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Whose Web Is It Anyway?

bruce lawson
September 17, 2020

Whose Web Is It Anyway?

Who decides web standards? Who decides what gets implemented in browsers? Who does your browser work for? And, most importantly, why did Vladimir Putin's communist nipples get me banned from Facebook last week?

bruce lawson

September 17, 2020
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  1. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk

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    • Picture of TBL “web developer”

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    https://www.igalia.com/open-prioritization/

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  9. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    Tim Berners-Lee Takes the Stand to Keep the Web Free
    Jennifer Doan, a Texarkana lawyer representing Yahoo and Amazon, led the questioning.

    When Berners-Lee invented the web, did he apply for a patent on it, Doan asked.

    "No," said Berners-Lee.

    Doan: "And who owns the web?"

    Berners-Lee: "We do."

    https://www.wired.com/2012/02/tim-berners-lee-patent/

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  10. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
    "No provider or user of an
    interactive computer service
    shall be treated as the
    publisher or speaker of any
    information provided by
    another information content
    provider."

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  11. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    Did the Early Internet Activists Blow It? Mike Godwin
    designed to empower internet companies
    to remove offensive, disturbing, or
    otherwise subscriber-alienating content
    without being liable for whatever else
    their users posted. The idea was that
    companies might be afraid to censor
    anything because in doing so, they would
    take on responsibility for everything.
    Co-counsel in Reno v. ACLU (1997), a constitutional
    challenge to the Communications Decency Act

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  12. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    Did the Early Internet Activists Blow It? Mike Godwin
    Another thing we clearly got wrong
    is how large platforms would rise to
    dominate their markets

    Back in the 1990s, we thought that
    a thousand website flowers would
    bloom and no single company
    would be dominant.

    https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/three-decades-internet-
    freedom-activism.html

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    “I Have Blood on My Hands”
    “I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to
    abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and
    caused international news on multiple occasions. I have personally made
    decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken
    action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve
    lost count.” - quoted in Buzzfeed, 14 September 2020

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo

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    p

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    https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/adult_nudity_sexual_activity

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    Springer law suit
    The claim is that ABP changes the programming code of websites in order
    to block inventory, and that this is illegal and infringes publisher copyright.

    “Advertising blockers change the programming code of websites and thus
    directly access the legally protected offer of publishers,” Claas-Hendrik
    Soehring, head of media law at Axel Springer told German site Heise.

    https://digiday.com/media/inside-axel-springers-war-adblock-plus/

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  31. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    WTF FFS OMG
    “Compared to the original version of HTML, to which many statements still refer with respect to
    the property of a program, HTML5 shows many characteristics of a programming language,
    such as concrete control statements.

    For example, these control statements - or commands - cause the computer with a browser to
    at least maintain certain priorities when processing programs ("block - i.e. immediately
    now" (default), "only at the very end" (defer) or "parallel" (async)). This means that the
    requirements for a computer program, such as those mentioned in the Response to Claim, are
    met.”

    "the case law defines a computer program as "a sequence of commands which, when recorded
    on a machine-readable medium, are capable of causing a machine with information processing
    capabilities to display, execute or achieve a specific function or task or a specific result”

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  33. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    It’s a USER agent
    Over the course of its existence, the web has accumulated a multitude of
    standards and common patterns. While most of these are beneficial for both
    developers and users, if abused (intentionally or otherwise) web APIs can
    sometimes be a detriment to user experience.

    An intervention is when a user agent decides to deviate slightly from a
    standardized behavior in order to provide a greatly enhanced user experience.
    Because of its nature, it must be done sparingly and with extreme prudence.

    https://github.com/WICG/interventions

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    RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users
    “When a decision improves the Internet for end users in one jurisdiction, but at the cost of
    potential harm to others elsewhere, that is not a good tradeoff. As such, we effectively design
    the Internet for the pessimal environment.”

    So at its heart, The Internet is for End Users is a call for IETF participants to stop pretending
    that they can ignore the non-technical consequences of their decisions, a call for
    broader consultation when making them, and one for continued focus on the end user.
    Ultimately, end user impact is as least as important as the technical considerations of a
    proposal.
    https://www.mnot.net/blog/2020/08/28/for_the_users

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  36. @brucel, www.brucelawson.co.uk
    Godwin:
    When ordinary people are empowered to come together and work on a common,
    humanity-benefiting project like Wikipedia, unexpectedly great and positive things
    can happen. Wikipedia is not the anomaly my journalist friend thinks it is.

    Instead, it’s a promise of the good works that ordinary people freed by the internet
    can create. I no longer argue primarily that the explosion of freedom of
    expression and diverse voices, facilitated by the internet, is simply a burden we
    dutifully have to bear. Now, more than I ever did 30 years ago, I argue that it’s the
    solution.

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    • [image of a crowd of people - terrible stock
    photo?]

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  48. THANKS ’N’ SNOGS!
    brucelawson.co.uk
    @brucel
    * Other Bruce Lawsons are available.
    ** known to cause nausea in some jurisdictions.

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  49. THANKS ’N’ ELBOW BUMPS!
    brucelawson.co.uk
    @brucel
    * Other Bruce Lawsons are available.
    ** known to cause nausea in some jurisdictions.

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