Keep
The Web Worldly And Wide
By Matthew Hindman
and Kenneth Neil Cukier
International Herald Tribune
12 December, 2003
The
World Wide Web as we know it was born 10 years ago last month when a
handful of students at the University of Illinois released a tiny piece
of software called the Mosaic browser. Later renamed Netscape, it made
the Internet a colorful and inviting medium that anyone could navigate.
Millions soon flocked
online, and Netscape's public stock listing two years later ushered
in the dot-com boom.
Today 600 million
people around the world use the Web, digital traffic doubles each year
and the most common language online will soon be Chinese.
This week, nations
from around the world (more than 50 represented by heads of state) are
meeting in Geneva to discuss how to govern the information society globally.
Yet remembering the Web's roots is more important than ever: Its success
is due to the fact that it initially flew below the radar of governments
and large corporations.
But now that the
Web is too important to ignore, its revolutionary openness is under
threat. As both governments and businesses try to tame the Web, it risks
suffocating in their embrace.
In the Web's early
years, many claimed it was beyond the reach of geographically-limited
nations. Today, of course, online crime is routinely prosecuted, while
electronic commerce is regulated and taxed. More ominously, many governments
such as China and Saudi Arabia routinely censor the Web, and even U.S.
law mandates the use of filtering software in public libraries.
A French court in
2000 ordered Yahoo to remove content featuring Nazi memorabilia that,
although outlawed in France, is legal in the United States where Yahoo
is based. Meanwhile, a plethora of developing nations ban Internet-based
phone calls to protect their state-run telephone companies, even though
this holds back their own economic development.
If governments pose
one set of challenges for a free-flowing Web, unbridled commercialization
presents another. A host of dubious patents concerning Web technology
now threaten to stifle online innovation and interoperability.
For instance, while
Microsoft is criticized for crushing Netscape in the "browser wars"
of the mid-1990's, the company itself is under siege by businesses that
claim important parts of the Web's technical standards as their own.
In August, a U.S.
court fined Microsoft $521 million for infringing on patents covering
basic Web technology - a verdict so questionable that in November the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office took the rare step of re-examining
the original patent award.
One can sympathize
with the motivations to rejigger the Web. Countries want an Internet
that is easily regulated, scrutinized and taxed. Companies want one
that is sanitized, commercialized and family-friendly.
A decade ago, computer
viruses were a novelty, spam was for sandwiches and online privacy was
a non-issue. Yet as we try to remedy these problems, we must not destroy
the unique openness that has made the Web so successful.
This is because
the principle behind the Web is the free flow of information; the network
lets anyone connect to anyone else seamlessly - which, despite its vulnerability
to abuse, is inherently democratic and empowering.
The alternative
is a world where governments and companies close their digital borders,
harming the Web's smooth interoperability. For instance, one increasingly
popular technique to curtail spam is software that only permits e-mail
from people already in one's address book - thus blocking innocent communication
among friends-of-friends.
More troubling,
a number of countries, including China, India and Brazil, are pushing
for the United Nations to take control of the underlying infrastructure
that makes the Internet work - an issue to be hotly debated at the UN's
World Summit on the Information Society this week in Geneva. Proponents
justify this under the banner of internationalism, yet it risks subjecting
the global medium to the whims of parochial (and at times repressive)
interests. Ultimately, the Web might end up less wide and less worldly.
The group of college
students who released Mosaic 10 ten years ago were blessed with a simpler
set of concerns. We should be thankful to those who provided us with
such an incredible technology. But governments and industry worldwide
must guard against sacrificing the Web's openness as the network matures.
In the decade to come, we should remember that the proper stewardship
of a technology is as important as its invention.
The writers are
fellows at the National Center for Digital Government at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government.
Copyright ©
2003 the International Herald Tribune