Re: websites: public vs private information?

On 6/9/2000, Roland J. Cole <cole[_at_]spi.org> wrote:
>
> I prefer to think that "presto changeo, every time we get on the
> web we are licensees." There are sites with "click-through" pages
> that make the viewer an explicit licensee; I think sites that are
> "open" to the web are granting a license for "normal web viewing,"

If you listen to the representatives of commercial web sites, especially around the topic of user tracking and privacy, you learn that they do indeed consider there to be a "contract" of sorts between the user and the site owner that is engaged the moment the user views the site. They use this as their excuse for tracking the user's activities: in exchange for the content on the web page, they extract a "payment" of consumer information. This is the ultimate in shrink-wrap licenses: unstated, and there's no way out. If you are engaging in some kind of agreement with the site merely by viewing its page, but you have to at least view the page to find out what that agreement is, then this is a contractual catch-22. Not only that, but the sites do all they can to lure users, including using deceptive banner ads on other sites. None of this pre-entry information gives any hints at a quid pro quo for viewing the site. I consider it like being charged to look in a store window, but only finding out that there is a charge after I've already looked at what is presented as a tantalizing public display.

Karen Coyle                    karen.coyle[_at_]ucop.edu
  University of California Digital Library
  http://www.kcoyle.net        510/987-0567
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