Reflection on “long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality”
In the article (Tim Berners-Lee, 2010) Berners who invented the World Wide Web in 1989 pointed out several problems which damage the principles of the Web in developing trends of Web services. He claimed that we must insist on four basic principles of the Web in order to prevent the Web from being “broken into fragmented islands” and falling into the hand of any company or government. These four principles include universality, decentralization, no snooping and using Web open standards. Looking ahead, Berners suggested that creating linked data in the future will benefit human more effectively. In my opinion, I fully support universality and the non-payment option for using open standards. Nevertheless, decentralization, using open standards and creating linked data seem questionable as Berners has not taken into account practical dangers that decentralization and using open standard may incur and challenges facing linked data practice.
Berners defined decentralization as “You do not have to get approval from any central authority to add a page or make a link”. Decentralization is a good point in the designing of the Web as this concept indicates that it is us who are creating and shaping the Web. Under this idea the Web is playing a more important role in personal life and social media. However, if we adhere to Berners definition of decentralization, we admit that anything we put onto the Web is legal, which suggests that pornographic websites, fishing sites and online shops which sell illegal stuff are all legal! Then how we protect the Web users interest will be a big problem. A latest example of cyber crime is that of 50,000 illegal iTunes accounts that were tied to active credit cards were being sold through taobao.com with extremely low price, which was reported by Chinas Global Times (Katie Marsal, 2011). In this example, Apples company is the victim of web crime. If this situation continues, you and I are likely to be the next victims. An article written by Robert McClelland (2011), Federal Attorney-General, claimed that Cybercrime is a growing threat to individuals, businesses and governments around the world and has already overtaken the drug trade as the most profitable form of all crimes. Through the examples mentioned above, we can see that decentralization should be confined within limit, which means effective cyber laws and regulations must be strictly carried out to filter contents of the Web. Only under a clean and safe Web environment, can we fully enjoy Web services.
Berners also emphasized using only open standards. Indeed, using only one standard breaks down barriers among nationalities and languages, leaving more room and more opportunity for everyone (Jeanne Follman, N.A.). However, Tim Berners neglected the importance of diversity of standards and the fact that standards are always changing, though slowly. Nowadays Apples iTunes system gives people another