Another Web Pioneer Speaks Out for Net Neutrality
May 3rd, 2006 by tkarrTim Berners-Lee, one of the inventors of the Web, came out in support of Net Neutrality calling it fundamental to maintaining a fair and competitive market economy.
When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone’s permission. The new application rolled out over the existing Internet without modifying it. I tried then, and many people still work very hard still, to make the Web technology, in turn, a universal, neutral, platform. It must not discriminate against particular hardware, software, underlying network, language, culture, disability, or against particular types of data. The Internet is increasingly becoming the dominant medium binding us. The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy.
This tip came from Om Malik at GigaOm. Om adds: “I think it is time for start-ups and their backers to take stock of what the loss of network neutrality would mean to their business. Win or lose, this one has business implications, more so for many of the smaller corporate citizens.”
The financial industry is beginning to make noise to that end. According to a story in The Hill, the financial-services industry is weighing coordinated opposition to the telco-friendly language in the House’s bill, “fearing a financial hit if lawmakers allow phone and cable companies to charge banks more for secure Web service.”
This concern is now echoing among venture capitalists and Internet innovators in Silicon Valley, according to a column by Tom Foremski.
Berners-Lee joins fellow pioneer Vinton Cerf in support of a free and open Internet.
May 3rd, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the WWW, not “one of the fathers of the Internet.”
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berners-Lee
If the internet were railroad tracks, then TBL would be the inventor of the steam (or diesel, or electric) engine that enables locomotives to run on those tracks.
You should not be making mistakes like this on a site dedicated to ’saving the internet’!!!
May 3rd, 2006 at 12:52 pm
Thanks Renato. The fix is in.
Tim
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:17 pm
I didn’t mean to sound c*nty on that last sentence… no way to edit a posted comment here.
May 3rd, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Don’t mean to quibble again, but Tim Berners-Lee is not “one of the inventors”, he is _the_ inventor of the web. Singular. He defined HTTP and HTML, wrote the first web browser, and wrote the first web server. It doesn’t get much more clear-cut than that.
With regard to the modern internet as a whole, sure, he’s “one of the fathers”, since the internet wouldn’t be the same without the web. But credit for inventing the web is all his.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Tim invented HTTP and HTML 1.0, but we don’t use those things any more because they’re too slow and too limited So if we’re talking about the web of today, he becomes “one of the inventors.”
Engineering works best as a collaborative process iterating through successive refinements as we learn more and more about the problem.
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Excuse me? With respect, that’s not the way it works.
Let’s examine a parallel statement: “Levi Strauss invented blue jeans.” By all accounts that’s entirely true:
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllevi.htm
But the jeans you wear today are not the same as the ones Strauss specifically invented. Heck, chances are if you put on a pair of jeans today that they weren’t even made by his company. But he is given credit for inventing blue jeans all the same.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the http://WWW. Others took his idea and that initial implementation and helped refine it into what we use today. But when you are talking about invention, he invented the web. Period.
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:24 pm
I was afraid this would devolve into pedanticism…
There are very, very, very few inventions which can be credited to one single individual without valid competing claims or exaggeration based on negating the contributions of others (I’m looking at you, David Sarnoff. You too, Jobs and Gates).
The web is one of those very rare inventions for which credit belongs solely to one individual - Tim Berners-Lee. And deity bless him for not trying to profit off of it.
I wasn’t going to point out that “one of the fathers” still wasn’t exactly accurate, since the main correction was the important one. The internet and the web are NOT synonymous.
Enough with the pedantic antics… back to lurking on the interwebs.
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:26 pm
I see what you’re trying to say, but it’s not really true. TBL invented the original versions of HTTP and HTML, but the Web is larger than those two protocols, including the ftp repositories that were already there and arguably Usenet.
So don’t get too carried away. It turns out he’s unclear about what Net Neutrality actually means, in any case.
May 3rd, 2006 at 9:37 pm
The Web is not USENET, nor http://FTP. The *Net* includes USENET and FTP and the Web. The Web is HTTP and HTML, plus some additions. Therefore TBL, the inventor of HTML and HHTP, invented the Web.
If you’re going to accuse TBL about being unclear, it would help if you were actually clear on things yourself.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
If you say so, pops.
According to TBL, all packets on the Internet are treated equally by all the interior routers today, but he’s afraid he won’t be able to buy blue jeans from Land’s End if the Evil Telcos implement the RFC 2309 recommendations.
I think that’s what he’s saying, but like I said it’s fuzzy.
May 4th, 2006 at 2:11 am
[…] From ASve the Internet: […]
May 4th, 2006 at 5:34 am
While we’re determining where, exactly, Tim Berners-Lee fits into the pantheon of digital pioneers, can you take a moment to spread the word and take action against legislation that threatens to bring it all crumbling down.
Best, Tim
May 4th, 2006 at 8:19 am
[…] Mr. World-Wide-Web, Tim Berners-Lee, lays out the issue in crystal-clear language here. […]
May 5th, 2006 at 7:57 am
TBL Supports Net Neutrality…
That’s Tim Berners-Lee. Calls it “fundamental”….
May 5th, 2006 at 11:26 am
[…] Besides hosting considerations, most web sites are able to be accessed at a fairly fast speed. A person can create a blog or web site and that can be accessed by people from around the world. That soon may change. Cable and phone companies are proposing changes to the way the Internet works, where they would charge money for faster access to web sites. So the big corporations’ web sites would load faster if they decided to pay this “protection money” to the telecom giants who currently have a virtual (and sometimes very real) monopoly on the telephone and cable lines that the Internet runs through. But citizens, groups, some politicans and even the guy who invented the Web have come out in support of protecting smaller web sites and Net Neutrality. PC World has a good article about the Net Neutrality debate: Your favorite Web sites may be relegated to the Internet’s slow lane if the companies that run its backbone network have their way. Proposed services from telecommunications and cable companies would let ISPs and other Web businesses pay extra to receive preferential treatment for their data packets carrying everything from video to music to text over the Internet. Such packet prioritization would deliver a more responsive Web to those sites’ visitors–a valuable perk for high-bandwidth services like streaming video. […]