Cable Forum - Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

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- - Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797] (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/showthread.php?t=33628733)

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rryles (Post 34547118)

The original RFC spec only does disallow. However the benchmark they have set is Google and Google's bots support an allow extension. Google's bots also check for meta tags in the documents. Checking those would require interception first though. :td:

:)

The problem is Phorm aren't a search engine. They need explicit consent for communication interception and/or use of copyright materials.

Lack of robots.txt does not indicate consent for Phorm (or Google for that matter, though Google is generally considered beneficial to publishers). Phorm definitely isn't beneficial to publishers, unless they participate as OIX members (and most ecommerce sites, and non profit sites won't be doing that).

So assumed consent isn't reasonable.

I like the obs that they would have to intercept first :). Ooops. That's a bummer for Phorm. I wonder how they work around that then?

Pete.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by R Jones (Post 34547127)

Thank you for quoting your source. I've pasted below the text from that source which is Clayton's technical report which I have already read and which does not give any details on how Phorm will be using robots.txt and in fact records their refusal to give further details, even to Clayton, and further, makes the clear statement that their use of robots.txt is simply to assume that if search engines have permission, then Phorm have permission - it does not clarify how they will do that. We might think it is obvious, but nothing is obvious when we are dealing with Phorm.

The quote from Phorm in section 44 below is not a blanket statement of respect for robots.txt - it is a conditional statement, without explanatory detail that "if the site has disallowed spidering and indexing by search engines, we respect those restrictions in robots.txt "

"39. When a website is first visited (by any ISP customer) the pages are not inspected. Instead, a request is queued to fetch the siteÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…â€œrobots.txtÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Â file; viz: a file maintained by the website owner which tells web crawlers and other automated systems which parts of the website should not be indexed or processed.
40. Once the robots.txt file (if any) has been fetched, it will be cached. The cache retention period will be value set by the website using standard HTTP cache-control mechanisms, or for one month if no period is specified. The minimum period that the file will be cached for is two hours.
41. The robots.txt file will be inspected and URLs that fall within forbidden areas of the website will not be processed by the Phorm system.
42. This mechanism, which will permit website owners to opt their pages out of the Phorm system, does not seem to have been previously described in any of PhormÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s documentation. They were unable to provide an explanation as to why this had not previously been disclosed.
43. In the meeting, Phorm were unable to tell us the User-Agent string they match against in the robots.txt file, knowledge of which would be required if a website owner wished to set particular rules for Phorm which differed from, for example, for the GoogleBot.
44. I asked for further clarifcation and was told ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…â€œwe work on the basis that if a site allows spidering of its contents by search engines, then its material is being openly published. Conversely, if the site has disallowed spidering and indexing by search engines, we respect those restrictions in robots.txtÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Â.
45. It therefore still remains unclear to me what the Phorm system does if the robots.txt file does not use a User-Agent: * construction, and whether this will be in line with what the website owner intended."

On the question of dictionary attacks for email addresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address_harvesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_harvest_attack
http://www.sophos.com/security/spam-...yharvestattack
http://geek.focalcurve.com/archive/2...ary-attack%20/

Obviously I can't comment on what caused the particular spam in question in the original post and did not do so.
Best wishes.

This was clearly K*nt shooting from the lip and he probably regretted it as soon as he said it. Google is the elephant in his sights and he seems to have the view that anything they can do phorm can do and that will be fine. His lack of a moral compass does not allow him to differentiate between "Don't be evil" and "Would you like to see some puppies".

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by R Jones (Post 34547127)

On the question of dictionary attacks for email addresses
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address_harvesting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_harvest_attack
http://www.sophos.com/security/spam-...yharvestattack
http://geek.focalcurve.com/archive/2...ary-attack%20/

Obviously I can't comment on what caused the particular spam in question in the original post and did not do so.
Best wishes.

As I've been careful to say, I was questioning not dictionary attacks but your assertion about random alphanumeric strings. But as Mick points out this is OT so PM me.

If you re-read my original post that seemed for some reason to have caused so much controversy:
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34...-post6037.html

I said "Phorm insist that they will respect robots.txt"

I heard them say that in one of Cpt. Jamie's videos. I saw it in Clayton. I had reasonable grounds to say exactly and precisely what I did.

Now I know what I said was maybe an unpopular view, and maybe the moderators will do the courtesy of re-reading my original post, but I really don't think copyright holders do have a very strong legal argument against Phorm *if* what Phorm say is correct and they provide one or more mechanisms for content owners to opt-out.

I also stand by my original assertion that *some* lawyers will argue for the premise of implied consent on published works.

I still don't support what Phorm are doing, so why this original post caused such a wave of anger from some posters which lead to me being cast in a demonic light is beyond me.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oblonsky (Post 34547144)

Now I know what I said was maybe an unpopular view, and maybe the moderators will do the courtesy of re-reading my original post

It doesn't matter how many times it is read by us. It was an uncalled for personal attack. There is no justification for it regardless how much you think you were right in your opposing argument with Alexander.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

OT post removed.

oblonsky - can you discuss your warning via pm not in the thread please.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Guys, can we get back to the issue at hand here. We have established oblonsky's remarks were uncalled for. Lets say no more about it. Thanks. :)

Phorm would be loving these kind of distractions ...

