Targeted Online Advertising

[Ian Batten]

On 12 Mar 08, at 1402, Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
> And I think that any website that has agreed to provide advertising  
> "holes" for Phorm to fill in has agreed to all relevant  
> interceptions. So we now look at the 95% of "clean" websites that  
> are not cooperating with Phorm.
>
> The URL sent from the User to the clean website has clearly been  
> intercepted, and the clean website has clearly not consented to such  
> interception.
>
> The page sent in reply from the clean website to the User is  
> intercepted when the Keywords are extracted from it, and the clean  
> website has clearly not consented to that.


There are any number of websites which require registration and impose  
copyright restrictions on the use to which the data may be put.   
Financial analysis, publishers, software downloads.  They don't  
necessarily use https: if the concern is more about the eventual  
recipient redistributing the data improperly, rather than its being  
intercepted in flight, there is little reason to.

Intercepting that data in flight is clearly in breach of the website's  
licensing terms.  Moreover, were I to unilaterally agree with a third  
party for that third party to take a copy of all the licensed material  
I received from, say, Encyclopaedia Britannia, I am myself in breach  
of my contract with the website and the third party can receive no  
better title than I have to transfer.

ian