It sounds like we are willing to throw security under the bus for an edge case, although I am sure that I am missing some subtlety

Cary

On Nov 5, 2013, at 10:27 AM, Ross Singer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:07 PM, William Denton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> (Question:  Why does HTTPS complicate screen-scraping?  Every decent tool
>> and library supports HTTPS, doesn't it?)
>> 
> 
> Birkin asked me this same question, and I realized I should clarify what I
> meant.  I was mostly referring to existing screen scrapers/existing web
> sites.  If you redirect every request from http to https, this will
> probably break things.  I think the Open Library example that Karen
> mentioned is a good case study.
> 
> And it's pretty different for a library or tool to support HTTPS and a
> specific app to be expecting it.  If you follow the thread around that OL
> change, it appears there are issues with Java (as one example) arbitrarily
> consuming HTTPS (from what I understand, you need to have the cert
> locally?), but I don't know enough about it to say for certain.  I think
> there would also probably be potential issues around mashups (AJAX, for
> example), but seeing as code4lib.org doesn't support CORS, not really a
> current issue.  Does apply more generally to your question about library
> websites at large, though.
> 
> Anyway, I agree with you that the option for both should be there.  I'm not
> just not convinced that HTTPS-all-the-time is necessary for all web use
> cases.
> 
> -Ross.