FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

"Europe must take back the Web"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26695.html

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.

[...]

---------------------------- CUT ----------------------------

See

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26612.html

---------------------------- CUT ----------------------------

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.

[...]

---------------------------- CUT ----------------------------

See further

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/26685.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,774480,00.html

Zurück