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

With Phorm's stock croaking on AIM, the small investors are trying to talk it back up....

Quote from Carol & Son over on iii:

"Small volumes speak rather loudly to people dealing in even smaller volumes and this share isn't being traded enough to get an accurate picture of the real market value. There's more to this than the UK market - and enough cash and equivalents to keep it ticking over. Worry though is the Charles Stanley "research" showing forecast of revenues from Germany and Italy. In my view they need to look to Eastern markets where perceived privacy is less of an issue. Also US looks favourable. The board always said UK was a market tester, but Germany is even more privacy focussed, with scars of the Cold War hanging over the East and so it appears a very privacy-focussed legal framework."

It sounds as if the message that the UK won't take this lying down is starting to get through to Phorm's investors. They're beginning to talk about other countries - a tacit admission that the "pilot study" in the UK is failing even before it's got off the ground? I'd like to think so ;)

I always find it fascinating that otherwise decent, rational people check their conscience at the door when they go shopping for shares. It never ceases to amaze me that people living in a democracy feel no shame openly talking about infringing individuals' human right to privacy for commercial gain; "Hey, if it won't fly in the UK, let's do it somewhere else instead. Who's got a reputation for trampling their citizens' rights? Eastern Europe. Yeah, let's do it to them instead..." :rolleyes:

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

I'm under the impression that RIPA requires consent from both parties in a communication. I'm trying to see how that could be satisfied for site owners using robots.txt. I don't think it's possible. In fact I don't think it's possible with any other mechanism either. The http request would have to be intercepted to see which domain it was for before it could be checked if that domain has consented to interception. The destination IP address isn't even enough as multiple domains can be served from a single IP. You have to look at the actual http headers to find the domain.

For those who are less up on the inner workings of the internet I'll try and make an analogy.

Suppose you have consented to have your calls intercepted by BT(Just imagine you did). You make a phone call to a telephone number that is used by several people. Some of these people have also consented to interception, but not all. In order for BT to know if the other party has consented to interception they have to intercept the call and listen in until you ask to speak to bob (or whoever it may be). They can't do that until they know who is on the other end though so it's catch 22.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

http://investors.virginmedia.com/pho...869&highlight=

Virgin Media Reports First Quarter 2008 Results

I won't repost it (huge) - but from reading through it they can ill afford any kind of exodus that the deployment of Phorm may bring. No wonder they were making "backing away" noises a couple of weeks ago:

In the first quarter it looks like they lost 7,800 ADSL subscribers...

:rolleyes:

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rryles (Post 34547172)

I'm under the impression that RIPA requires consent from both parties in a communication. I'm trying to see how that could be satisfied for site owners using robots.txt.

It can't, but there are two issues embroiled in my original post.

For RIPA there is an "implied" consent argument, as raised by Simon Watkins of the Home Office in his email (par 15):
http://cryptome.org/ho-phorm.htm

However Fipr argue that this consent can not be assumed, and provide several layers to their argument, starting with the premise that consent to read (through publication) does not imply consent to intercept - a legally questionable view that I have heard counterargument from several lawyers, hence my post, and ending with less contestable arguments that consent cannot be assumed when:
- reading private email
- a page is not linked from any other page, therefore remains unpublished
- where access controls are in place on the website

Now as far as robots.txt I agree this has no bearing on RIPA but it does on copyright control. Any person publishing a web page and is happy to have their page read and classified by an automated process e.g. Google is unlikely to win damages from Phorm. My view, and I qualify that by saying only for "published" content, i.e. non of the Fipr specific cases apply (password protected etc).

No need to shoot me for having an unpopular view on this. I think the best way to fight Phorm is on the fact that they cannot distinguish with certainty between private content (e.g. password protected) and published content, nor can they accurately and reliably ignore all web email services.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jelv (Post 34546983)

Do we actually know if it is Google they look for in robots.txt or is it the any agent string? I posed this question a bit back and (unless I missed it) there was no answer:

If (unlikely as it is) they do obey the robots.txt rules we need a robots.txt file putting together which includes all the known valid agents and barring *

They are spoofing the site you are visiting to pass cookies. Do you think that they would not spoof the googlebot robot rather than name their robot their own.

In any case there is no robot involved in the activity of Phorm it is your browser so the agent is not googlebot but MSIE7.x or whatever you use and the result passed back to the L7 switch and your machine.

EDIT
OK so just read post 6060, so they will take the reply stream from the 3rd party site and will not index it until they have also got the robots.txt from that site under a separate request.

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul Delaney (Post 34547177)

..and with the potential sell-off of their cable TV channels (UK_Gold/Living/History/etc) to rivals Sky, they're going to be wanting to concentrate more and more on the broadband business - so: not a good time to be p***ing off their Internet customers :D

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

After reading Mick's News Post... I have a question... Do we as consumers have the right to cancel our contract due to the T&C Changes (as we haven't been informed of them) and also the website doesn't give the date of the T&Cs change...

Re: Virgin Media Phorm Webwise Adverts [Updated: See Post No. 1, 77, 102 & 797]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oblonsky (Post 34547179)

<snip>For RIPA there is an "implied" consent argument

Even if implied consent is sufficient the problem is still the same. Unless it is irrevocable implied consent, which doesn't sound much like consent to me.