Sweet, forbidden fruit
Via BoingBoing, I found this very interesting article on silly - nay, extremely silly - website User Agreements. You may have seen these before; often there’s a link in a small font at the very bottom of the page you’re viewing which when clicked, tells you that you agree to let the website collect anonymous cookies, track your IP address, and other things to limit their legal liability should it ever become an issue. But as with all things in life, there are some who just have to take things to their extremes.
Witness the lovely allegory on the “User Agreement/Privacy Policy” page of Dozier Internet Law, P.C., which states in part that
We own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws.
and further, that
We also do not allow any links to our site without our express permission… [t]he name “Dozier Internet Law, P.C.”, and similar derivatives of it, constitute our trademark and servicemark, and should not be used in any manner without our permission.
One very astute commenter on BoingBoing made the observation that these prohibitions are fundamentally flawed, as ridiculous as claiming that
… a television picture is made up of a series of colored dots called pixels, which you can inspect by getting really close to the screen. We do not permit you to inspect the precise layout of these pixels, as we consider that layout to be our intellectual property.
I think an even better analogy is a grocery store trying to outlaw sushi.
Like any good grocery store, they have a decent selection of fish, whether whole or filleted. But this grocery store wants you to cook the fish, and at the bottom of every receipt is a short User Agreement stating that by purchasing the fish you have agreed to cook it before eating it. If you instead choose to turn the fish into some lovely sushi, then you are violating their User Agreement - much as you would be violating this law-firm’s UA by “viewing the source code” of their website. The fact is, the source code (raw fish) is exactly and entirely what they are making available to you to download (purchase). All of the parsing and rendering (cooking) which makes it look (taste) like a webpage (cooked fish), with graphics (tartar sauce) over here, and text (grilled veggies) down there like so, is entirely done on the user’s end. By attempting to restrict the user’s ability to view (eat) the source code (uncooked fish), you are essentially trying to tell the user that they can only render (cook) the website (fish) and only render (cook) it one way (poached?) - attempting to view (eat) the code (fish) without rendering (cooking) it as a webpage (poached-style) is completely verbotten.
So maybe my fish analogy doesn’t quite work. Something more apt would be if the grocery store made you agree to the same as above, but also you’re not allowed to look at the fish before you cooked it nor while you were cooking it. And you can’t take pictures of it either. And don’t even think about recording a written account of its description, because that’s out too.
This is a bit of a long post, so as a reward, please enjoy these illicit snippets of HTML code straight from the User Agreement/Privacy Policy webpage of Dozier Internet Law, P.C.:†
<html>
<head>
<base xhref=”http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/user-agreement/” mce_href=”http://www.cybertriallawyer.com/user-agreement/” /><title>User Agreement/Privacy Policy</title>
†Â By reading this blog post in whole or in part, you agree that you shall waive any and all legal recourse against its author, maintainer, publisher, and web-host, in perpetuity, in all issues regarding the website of Dozier Internet Law, P.C. This agreement nullifies any previous user agreements engaged in between yourself and the author, maintainer, publisher and/or web-host of this website. You agree to waive any and all legal liability regarding website user agreements on the part of the author, maintainer, publisher and/or web-host in all countries, forever. Plus, you like, totally owe me ten bucks.
October 18th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Will I be sued for reading this post? Does anyone have an infringement claim on the word Sushi?!Eula!!
November 10th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Oh noes! Can’t read the HTML, you say? I read the illictness and I am entirely, one hundred per cent certain that they will now track me down and force feed me cooked sushi (which is possible. You just cook it. Only it isn’t called sushi. It’s called…cookshi. Forget it.) and then make me pay ten bucks. I felt incredibly naughty reading those “illicit snippets of HTML code” and, well, anyway, this comment is reaching essay length (not to mention I have to write an ACTUAL essay) so I’m just going to say, funny stuff, and CIAO!
January 10th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Ross, get posting!