[djsumdog]

ah, but you might be. This gets into a crazy area where we're talking about some entity offering up information via HTTP and you choosing how to represent that data. You could use Lynx, Firefox, Chrome, IE or even just browse everything with Python/BeautifulSoup in a console. Does the provider get to chose how you represent that data?

Well it turns out they kinda do. Sites have terms of service people supposedly agree to, all the time, without reading, because it's fucking impossible.

I posted this argument before and got the following comments which make a good argument:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095147

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14095410

However the comments get into implementations like Netflix and rendering that data, but it's a bit different because in that case you are paying for access.

Will we be in a world one day where sites can require specific web browsers, by law?

[Karunamon]

Worse. A world where companies just take their stuff off the web and require you use their apps for everything. Much fewer legal questions there.

[codedokode]

That is not a problem because there will be competitors without this requirement. The problem is laws that are not well balanced and are biased towards interests of one party.