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[FYI] Lumbering BT mishits on links
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] Lumbering BT mishits on links
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 15:34:57 +0200
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http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/today/article/0,6729,334436,00.html
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Lumbering BT mishits on links
Online editor Victor Keegan says the British telecommunications giant
is doing itself no favours by belatedly pursuing a hyperlinks patent
claim
Tuesday June 20, 2000
It is difficult to see how British Telecommunications will gain from
the claim that it has been sitting on key US patents for hyperlinks,
one of the key ingredients of the world wide web which allow users to
browse from page to page all over the world. If it wins its case in
the US then it will invite an avalanche of protest from net users
everywhere who have long regarded the web as being a free public
good. This is the view strongly endorsed by Tim Berners-Lee, the
British computer scientist who up until now has been acclaimed as
having largely invented the world wide web when he worked at the
nuclear physics laboratory in Switzerland.
If BT wins then it may get extra income but at the cost of a huge
public relations backlash which it could do without. It doesn't win
either way, because not to have realised until quite recently that it
had been sitting on the patents of the central nervous system of the
web will only reinforce its image of being a giant monopoly too
unwieldy to exploit its underlying potential. It has been criticised
for years for not using its 90% monopoly of domestic internet access
to launch cheap broadband internet access for all.
[...]
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