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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think maybe Tim Burners-lee shouldn't have given the world wide web away for free

36 replies

JustAsking1837 · 29/07/2020 12:53

Was very kind of him but maybe it would have helped raise lots of tax revenue for the UK if he hadn't given it to the world for free.

What do you think?

OP posts:
ArriettyJones · 29/07/2020 17:06

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_web

BadgersPaws2 · 29/07/2020 17:27

"Does America give anything away for free? ... snip... Would they have given the internet away for free? Doubt it."

America did invent the internet and it did give it away for free.

As others have said the internet is not the web.

DGRossetti · 29/07/2020 17:36

America did invent the internet and it did give it away for free.

To be fair, the UK has invented ITIL and SSADM and given them away for free (although whether that's because no one would actually pay for them is another matter).

BadgersPaws2 · 29/07/2020 17:38

"That’s the rub. You kind of hope that if TB-L has retained control, he would have been wise enough to immediately pass control to some kind of impartial committee of other wise types."

That's pretty much what he did, TB-L passed "control" of the standards that drive the web to the World Wide Web Consortium of which he is the president.

TheLastDynasty · 29/07/2020 17:48

‘The existing Wild West situation isn’t great. How mismanaged would a committee need to be to be worse?*

It could be the best managed organisation in the world and it would still be a nightmare. Who would you genuinely want in charge of deciding what was and wasn’t acceptable internet content? Who’s morality do you consider universal enough to be the deciding factor in administering the internet?

And even if you found a committee who you did trust, it wouldn’t stop the dark web. Much of what’s traded on the dark web is already illegal and yet it exists.

Steelasprey · 29/07/2020 17:54

Considering all the wealth and resources the UK has plundered from around the globe throughout your imperial history I find it amusing that any British person might mourn the loss of a worldwide tax revenue 😂

safariboot · 29/07/2020 19:07

It’s a shame somebody well intentioned didn’t retain some control over it.

Well, that was intentional. The web, and the internet upon which it was built, are worldwide and decentralised. Anyone can get a connection and host stuff. The same way anyone can get a telephone line and, when someone calls, say whatever you like.

If it had been made impossible to host a website without first getting it approved by some committee, the web would have been strangled to death at birth. By 1997 there were over a million websites, each could have many thousands of pages, each page could be changed instantly at any time. Today there are over a billion. It's infeasible for humans to centrally pre-approve all web content.

The rise of tech giants has created considerable new centralisation but that is not complete, hence why sites like Mumsnet still exist. Which, after all, allows us to publish opinions that opponents would much prefer were censored.

Individual countries do control, censor, and regulate their portions of the internet to varying extents. Or at least the ability of their citizens to access it. The British government has been working with ISPs to block access to child sexual abuse since the early 00s, and more recently has blocked sites for copyright infringement. Then you've got China as the most prominent example of heavy censorship for the political gain of the ruling party.

But most such control is reactive, policing what has already been made available. The analogy of the internet to the global telephone network, which in many ways was the internet's predecessor, makes it obvious how hard it would be to take any other approach.

DGRossetti · 29/07/2020 19:13

Well, that was intentional. The web, and the internet upon which it was built, are worldwide and decentralised. Anyone can get a connection and host stuff.

It's more that the underlying protocols aren't owned by anyone, and so can be used without a licence.

Pepperwort · 31/07/2020 19:41

A little late to the party, but as pp’s said if it hadn’t been free it would not have taken off. TBL did create an organisation at the time to discuss the present and future of the web and is said to be disappointed in its current direction. It was built, rightly or wrongly, as an idealist project, to be free as in freedom not as in beer, and the thinking in the op is exactly what he didn’t want it to turn into. Try having a read of this.

www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets/amp

WanderingMilly · 31/07/2020 19:46

I think he is an amazing man not for his idea to join systems together to create the web but for his outstanding example of giving it away "for free" (ie. not patenting it).

How I wish there were others in the world who could invent/create/work on something and give it to others for free instead of being tied up with profiteering all the time. It's time the world valued things other than money and profit and revenue.....

Pepperwort · 31/07/2020 20:03

^ or, indeed, men valuing things other than their genitalia.
This is another interesting starting point with links. It’s easy to forget after watching everything be subsumed into power games.

qz.com/1631441/the-splinternet-exists-and-we-need-to-fix-it/

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