gethan - 12:18 pm on Jan 23, 2002 (gmt 0)

> There should be some way that a webmaster can have his web page published without change. Maybe an HTML META

Agreed - though from what I know about copyright that would be the wrong way round. The copyright holder would have to express that he is happy to have content modified and redisplayed.

Copyright (UK) basically is: "you can't copy/modify/redistribute anything unless you are given permission". (Copyright lawyers would probably have kittens reading that - must be way more complicated.)

If someone invented a gizmo that did this to TV commercials there would be an outcry from the broadcasters, look at the whole VCR that strips out ad's thing.

Imagine you're watching an ad/documentary/soap and placed products would go yellow and flash, pointing your remote would take you off to an advert for a competitor of the placed product. Its not a perfect analogy but the big companies would sue, and win. The reason that it won't happen on the web is it's the big guys that would win.

[darnit - gone right off topic ... ;)]

Back to the Google stand: its a great thing - the more users are educated to the evils of scumware the better.

These things are trojan horses. Spying, popups, backdoors, what other nasties do they introduce?