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Re: Smart Fine Print

On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Frank Chen wrote:

> Benjamin Tomhave wrote:
> > It seems to me that, now that we are raising this issue in a more
> > public arena, hopefully companies such as Netscape will pay attention a
> > little more and consider finding a less shady way of implementing
> > persistant cookies.  A good start would be adding a patch, or adding in
> > the next release, the option to deny use of the cookie file.  
...
> We work hard to avoid "shady implementations" in our products, and
> following
> the first public uproar around cookies a couple of months ago, 
> we did indeed put the feature you describe into Netscape Navigator.

IMO Netscape is not so guilty of "shady implementations" as they are of
not realizing the political impact of certain "features", which is a much
different issue.

The javascript hidden mailto thing, using the real email address for
anonymous FTP login (just a continuation of long Internet convention),
cookies, etc. had ramifications they didn't plan on and could not
necessarily foresee, and they had to back off of them as unforeseen uses
were exploited and popular reaction arose against it. 

   -- Michael
References: