Who Owns Your Browser?

Will anti-circumvention apply to normal web content? Is it ethical to modify the style or functionality of a website with tools like browser extensions or user stylesheets? Does anyone care? Herewith some ramblings on modifying other peoples sites via user stylesheets…

I received a few weird comments (a ton of really nice ones too, thanks!) on the Per User Stylesheets XBL hack for Mozilla based browsers I posted a little while back. Technically, this thing just inserts an id into all the pages you visit–one tiny little id–so that you can write custom CSS rules in your user stylesheet for specific sites. It’s so simple and crude and stupid that I never really stopped to consider whether it might be controversial.

It turns out there’s a stink in the air around giving people too much control over their browser, which completely blows my mind. Adrian Holovaty put out an extension for Firefox that fixes the broken design of allmusic.com. That’s all the extension does: fixes one site. I saw that and I said, Damn, won’t it be great when building extensions is so easy that everyone can fix stuff like this? Other people saw Holovaty’s extension and got scared. There’s some really good discussion (as usual) on this topic over at Simon Willison’s weblog as well, where he asks if per site extensions are completely ethical.

A couple days ago wired.com ran an article about this guy who redesigned a UK movie listing site for accessibility reasons. He hosted the redesigned version and received much acclaim from people who use the site. He was probably responsible for a decent amount of the site’s business. They sent him a cease and desist. The reasons (security) seem valid to me but this sparked a lot of conversation on when it is and isn’t acceptable to muck with a sites content.

Some of the comments I received after posting a link to MyOwnCSS indicate that there is a fear out there about people being able to share modifications to a sites design without the sites consent. “People will use this as a tool for hiding ads” and for “defacing sites that are unpopular.” This is probably true. People will also use MyOwnCSS as a way of adding accessibility features to sites that suck, or for adding paper friendly versions of documents, or for fixing sites that don’t work in browsers that have less than 96% market share. In general, I think you will see a much higher percentage of good things being done with this technology than bad. But what if a bunch of people did decide to start making defacing stylesheets? I’m thinking things like the great Opera Bork Bork of MSN a while back… So what?

Just what are your rights regarding the pages you suck down through your browser every day? There’s obviously restrictions on republishing but are there any limitations on what you can do to content locally–for yourself, your family? Do I “own” a copy of the content like I would “own” a copy of a print magazine article I buy from Barnes and Noble? What about tools for manipulating the presentation or functionality of a site such as the XBL hack, or Holovaty’s allmusic.com extension, or popup blockers, or ad blockers? Is distributing tools that might be used to produce an alternative representation of a work the same as republishing? What about The Schizzolator? Look, if the The Schizzolator is wrong, I don’t want to be right.

I’m free to do what I please to a magazine I purchase. Sometimes I like to draw mustaches and big huge afros on the women in my wife’s Glamour. It makes the articles tolerable. In fact, I might decide to manufacture special pens that make it easier to deface glossy magazine pages. I don’t see a problem with that and I hope people’s reaction to Glamour having a problem with that would be “tuff!” So why all the commotion about people being able to manipulate online content to get some use out of it?

My original reasons for wanting per site user stylesheets is pretty simple, and I hope they are honest as well (I can never tell with the whole honest thing). When I’m reading long bits of text I like big white margins, a big serif face, and something close to double line spacing (very much like this site is styled). I don’t have poor vision, I just find that I comprehend more with this setup (recent research on this topic seems to agree with me). It drives me crazy when I visit a site with hard coded 8pt Arial and no margins. I don’t want to blanket override every site’s font setup in my browser settings–that steals so much from good designers–just the few sites that feel they need to squeeze 100 words on each line. Trying to combat sites that don’t fit with my reading preferences has given me a new respect for the Jackies, Michaels, Bills, Lillians, and Marcs of the world. Honestly, I think I would just not go near the web if I was in their shoes.

I’ve actually stopped reading and left sites because of this. Let me say that again, I will not visit your site, look at your adverts, or buy your products if your site’s design drives me away. Having said that, I also know that you can’t please everyone and my preferences are really pretty fringe. I cannot expect a site to tailor their stuff so that it fits my preferences perfectly. But with this recent slew of tools, I can finally do something about it myself. This is to the benefit of the site and to me. For people with real accessibility needs, this could be a mucher bigger deal. MyOwnCSS means that everyone with a vision impairment can benefit from a single persons contribution. Hint: this is the real value of the Internet. These collaborative services that allow an entire planet to benefit from something that a single person does in his basement - that’s the future. Anything trying to stand in the way of this phenomenon is going to get run over. Sorry, if for whatever reason you do not want people enhancing your site for accessibility, or entertainment, or slander, or whatever, you should just take your site off the Internet right now.