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[FYI] "Europe must take back the Web"
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- Subject: [FYI] "Europe must take back the Web"
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 18:36:47 +0200
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26695.html
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Bill Thompson answers critics
By Andrew Orlowski in London
Posted: 15/08/2002 at 12:34 GMT
Writing in The Guardian newspaper today, Bill Thompson describes the
reaction to his provocative essay Damn the Constitution: Europe must
take back the Web that became the most talked-about tech piece last
weekend.
Since this produced a huge and varied mailbag: spanning the extremes
of vilification and enthusiastic support, I caught up with him with
to explain. Reg regulars will know that I've lived in the US for
couple of years, and I think the constitution is so bad it ought to
be adopted in Britain at once, to replace the farcical aquatic
ceremonies we currently endure. But I've also despaired of the
popular failure to mobilize against restrictive technology [follow-up
and mailbag]and restrictive legislation.
That seemed a good starting point for this discussion.
Reg:OK, I thought this was timely for two or three reasons. One was
your column on Palladium for the BBC, which suggested a trusted space
might be a good thing. Another is the failure of the EFF and the
libertarians so far to counter the Pigopolists; and third is Danny's
success with his fax-your-MP anti RIP campaign in the UK, by way of
contrast.
But why do you think the US is irretrievably doomed? You seem to
suggest that as long as it has a constitution, or this constitution,
then it is.
Bill: It's not quite that bad. You're right that this was largely
prompted by thoughts of what a trusted computing environment might
look like, and the realisation that this was finally an opportunity
to assert the primacy of political rather than commercial control
over the future development of the net...
It was also prompted by reading Lessig's 'Code', which I'd avoided
for so long but finally felt I had to engage with. His inability to
see beyond the constitution, coupled with the realisation that with a
trusted network... you could, at last, effectively 'zone' cyberspace,
lead to the conclusion that we no longer had to do what the United
States said. We could rethink the Net.
Once you do that - once you challenge the core assumption that the
Net transcends geography and therefore must be subjugated to the
interests of the world's only remaining superpower, then you find
lots of possibilities open up. And I believe that many of those
possibilities are significantly to be preferred to the current
reality and the US vision of the Internet's future.
[...]
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See
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26612.html
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Damn the Constitution: Europe must take back the Web
By Bill Thompson
Posted: 09/08/2002 at 14:01 GMT
Guest Opinion
I've had enough of US hegemony. It's time for change -and a closed
European network.
[...]
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See further
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26685.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,774480,00.html
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