Legal Research

Threats to the Web on its 20th Anniversary

By admin

Tim Berners-Lee brings up some very important points. I highly recommend that you read this news piece and his original article. I just saw this today and I’m surprised that this is the first time I am seeing it. I must have missed this when I was in New Zealand and I regret that. Principles of the web match library principles and values quite well and a threat to the web should be of concern to all of us. Take a look.

Tim Berners-Lee: Facebook could fragment web

“Founder of world wide web says some of the most successful social networking sites ‘have begun to chip away at its principles”

Tim Berners-Lee wrote about this in a Scientific American journal essay dated Nov. 22, 2010. Here is the link:

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
by Tim Berners-Lee, Scientific American, November 22, 2010

“The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity?and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending.”

“The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments?totalitarian and democratic alike?are monitoring people?s online habits, endangering important human rights.

If we, the Web?s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.”

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on January 01, 2011 (boomark / email).