Curious: what are the legal considerations of "decorator" proxies like 's via.hypothes.is, which redistributes content from a target URL with an extra JS include for annotation?
(Noodling on permission-less mnemonic-medium-ifying…)
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Ah, there's actually a W3C "working group note" on these, which they call "Web Content Transformation Proxies": w3.org/TR/ct-guidelin
(no comments on legality there, of course)
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Is this meaningfully different from people deciding to install a browser extension or apply some other tool to the website?
I imagine the "content of the action/what your service is doing" would matter more here vs the mechanics
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I can imagine it might be interpreted differently legally, since I can pass around a proxy URL to anyone, and then it'll "just work" transparently, without the user "opting-in" to some transformation.
The mechanics in my prototype are similar to those of Hypothes.is.
The modern equivalent of doing a graffiti on a poster stuck on a wall that says "No posters"?
I bet the ToS of most business websites has ridiculous clauses that says copy/pasting if forbidden but that also wouldn't hold in court.
So... I don't know🤷♂️but my browser, my view.🔓
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Ours is a non-cacheing proxy. It is also a closed proxy, and only permits a pre-approved list of sites. Over 10 years we have had very little opposition to it. We disable when specifically requested.
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