How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This? is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

In particular, Willy objected to UFS's assertion that they had complete control over who could link TO their site as well as what most people consider reasonable, controlling links FROM their site. Among other things, UFS claimed that it was unlawful to link to images or subpages of their home page without their written permission. Willy thought (and still thinks) that this is a preposterous claim and would, if recognized by the courts, destroy the Web as we now know it. I agree completely.

Willy's problem is that a lot of people did not understand what he was trying to say. The protest has resided on the Web for over two years and, although it is no longer directly linked to the Dream Machine site, it still receives considerable traffic from other links (put in WITHOUT the Dream Machine's permission...but, then, who cares?) Anyway, I am going to try to help old Willy out. I apologize that this column contains a lot of technical details. So read what follows carefully. The life of the Web may depend upon it.

Yet, as I speak, TicketMaster is suing Microsoft for doing the VERY SAME THING. That is, MS linked to a sub-page of TM's site and the latter said that MS was "trading on TicketMaster's good name" by doing so without TM's permission. Now leaving aside the fact that Paul Allen, Bill Gate's partner in crime, is a MAJOR shareholder in TM as well as in MS, leaving the average person to wonder what in hell is going on (like, for example, is this all a yet another MicroScam, or what?), consider the implications of this.

As most of you probably know, a Web page, as downloaded to your desktop browser, contains ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BUT WORDS! No images, no animations, no sound, no nothing else. Just words. You can verify this by using the "View" menu on your browser to look at the source code for this column...or any other HTML page as well. When you downloaded this page to your browser, the browser encountered various text references to images and other HTML pages. When an image reference is read by the browser, it sends a REQUEST for download to the ADDRESS (just words) of the image, which may reside on the very same server as the HTML page, or may instead be located on a faraway server. To the browser, it is all the same. One address looks functionally just like another.

So, I ask you to consider this. At the bottom of this page there appear several images which have been downloaded from other servers than the Dream Machine server. Correction: they MAY be there. All the text on this page did was reference an address where the author (yours truly) EXPECTS to find certain images (hey, they were there yesterday!). Whether or not those images are actually there, whether or not they are actually downloaded, depends upon the server on which they are actually stored and the custodians thereof. Like everything else on the Web, this is ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY. The authors of those images VOLUNTARILY published them on the Web. THEY made them readily available to me and you. You VOLUNTARILY downloaded this page and it is YOUR BROWSER that sends off the requests to the addressed server. After placing the words on this page (of course, also VOLUNTARILY), the subsequent process is ENTIRELY OUT OF MY CONTROL! Whether or not the desired effect is obtained depends entirely upon other people and their hardware.

For your information and, I hope, amusement, these images have also been made into "anchors," references to other HTML pages. Thus, if you click on them, you MAY be transported to another destination...and, in a way that was probably NOT intended by the original publishers. In fact, I suspect that what you see will represent the worst fears of the people who originally published them. My comment: "So what?"

If UFS, TicketMaster, the White House and other corporate or political CEBBTOs can't take the heat on the Web, they should get out of the kitchen! When they put their materials on the Web and gave them publicly available addresses, it was like they published their phone numbers. If they then try to tell me that I can't USE these addresses, in any way I see fit, it is like they are telling me I can't call them at their published phone number. And, don't tell me that what I have done below is the equivalent of a harassing phone call. What I am doing is for YOU, my VOLUNTARY reader, and has nothing whatsoever to do with them. I'm not calling them, YOU are. I'm not publishing their images, THEY are. All I am publishing is words. I these words offend them, they should get an UNLISTED number like any of the rest of us have to do when we don't like our phone messages.

Perhaps a better analogy is this. Suppose I put up a billboard somewhere in a metropolitan area. You think it is a neat billboard, so you tell all your friends where it is and to go out and look at it, just to dig the pretty pictures or funny text on it. "Hey," I proclaim, "I put up that billboard to advertise my client's products, not to attract a bunch of weirdos who just want to gawk and clog up the highway with their presence! Go away unless I give you permission to look at it!" What would you tell me? I mean, beside to go fuck myself?

Talk to you later...

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