Re: Why the Democratic Ethic of the World Wide Web May Be About to End

(Lisa Hancock said): > [public replies, please]

I d> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have often times wondered why people

like Tim Berners-Lee (credited as the 'inventor' of the World Wide Web)

The fact that you used 'scare quotes' here suggests that you don't believe TBL invented the Web. Would you care to explain who you think did, if he didn't?

did not think far enough ahead in the middle-late 1980's to slap some > very firm controls on how _his_ product could be permissibly used by > people in generations to follow.

Perhaps because he (or whomever) had no such power. Remember, the Gopher folks at the University of Minnesota tried that -- and lost in the marketplace.

That is, unless Tim B-L is really okay with the unreal twists and > turns which have taken place on the web in the past, all the abuses > and misuses we see as a routine thing of late.

You could actually read what he, and other Internet pioneers like Dave Clark, have written on the subject -- although I understand uninformed speculation is much easer.

Was it really his intention to provide an air of 'legitimacy' to the > cretins who publish all sorts of scams and spams and then hide in > obscurity behind web sites which

Huh? How does a scam have more "legitimacy" (your word) when it's on the Web than when it's delivered in a plain white envelope, no-return-address? (Or, for that matter, in a plain white envelope, franked bulk rate and sent by one of America's largest banks?)

When I changed my title (I like to say 'gave myself a promotion') > from "Moderator" to "Editor" and published some rules on what would, > and what would not be acceptable, the shit really hit the fan blade, > as the expression goes.

And yet, those people who you pissed off could easily have told their netnews servers that you no longer had anything to do with this newsgroup, and set someone else up as moderator. At that time, such a thing was still possible. Yet this didn't happen: most of those people simply unsubscribed, moving their telecom discussions to other forums where they would have to deal with you. (Sometimes you make me wonder why I still bother, but then I realize that someone responsible needs to pay attention to what you're doing, so long as it's on our servers and network. Speaking of which, that advertising on the Web site *must go*; we do not permit our network to be used for commercial gain.)

-GAWollman