Quote:
Originally Posted by phormwatch
Argh. OK, I'm going to try and finish the open letter to business. Can someone please find me an official quote where a BT spokesman says they can freely copy stuff off the web because consent is implied?
Also, the cookie forgery is a violation of the Computer Misuse Act, correct? Which specific part?
Here is the blog:
http://business-openletter.blogspot.com/
Please suggest any additions. |
Here's a quote for you - in email from Director, Value Added Services, to me, 02/07/2008, responding to a query from me which contained the words, "Please note - I will infer your consent to the publication of any reply to this email unless you expressly and explicitly withold such consent." - there was no reference to witholding consent to publication in the reply, the bulk of which is copied below. As this is the last email I received from this person of course it is very precious.
ES says
"Neither of the previous small technical trials or our future trial of BT Webwise involve infringement of the copyright of any website holder.
Anyone who puts a webpage on the internet does so for the purpose of people making copies of it for the purpose of looking at it and assessing the information contained in it. There are of course some exceptions to this, which is why, for example, BT Webwise does not profile pages transmitted via HTTPS.
Accordingly I am afraid no royalties or other payments are due to website owners - aside from those that want to participate in the OIX of course (www.phorm.com).
We believe that we can rely upon website owners implied consent, especially if websites are happy to be trawled by major search engines such as Google, as if they are unhappy with this and use robots.txt to block the likes of Google then Phorm will also ensure such sites are excluded. It is not reasonable or practical to contact every website owner in advance or to identify sites displaying Webwise messages.
Over and above this we are also taking reasonable steps to exclude specific websites upon specific request from the website owner, so if website owners provide us with the url's of their websites (and confirmation of ownership) then we will ensure that they are excluded by
Phorm.
I can assure you that we have taken advice and believe our approach is both entirely reasonable (straightforward) and that it complies with relevant legislation."
The email (and no other communications I am aware of from BT) takes no account of the inability of all customers with BTOpenworld or BTYahoo! Geocities websites to use robots.txt exclusion statements, nor do they refer to any communications attempts made by BT to let proactively let even their own webspace owners know this or apply for their sites to be excluded from Webwise profiling. (I know we don't likethat solution, but as it is the one BT are offering, along with robots.txt, they need to have a coherent plan for informing customers about it and they don't.)