[FYI] "Europe must take back the Web"

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

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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