Re: How about a Safe Virtual Machine?

Karl Auerbach (karl@cavebear.com)
Mon, 3 Oct 94 13:59:22 PDT

> We can get part way there just by having common standards for posting
> rates, terms and conditions. (By analogy with a restaurant, that's
> like posting the menu to a restaurant outside the door. Of course it
> doesn't tell you whether the food is good, but at least you know the
> price and whether they take checks.)

I find this sort of information *from servers* to be extremely
useful.

In addition, one thing I've been cogitating on is how to express
copyright restrictions/licensing terms/payment agent information in a
way that a user's automated browser can read *before* fetching the
entire document (i.e. using a HEAD request). Making copyright
comprehensible to a *program* (especially in my self-imposed limit of
400 bytes, max) is a bit of a challenge. (But I have some ideas which
I will post later this month after they I get a chance to bounce them
off some lawyers better educated in this area than I am.)

--karl--