On his Boing Boing weblog, Cory Doctorow provides several examples of content modification that Google allows. However this isn't responsive to the question I raised on Scripting News yesterday.
"Can I put up a Web app that scrapes Google and replaces their ads with mine, or adds mine to theirs? Could Microsoft? Could AP or the New York Times?"
These are the questions that matter, because that is analogous to what Google is doing. The examples that he provides are innocuous, of course they should be allowed. As I said in my essay, this is not a technical issue, it's about speech, integrity, and commerce.
I can also see that I have to draw a picture of the slippery slope.
Today, Google has AdLink. This means that Microsoft, Yahoo and others, now have to at least match it. However, it's very easy to one-up AdLink, by not requiring that the user do anything to see the alternate links. Next step, a spell checker. Who can argue that it's not good to have a Web with correct spelling. Then what about a Web with correct thinking? What happens when the Christian Coalition buys Ask Jeeves, or perish the thought, buys Google. Stranger things have happened.
Yes, we have to look at all these eventualities, because when the next step is taken, the argument gets much weaker. Draw the line at content modification, changes that alter the meaning of the writing. Does linking convey meaning in 2005? Come on Cory, how could you of all people argue that it doesn't?
# Posted by Dave Winer on 2/28/05; 11:14:36 AM - --
