MSSmartTagsPreventParsing

I couldn't find anything in the archives about this, but I haven't been
on this list very long.

it's been awhile since I checked out other people's META tags but I
happened to notice the following

<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

While looking at other people's javascripts.

A google search brought up this page from Aug 2001, titled "Use this tag
to *PREVENT MICROSOFT* high-jacking /using your site.":

http://www.therapist-uk.net/Net/Isp/IspHelp/MetaTags2.htm

Which admittedly I couldn't get through entirely, it seems to degrade
into some kind of sales pitch for web dev, but read enough of to become
seriously alarmed by microsoft (it had been awhile)

IE can scan the text of your web pages and somehow highlight certain
keywords that it looks for, making them into a different kind of
hyperlink. apparently MS has so far refrained from doing this (I'm on XP
w/IE6 right now and have never seen one of these links), but once
implemented, the only way to "opt-out" of your websites being used by
microsoft for advertising is to include the above META tag

The google search also returned a lot of webmasters outraged at a whole
"scumware" movement using (the same? Similar?) technology. seemingly
dominated by a company called top text who has a plugin called ezula,
which seems to come with file sharing software kazaa. Like everything in
internet advertising it seems to have impacted the adult sites first,
but also from august is this thread by non-adult webmasters whose users
were being taken to adult sites

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/t415/s.html

Which I found by this dmoz search

http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Business/Allegedly_Unethical_Firms/Ezula/


It looks like everyone should put the

<META NAME="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">

Tag in all of their pages.

Does anyone know if this is sufficient?

We're supposed trust them to write software "ethical" enough to respect
this tag?

Have there been any lawsuits about this in America?

If I'm wrong about any of this, please correct me. I am a little
confused that nothing is coming up about this on a website I've ever
heard of before. Perhaps because it did effect the adult sites and
peer-to-peer users first?

Ah ha, a mile long slashdot discussion:

http://slashdot.org/features/01/07/31/2015216.shtml



Kenneth Dombrowski
Design Matters, Inc!
212 695-1471

Good Design is Good Business

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