← Back to context

Comment by Dalewyn

8 months ago

>It's nice to think that you can just leave it to the users to pick and they'll always do the right thing,

>it's literally the job of people who do have that capacity to fight for the user's best interests

A user agent should not be concerned about "doing the right thing", that's none of its business. You are proposing a developer agent, not a user agent.

5 comments

Dalewyn

Reply
jchw  8 months ago

"Doing the right thing" for the user's best interests is the job of the user agent. It's just that simple. Giving the user a "choice" by implementing anti-features that they will be coerced into using by abusive websites is not really much of a choice. What you're really building there is a website agent, with a side of deception to make it sound like it's actually good for the user. Coincidentally, Google makes a nice website agent called Chrome that serves their needs for advertising quite well.

This is also now the third time in this reply chain where I will point out that I am objecting to the inclusion of DRM technology in web standards, where this pitiful semantic debate about what a user agent is for doesn't even apply in the first place. What is fit for the open web platform and respective standards has nothing to do with decisions made by user agent developers. I am not going to point this out again. Further replies that try to drag this semantic debate out are just going to go ignored by me.

  • Dalewyn  8 months ago

    >"Doing the right thing" for the user's best interests is the job of the user agent. It's just that simple.

    No, a user agent's sole job is to represent its user. It's right there on the tin: User Agent. Forcing no DRM is just as bad as forcing DRM, it's not the user agent's business to decide for the user. The fact that most user agents today are actually developer/publisher agents is part of the problems we are having.

    >I am objecting to the inclusion of DRM technology in web standards, where this pitiful semantic debate about what a user agent is for doesn't even apply in the first place. What is fit for the open web platform and respective standards has nothing to do with decisions made by user agent developers.

    Commercial interests are not going to fly the free-as-in-beer pirate flag no matter how loudly you bang that drum, and if the internet is open then those commercial interests also certainly have a right to be part of it.

    It's ultimately not a problem if internet standards allow room for DRM schemes, because in a properly functioning system the users will decide through their user agent if they want to engage in DRM schemes or not.

    So long as you are fueled by self-righteous dogma with a seething hatred towards people just minding their own business, you're not going anywhere and I would even argue you're actually contributing to the very problems you want to see resolved.