Could the Web Not be Invented Today?

An anonymous reader writes " Corante's Copyfight has a piece up about this new column in the Financial Times by James Boyle celebrating (a few days on the early side) the 15th anniversary of Berners-Lee's first draft of a web page . The hook is this question: What would happen if the Web were invented today? From the article: 'What would a web designed by the World Intellectual Property Organisation or the Disney Corporation have looked like? It would have looked more like pay-television, or Minitel, the French computer network. Beforehand, the logic of control always makes sense. Allow anyone to connect to the network? Anyone to decide what content to put up? That is a recipe for piracy and pornography. And of course it is. But it is also much, much more...The lawyers have learnt their lesson now...When the next disruptive communications technology - the next worldwide web - is thought up, the lawyers and the logic of control will be much more evident. That is not a happy thought.'"

Comments

Re:All in jest I know...

[rtb61]

Lawyers do not represent the law, they obfuscate laws then charge enormous amounts of money to interpret those obfuscations. If they attempted to create the Internet, it would cost billions of dollars and never achieve a single connection as they would spend an eternity arguing of the legal rights with the only development being the continuous promulgation of new interpretations of previous suppositions and future possible ramifications ;).