This entire thing just smacks of a half-hearted attempt for W3C to get their hands on some of the money thats pouring through the web right now. Also, Cailliau really contradicts himself: he wants to track down racist websites and perverts, but at the same time, he wants things to be free of content governing rules? Make up your mind, buddy.
It's arguable that licensing people to use the internet would probably increase the level of clue out there among all the Joe Sixpacks on AOL. But I really doubt that any sort of licensing or registration will help in combatting stuff like warez, kiddie porn, or whatever the media is whipping the public into a frenzy about. And I'm certain that advertising companies are not going to go out of their way to make sure that these 'licensed' users see less ads while surfing, or get less spam in their mailbox.
Besides, with all the ways to be anonymous nowadays (remailers, Freedom, etc.) I seriously doubt that this would be easy to implement, so that it covers every person, anywhere. If this was thought about a few years ago, maybe it wouldn't sound so farfetched. But right now, its a case of closing the barn door after the horse has ran off.
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This entire thing just smacks of a half-hearted attempt for W3C to get their hands on some of the money thats pouring through the web right now. Also, Cailliau really contradicts himself: he wants to track down racist websites and perverts, but at the same time, he wants things to be free of content governing rules? Make up your mind, buddy.
It's arguable that licensing people to use the internet would probably increase the level of clue out there among all the Joe Sixpacks on AOL. But I really doubt that any sort of licensing or registration will help in combatting stuff like warez, kiddie porn, or whatever the media is whipping the public into a frenzy about. And I'm certain that advertising companies are not going to go out of their way to make sure that these 'licensed' users see less ads while surfing, or get less spam in their mailbox.
Besides, with all the ways to be anonymous nowadays (remailers, Freedom, etc.) I seriously doubt that this would be easy to implement, so that it covers every person, anywhere. If this was thought about a few years ago, maybe it wouldn't sound so farfetched. But right now, its a case of closing the barn door after the horse has ran off.