Here’s a site that helps people get rid of “scumware” — software that gets installed along with another application, usually without your permission, whose job it is to turn certain, paid-for words on every Web page you see into a paid link. In other words, every time the word “car” appears on any Website you visit, it will be a link to, say, GM’s site.
Now, there are lots of reasons to object to this kind of software. It usually installs itself without forewarning. It has extremely limited utility as an information resource.
But that’s not what the site’s authors are up in arms about. They’re upset because scumware “changes your site content without your permission.” This is a terrible argument against it — it’s the same argument that people used against ThirdVoice (which allowed people to leave public annotations about any page they see, so that visitors to your site could discuss its content among themselves). Trying to limit others’ ability to share their opinions about your material is a hopeless and immoral cause.
Now, that’s not what scumware does. Scumware adds links to your site. I’d rather that any links added to BoingBoing were useful ones, and context-sensitive, and chosen by the reader. If you were a German learning English, you might get a browser plugin that link every word on the site to a German translation. If you were a blogger, you might have a plugin that added links to other blogs’ discussions of any link that appeared here. The point is that it would be reader-driven. You would choose how you want your page rendered. Mozilla’s got a ton of tools that do this already, letting you apply your own stylesheets to a site.
So scumware may be a bad idea — but only because its users don’t choose to install it, not because it “hijacks” people’s Web-pages. Link Discuss (via EvHead)