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As the Web Turns 25, Sir Tim Berners-Lee Calls For A Web Magna Carta
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee's "Information
Management: A Proposal," containing the ideas that led to the
World Wide Web. From its humble beginnings as a way to store linked
documents at CERN to... well, you're reading this now. To celebrate, the
W3C is encouraging
people to post their birthday greetings. Quoting Tim Berners-Lee:
"In the following quarter-century, the Web has changed the world in ways that I never could have imagined. There have been many exciting advances. It has generated billions of dollars in economic growth, turned data into the gold of the 21st century, unleashed innovation in education and healthcare, whittled away geographic and social boundaries, revolutionised the media, and forced a reinvention of politics in many countries by enabling constant two-way dialogue between the rulers and the ruled."
Martin S. and JestersGrind both wrote in to note that Tim
Berners-Lee is calling for the creation of a Web Magna Carta. Again Quoting Tim Berners-Lee "It's time for
us to make a big communal decision," he said. "In front of us are two
roads - which way are we going to go? Are we going to continue on the
road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more
control - more and more surveillance? Or are we going to set up a
bunch of values? Are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta
for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so
much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human
rights?"
How has the rise of the web affected your life? Also check out the CERN line mode browser simulation of the first web site.
I got tired of him when he endorsed DRM. That would be rule 1 and 2 for my web Magna Carta: No DRM.
Nice idea but to get the original Magna Carta signed took a rebellion, and getting it accepted meant overthrowing the king. I don't accept the NSA, GCHQ, etc. to just accept this one either!
3db745be-9d31-4f24-bf36-4e262bd12dbb
that it becomes on a level with human rights?
Online rights are already on level with human rights. i.e.: ignored by governments, cried about by NGOs, impossible to defend, trampled upon with no consequence, ...
I mean... We did already agree that torturing and killing people was bad, right?
Therefore its a meaningless gesture and nothing more than a publicity stunt for the anniversary.
And equating it to human rights is an insult to all the people in the world currently having their rights abused or taken away completely. Oddly enough billions of people manage to live quite fulfilled lives without going near a web browser. The same can't be said for those being oppressed ,tortured, starved or massacred. While I respect Berners-Lee, I think he's lost a bit of perspective on things.
Um, SGML dates back to the 1960s.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You'll have to be ok with that being only rule 2.
Rule 1 of the Wb Magna Carta is: you do not speak of Web Magna Carta.
Rule 3 is: Profit!
No, we won't. Because we already have no control on whether we give control or keep it.
The perfect "tool" with which to fuck beta I presume?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I was born in 1989 ^_^
today more people realize that it is better to be free than "the ruled".
Nonsense. People are reactionary and fickle, and irrational. Most people don't want freedom. They want order and structure, and they don't care about whose toes they have to step on to get it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I met my wife online (in a Yahoo chat room), work online as a web developer, socialize online with people around the world on a daily basis, use it for reference (ala Wikipedia) and entertainment (e.g. Netflix). Without the web, my life would be much, much smaller and poorer.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Thanks Good read
http://harunlog.blogspot.com/
Thanks for fucking up the Internet.
As USENET and WELL junkie (hell no AOL).
The Web made it easier for services and users.
Also check out the CERN line mode browser simulation of the first web site
On chrome it's unreadable, on IE it's crazily formated. Firefox shows it correctly, but come on; talking about how awesome the web is and giving an example that fucks up?
No, that link you posted to a web comic we've all seen a hundred times is not "obligatory."
Once Jim Clarke and Bill Gates had their "broswers wars", orderly development of web was thrown out of the window by the money chase. This may not have been bad. You now had hundreds of thousands trying out new ideas. Even though 99% there were some gems in the successful 1%.
You read too much into things
Americans ruined the web in their pursuit of a dollar.
of their wealthiest citizens. This is especially true in the United States. Now imagine how much more difficult it would have been to invade Iraq and steal their oil if the citizens of both the U.S. and Iraq routinely communicated, like over the web. Then the citizens of the aggressor would feel the pain of the thefts their government engages in . . . and might even go so far as to oppose them.
Opposing wars is a direct attack on the profits of both government minions and the wealthy who buy them. Therefore, the web must be controlled.
