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Comment by krono | Hacker News Reader

Not too dissimilar from Google Analytics official global opt-out browser extension. It injects a consistent/unchanging item into the global window scope of every single page you visit.

https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/index.html

License prohibits sharing its code so I won't - setting a good example for our artificially intelligent friends :)

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Fuck the license, here's the code it injects:

  /* Copyright 2010 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/intl/en/eula_text.html */ (function () {
    var a = document.createElement("script");
    a.type = "text/javascript";
    a.innerText =
      'window["_gaUserPrefs"] = { ioo : function() { return true; } }';
    document.documentElement.insertBefore(a, document.documentElement.firstChild);
  })();

Looks like a really convoluted way to add a "tracking disabled" mark. But I don't see any more than a bit of information on it.

> Fuck the license

Exactly. If you don’t want it shared, then don’t inject it in the first place.

"License prohibits sharing its code so I won't - setting a good example for our artifically intelligent friends :)"

What if the person sharing it is not a licensee. License terms would only bind licensees, assuming the purported licensee has properly assented to the license terms.

In which case that person would have no license to use it at all.

posting code to a forum isn't using it though since the code isn't executed

It's actually the other way around. Copyright doesn't regulate use, but it does regulate distribution. Posting it without permission is a copyright violation.

change a couple of var names, and you're good to go

also, fair use would definitely apply in this case as it's not the entire work and is a small sample. nothing different than playing a small clip/scene from a movie in a review write up. and commentary is definitely being had around said snippet

Exactly - Google themselves have been making use of fair use for a while with news exerts…

There's also the pages of the books they scanned and made available was pretty egregious. The snippets of webpages they display in search results so that users never actually have to click through to the actual website so they can get those precious impressions.

Just Googs being dicks to everyone, essentially

I'm sure are artificially intelligent friends give precisely zero fucks what you do and will steal your shit with impunity. If you do crime on a large enough scale, it's called innovation.

> It injects a consistent/unchanging item into the global window scope of every single page you visit

Confused, are you saying they inject a unique ID or something? Do you have an example of what they insert?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33430515

Would you mind explaining what's wrong with that code? I'm especially confused how it's similar to Facebook saving purportedly your info when you opt for erasure.

There's nothing wrong with that code, though it is a potential fingerprinting vector.

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