From the publisher/consumer standpoint, OPES is not about encapsulation
or routing and very seldom about encoding.
These are the most common potentially damaging uses of ICAP, either
currently in use or discussed:
Insert ads.
Insert a 'console' to 'brand' the browsing session.
Rewrite links.
Translate a document (changing its meaning)
Redirect to a local copy of the resource (making it impossible to
access the authoritative resource)
Does Ethernet do these things?
Of course publishers can protect against these things; they can run all
of their content over SSL/TLS, watermark everything, etc. What if OPES
is sucessful? Is the trust model of the Internet ready for this? The
infrastructure (imagine if all HTTP traffic moved to SSL, making caching
useless)?
Putting the burden of mitigating the effects of OPES onto content
publishers and end users isn't a nice thing to do.
Scott Brim wrote:
> Publishers lose control of how a resource is treated but still
> (optionally) retain control over the resource itself, e.g. through
> watermarks. I doubt that publishers care if their content is carried
> over Ethernet or ATM today. How much do publishers care how their
> content is encapsulated, routed, encoded, etc.? What do you think OPES
> could do that a publisher (1) would be concerned about, and (2) could
> not protect against?
>
> ...Scott
>
> On 18 Jun 2001 at 12:51 -0700, Mark Nottingham apparently wrote:
>
>>As such, the OPES goals break end-to-end transparency at the
>>application layer. As a result, (using HTTP as an example, because it
>>seems the first target of OPES), the publisher loses control over a
>>resource once it leaves their server. It then becomes impossible to
>>makes statements about that resource (e.g., P3P, Semantic Web, legal
>>status of a resource, etc.).
>>
>
--
Mark Nottingham, Research Scientist
Akamai Technologies (San Mateo, CA USA)
