Yeah, I guess this stands. But HTML is not executable. It has to be parsed, like words in a book, not chemicals in a tube. Who is liable, the person who creates the poison, or the book (encyclopedia) which describes the process (and therefore the person who wrote it/distributes it)?
Again, I'm not saying what is right and wrong, but I think this issue is fundamentally much, much more complex than the court may have thought, and more importantly, may have repercussions on almost every website out there.
> Yeah, I guess this stands. But HTML is not executable. It has to be parsed, like words in a book, not chemicals in a tube. Who is liable, the person who creates the poison, or the book (encyclopedia) which describes the process (and therefore the person who wrote it/distributes it)?
I know as soon as you typed this, you probably thought "oh crap, what about Python?" so I won't go there.
I think the major underlying thing here that makes developers uncomfortable with this court ruling is that the whole industry of software development has a chronic and pervasive problem with the idea of consent. I'm not saying individual software engineers don't know what consent means, but we constantly put out software that does things without giving the user informed consent and control, and resist all efforts to force us to ask for this consent.
Imagine trying to use the Software Industry's idea of consent when dating: "Hey, Alice, do you want to go out on a date with me? I'll only accept the answers [Yes] or [Ask me again later]". Ridiculous! But software regularly does this! "Hey, Bob, I love you and I'm going to keep sending you text messages. Do you want [all my text messages] or [only essential text messages]?" Ridiculous, but look at the "consent" options when it comes to cookies.
Not to be crass, but when software wants to get users to do something, they need to treat it as if the software is trying to get laid: You need to ask for, and receive, informed consent at every step of the way, at every new and different request. This is an uncomfortable idea to developers who are used to just commanding the code to do things.
I didn't, actually, but it's a fun thought experiment :)
Python code is instructions that are executed in a very precise manner, they could, in theory, encrypt a hard-drive. You execute the program the same way you execute binary instructions.
HTML is a description of a problem, there are different interpretations, and different solutions, depending on screen-size, etc. You don't always get the same result. Technically, JS could mine crypto, but I don't believe that's illegal (correct me if I'm wrong?), just very inconvienient, and there wasn't any JS involved here. You could make a browser that leaks data due to misinterpretation of the HTML. The problem also lies with the eager-evaluation of HTML, it's difficult to put a disclosure or ask for consent, such as the responsibility clause of most software licenses, without greatly annoying the user...
> makes developers uncomfortable with this court ruling
Guilty. At the end of the day, we need to get stuff done, without creating a private internet infrastructure for our customer. The small guy is at a disadvantage here, not big companies.
Not really. You are making this much harder than it has to be by bringing in irrelevant technical arguments. The court mostly cars about intent and effect, not technical minutiae.
Also by your logic machine code isn't executable either since it too has to be parsed (by the CPU which transforms it into microcode instructions).
In your paradigm: shell, Python, Ruby and Java programs are not executable either, since they require interpreters before they become machine code. Java calls this bytecode and wants to run on a whole JVM, which is rather like a browser.
Again, I'm not saying what is right and wrong, but I think this issue is fundamentally much, much more complex than the court may have thought, and more importantly, may have repercussions on almost every website out there.