Spraypainting the Web

The White House home page on the Web is pretty much what you'd expect: a stirring photo of the building with Old Glory flapping on either side and wonky links like "White House Help Desk" and "Commonly Requested Federal Services" lined up neatly underneath. But, hey, what's this tiny triangular marker by the "White House for Kids" link? And why, when you click on it, do you see a list of, um, non-government-sanctioned comments such as "Mommy, what's oral sex?"

Have hackers been at the White House website again? Are George W.'s operatives already doing dirty tricks in cyberspace? No, this is graffiti anybody could have written, thanks to a cool piece of free software called Third Voice that lets you leave your mark on every website you visit. With each passing software season, the once passive Web grows a little more interactive. Hundreds of websites have added bulletin and scribble boards where visitors can post comments. There is even a charming little app called Gooey that lets users stick live-chat windows on any site they choose.

But it's Third Voice that's drawing the most attention--good and bad. The software, brainchild of a trio of Singaporean immigrants based in Redwood City, Calif., lets you attach Post-it type notes throughout a website. Subsequent visitors who have also installed the software can read your messages, add comments or start their own discussion threads. The notes don't actually alter the underlying sites; they merely overlay them with a "transparency," to use nomenclature preferred by co-founder and CEO Eng-Siong Tan. And they cover everything from earnest commentary and rude invective to invitations to check out the poster's hot new home page.

Launched just last month, and thus far available only for the Explorer 4.0 browser, Third Voice already smells like a hit; a company spokesman says that tens of thousands of copies have been downloaded (from ) and that the rate is "growing exponentially."

Controversy may follow. On the one hand, Third Voice offers plenty of potential added value; feedback from your audience is, at least in theory, a good thing, and weekly visitors could become hourly obsessives if they get caught up in a busy site's evolving commentary. Tan is trying to sell Third Voice to established sites as a way to build traffic, and this summer the company plans to launch a "discussion search engine" to help users navigate the new communities Third Voice hopes its product will spawn. "The Web promises open expression, but that ability has been limited to those with a printing press," says Tan. "We don't want any single party to control what does or doesn't go up on the Web."

But this high-minded mission leads quickly to Third Voice's doozy of a downside--namely, that Web proprietors will no longer be able to determine what appears on their own sites. Dotting the White House home page with tart graffiti is one thing; messing with, say, a Fortune 500 company's multimillion-dollar promotional campaign is quite another. Until now, online publishing was "like a TV ad--what you send is what they get," says Jonathan Zittrain, a lecturer at Harvard Law School who runs the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "Now your message can be changed, enhanced, diluted." How will Amazon.com react, for instance, when its book ads are tagged by a Third Voice-enabled competitor offering the same titles for 5% less, along with a handy link to the rival site? "The initial reaction," says Zittrain, "will be, this is a nightmare."

And the second reaction will be, get me a lawyer! A group of Web developers calling itself Say NO to Third Voice has been organized to fight a product most of the online world hasn't even heard about. "Do we not have the right to determine what our URL is being used for?" asks a screed on the Say NO site, which also offers a link to Java software that supposedly deflects Third Voice markers. "At first the idea seemed cool," says developer Andrew Keeler. "But then you think about it a little and start saying to yourself, this is crazy!"

Crazy, perhaps. Lucrative, probably. Legal? We'll see. The company's terms-of-service boilerplate, says Tan, clearly states that the product is not for commercial use and that offending postings will be removed. He insists, however, that posting negative comments about a product on a vendor's own site is just another form of free speech.

It may also be a surefire way to get sued. Zittrain considers it "a near certainty" that Third Voice will wind up in court. At the same time, he's pretty sure that any attempt to muzzle it on grounds of copyright violation will fail. Which leaves Third Voice, despite the inevitable onslaught of silliness and spam, looking like a keeper. The Web was built on the promise of power to the people. So it is somehow fitting for the Web establishment to sweat a little, now that its creation is actually starting to deliver.