It really is as simple as that, and if you are truely patriotic for humanity, you will fight this trend as hard as you can.
well, an unnecessary abstraction layer in internetworked computing conjured out of thin air by Euro academics for essentially marketing purposes...that hasn't really done jack sh*t for me
now..."the internet"...that's pretty much changed every aspect of my life in some way or another...
December 9th 1968...**that's** the internet's birthday!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Bandwidth and CPU power have increased to the point where pervasive surveillance is achievable by government bodies. That will never change, unless you use a new Internet - which will run on the same compromised layer-1 system.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I got tired of him when mainstream news analysts started introducing him as "the man who invented the internet"
When the WHATWG had to be formed to get around the W3C's DRM capitulation...that basically confirmed my suspicions
Tim = corporate sockpuppet
Thank you Dave Raggett
How about the following:
1) Tell the NSA to GTFO. They are officially ban hammered.
2) The government, ISPs, MAFIAAs, etc. keep their damned hands off the internet. Any attempt to meddle with it gains them a horse whipping that gets televised for the whole world to see.
3) Any ISP getting a hair-brained notion to do crap like "two-tiered" internet gets everybody from the CEO down to the janitor horse whipped. Severely. On Television.
4) Everybody and anybody can get internet and has more than one ISP to chose from. If an ISP has a monopoly, they either get a competitor or get a horse whipping that puts the one in #3 to shame every day until they do. Televised, of course.
Government surveillance? The technology you have supported can be the best means to bring more surveillance to the web - for instance, by allowing you to view certain subsets of the web only if you're using a proprietary browser with spyware built-in.
Sorry dude (assuming you are the same AC as above?), just trying to make your one-word comment slightly relevant.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
no no no, everyone knows rule 2 is "???"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So what he's saying is that we should all grab our botnets and assault Al Gore (the king of the internet), forcing him to give rights to those of us who own servers?
. . . I'm OK with this.
March 12, 2014, the day that countless local TV Anchorpersons are celebrating the anniversary of the invention of the Internet! Probably more erroneous statements out of the mouths of Anchorpersons than any other day in history!
He didn't really endorse DRM. He said that DRM is inevitable - it's going to be used, one way or another. It'd be better to have an open-standard API with an 'insert proprietary blob here' section that would allow for cross-browser compatibility than to refuse to create the open standard and instead end up with a tangle of incompatible browser extensions.
Much as I loath Al Gore, I shall pledge my server to his cause.
I expect to be created a Viscount at the least as a result.
It'd be better to have an open-standard API with an 'insert proprietary blob here' section that would allow for cross-browser compatibility than to refuse to create the open standard and instead end up with a tangle of incompatible browser extensions.
Really? It seems to me that we end up with a tangle of incompatible browser extensions either way. Why would it make any difference whether it's in the form of browser-specific tags or browser-specific DRM plugins?
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Don't blame Tim for the ignorance of so-called, "News Analysts". Tim created a useful tool to advance the use of the Internet. It is far more useful than USENET that we were using when we first received messages to the effect of "Hey, come look at this new thing called WWW!" My first browser was Lynx when I only had a UNIX shell account while teaching at NYU.
DRM has NO PLACE in ANY standard for the Internet. I don't understand why Tim supports this. We obviously don't have all the facts. I agree with him that a Magna Carta for the Internet would be be appropriate. It would allow us to eliminate DRM.
In the words of Robert Burns, Tim is a "Man of independant mind"!
Please write your Web Magna Carta, and I will sign it.
...the guy who's pushing for Hollywood's control of the web? Something is amiss.
Why do people seem to think governments are the only threat to our rights in this space?
Large corporations already watch and log everything they can about you. Not just your metadata, but what you do (deep packet inspection), where you are (location-based services), what you buy (sharing all your transactions with "affiliates"), and what you say (facebook messages, etc).
What's worse, this data is all legally their property (at least in the U.S.), so they can basically do whatever they want with it, sell it, store it, give it to the government in exchange for favors, or worse. AFAIK, you cant even demand to see what they are keeping on file for you.
Their capabilities are not just passive, either. They can control what services you can access (now that net neutrality is dead), gouge you financially with little justification (credit ratings are based on proprietary algorithms), open you to barrages of advertisement, trick you into legal commitments you dont understand (do you have $500 to have a lawyer review that EULA?), and guess what? Government provides all the tools to enforce all of this. And you pay for ALL of it.
