[cc-metadata] referrer-enhanced deeds

Lucas Gonze lgonze at panix.com
Wed Aug 31 23:32:15 EDT 2005


I do similar referrer magic with http://webjay.org/playthispage.  It's a 
kludge but works pretty well.

However, I think that linking to a CC license is an assertion by the 
linker, and fudging around with the end result might weaken the assertion. 

- Lucas

Mike Linksvayer wrote:

>Pretend that http://example.com has a link to
>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/
>
>When someone clicks on that link, typically the user agent sends
>http://example.com as the referrer.  The CC server could get the content
>at the referrer and alter deed presentation based on that content
>(including metadata found there), e.g., if it looks like primarily audio
>content, the deed could be tweaked accordingly -- I had to hardcode one
>such tweak, see
>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed-music -- among
>many other possibilities, I want to avoid ever creating a custom deed
>url like that again.
>
>Is there something horribly wrong with the idea of getting the referrer
>url?  With potentially changing the deed based on content found there?
>  
>



>The obvious downside is that a slow/dead host pointed at by the referrer
>will slow down deed rendering, but I don't know if that is a serious
>issue--if slow, it's "just" a continuation of an already bad user
>experience, as the user's browser already presumably slowly retrieved
>the content that links to a CC deed, while the dead host case is
>unlikely, as the user's browser never got the page linking to the deed
>in the first place.
>
>I'm sure someone will say this is a vector for denial of service
>attacks, but then wouldn't directly attacking the linking page be more
>effective?  The CC server will of course have to do a little caching and
>throttling.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>  
>



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