Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
The User is the only one in control - Television Analogy
Author: Dotan Dimet Posted: 9/16/1999; 5:58:54 AM Topic: New Third Voice version out Msg #: 11121 (In response to 11110) Prev/Next: 11120 / 11122
In Israel there was a time when TV was in Black and White. Even if you bought a color TV (when they finally became available), anything you saw broadcast on the Israeli Television channel (as oppossed to other channels like, umm, Jordanian TV, the only other channel you could get at the time) was in Black and White.Apparently, they were taking color TV shows and filtering or scrambling the color out, using a de-colorizer.
Pretty soon, someone clever began selling a re-colorizer, to unscramble the broadcasts and let you see the color.
Does this constitute "interference with communication"? I submit that as long as this stuff is going on in your own home, you can do whatever you want to the signal put out by the TV, or the content you download off the Internet.
Why is there a difference between running web content through a Third Voice or Junkbuster proxy before viewing it, and filtering pages through Babelfish or the Backwardizer or JarJargonizer or other clever CGIs that permutate and disfigure web pages? You can claim that these clever CGIs are even more in the wrong, since the original content is served to the client in an infringed and mangled form by a third party (the CGI service provider) rather being altered on his machine for personal use (as is the case with Third Voice & Junkbuster).
The key here is user choice. I can choose to read my news through the filters provided by CNet or through those provided by Slashdot, (or through Dave Winer's own interesting & idiosyncratic filter). I can view your finely crafted web design with images turned off, a different color scheme and my own fonts; I control the vertical, I control the horizontal. The content provider's only option is to be interesting. If reading the text of a Bill Gates speech as filtered through Third Voice or as annotated by a stream of Slashdot hecklers is more interesting than reading it as Microsoft intended, that's the way it will be seen. If www.scripting.com is more compelling without a layer of meaningless newbie graffiti, than I'll see it as Dave "wants" me to see it, rather than through a Third Voice wrapper.
That's all there is to it. - Dotan.
What, no .sig? come to http://www.armageddoncon.org anyway.
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