As long as we are using analogies from EU history, the government is a neutered king who lives far away and you rarely feel his presence. Big Business is the nobility who owns all the land, controls all the food, hoards all the money, and controls your life on a day-to-day basis. Like an indentured servant, you have no choice to participate and hand over most of the fruits of your labor. What are you going to do - stop buying things and stop having a job?
I'll head off one criticism of what I'm saying. This is not conspiracy theory, because there is no conspiracy necessary. This is a system, and most of what I've said above is just legal fact.
Unlike your government, you can not participate in corporate governance, you can't request meeting minutes under FOIA, internal rules and policies are rarely published. You have no voice except your dollars (and many industries are so anticompetitive you really have little choice).
Maybe big business has all this opportunity but doesnt take advantage of it. Do you think so?
Rule 3 should rescind whatever html crap-design that forces me to maximize my browser window to view content. I want my windows my size, not "their" size. That's just stupid. Re-flow to window size should just work, like it used to.
I'm not.
I'm blaming Tim for not setting things straight in all those CNN, BBC, Fox, MSNBC, etc TV appearances (and thats just in the US)...
Those interviews where it's his talking head and the screen graphics say "Invented World Wide Web"
If he's anywhere near the scientist he pretends to be, he should have **explained that 'the internet' was around long before his work**
He should have been the ***FIRST*** person to give credit to the Stanford team that did 'invent the internet' as we know it as exemplified in the Mother of All Demos: http://www.wired.com/wiredente...
Instead TBL accepted a knighthood from the Queen of England & helped stifle development of web standards in support of DRM
fsck TBL & the horse he rode in on...he's a charlatan
Thank you Dave Raggett
But that's just my humble opinion.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The Web (and Internet) enable the free flow of information. Up till recently, the way to distribute information was radio, television and print. There is huge money and power in controlling the flow of information. Frankly, I'm surprised the Internet has not been more locked down and controlled yet.
Rest assured that it is in the sights of politicians and big business. So, something like a Web Magna Carta would be quite a useful document. At least talking about the concept of trying to keep the Internet unfettered is a starting point. Because an unfettered Internet will go away otherwise. There's just too much money and power in it.
"--- You must be this intelligent to ride the internet."
Personally think it more important to get the real Magna Carta back in to UK law. Have a Google/wiki on the topic - this important (but admittedly not perfect) basis of freedoms in society has been silently removed from UK law over the last 100 years, without mandate from the people. I'd argue this was not legal in common law (should anyone care to listen). ... (but yes I am for net neutrality broadly).
Understand many here may be in USA - whilst I'm not jealous of much of your society, I am growing somewhat envious of your constitutional rights - whilst not perfect either remember in the UK our closet thing (Magna Carta) has been taken from us.
Sort the internet after basic human rights, I'd suggest
Because the W3C/TBL way means only the DRM vendor need deal with multiple browser support. The operators of each website than don't have to be concerned with it, and can go back to worrying about codec patents.
"today more people realize that it is better to be free than "the ruled""
Is this meant to be sarcasm, or do you think that the only people who exist are on slashdot? The vast majority of people would take being ruled if it included some nice shiny bobbles for free. Just look around at what people allow their government, elected or not, to do as long as they get something out of it.
Not to mention that the use of technology has just opened up new avenues for people to be oppressed. The sheer volumes of mis-information that are propagated via the web is enormous. Sites exist for every whack-job theory out there. A factual comment can be slaughtered by legions of anonymous trolls. With a new medium, the old tricks just had to find new methods to be accomplished.
...but one that even governments would have to abide by?
Something like this would be impossible to enforce (and by whom?), but it could serve as a point of moral reference, like the Hays Code. we could even set up a private body, say a crowdsourced wiki tribunal, that could act as a clearinghouse for violation reports so we could net-smae those we saw as violators.
Or failing that, issue a set of black robes to the nine Slashdotters with the highest karma in each given year, then have them vote on each case.
Let's us get this straight:
Web Magna Carta
There was a declaration of independence for the Internet some 10 or 15 years ago. Anyone remember it and got a link?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You don't get it. People want freedom. They just hate the idea that everyone else is also free. They want freedom for themselves and order and structure for everyone else.
Well sir, if you feel that strongly, you are perfectly welcome to do the same. Who am I to stop you?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”