web savvy person, 3 months to discover that the petition even exists. Once the public get to hear about it, the numbers will start to grow.

Originally Posted by drivetowin As I understand it , Phorm reads the content of the webpage and analyses it but does not store the actual content but instead uses its analysis of the content to profile the visitor. Now I may be missing something here, but is that not the same in essence as say adsense does - adsense reads the content of the webpage, analyses it, and uses it to decide what ads to display - yet I don't recall anyone sueing Adsense for breach of copyright?

You, as webmaster, have signed up to AdSense and you have put the code into the page. Google has thereby been given your permission to copy and analyse the code before placing the adverts. Hardly the same as someone not asking for permission. The BIG difference - Google pays you.

As for Phorm's method, read the technical documents to understand how the content is added to the profiler before making a derivative work and then the content is discarded. The urls visited is part of the data used - read the OIX pages on how it works and the fine detail which is provided as part of the profile. And nowhere is anything said about paying you for allowing the use of your content.

And, you are happy with that?

Originally Posted by drivetowin If anyone gets payment from BT for one of these invoices I'd congratulate you, personally I don't believe any such invoice would stand a chance of getting one penny from BT or any other ISP.

The interesting part will be the ISPs trying to show that they contacted copyright owners for permission before they used the content to create a profile. Believing that copyright has 'implied permission' is not a defence. Web content is not in the 'public domain'. Even the omission of a copyright statement is not reason enough to assume that it is not still within the copyright period which is a minimum of 50 years.

Originally Posted by drivetowin Just had a look at the link to that php script - I see one of the other things that site suggests is ban BT users from your websites - yeah that's going to really help my bottom line as an affiliate - lets spend loads of money getting traffic, and then ban it - well that ought to win the innovation award for 2008

The other way of looking at it is: spend lots of money getting traffic only for your visitor to see an advert from the brand owner all over the next sites visited and for the OIX cookie to replace your cookie. The brands will love this: you spend the money getting visitors to your site. The PPC URL shows the search terms. The brand pays £10 per click and saves itself from paying any commission.

Or, the only way to block the ads from continuing to profile you all around the sites you visit is to block all cookies. That is really going to make paying for visitors worth your while.

The worst part of all, block www. webwise. net and internet uses will not be able to access the internet.

The OIX adverts are only a distraction from the real debate. The forging of domain IDs, the forging of cookies, sending visitors outside the EU as part of the UID process. The search engines all profile and track you when you click on ads or do searches. They do not do any of the forgeries at the centre of how the behavioural targeting profiling works and yet all the phorms, nebuads, frontporch, etc claim to be doing so much less than search engines while increasing your privacy and browser experience PR spin.

I am not a techie, I barely understand how a layer 7 works; so, when someone who does understand this usage of a layer 7 switch says it is a risk to browsing security, I will agree with them until someone can show otherwise. Did you do any traceroutes last week and see the 6 redirects within BT IP addresses before being sent to the BT DNS servers? That is the forging of sites which allows the profiler to read / write cookies to your computer and update the data stored against the UID. So much for the profiler never knowing your IP address.

If you are happy for all your visitors to have to undergo computer fraud against their computer for every page they visit, then I don't know what to say.

If the affiliate networks and merchants are happy to increase the revenue of a system which performs this fraud, then I have no further respect for them.

With Barefruit hijacking 4/5xx pages, I hope that they are never accepted by any affiliate network either.

Next it will be the ISPs installing SpinVox so that they can 'listen' to all your phone conversations and use that for profiling and ad targeting. Very similar set of investors and $100m funding in March too to finance signing up ISPs.