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Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

wired.co.uk

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Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#51

Post by chimeracoder »

wwwtyro wrote: post #2

Part of the difficulty of bringing this about is making p2p easy for users. I have high hopes that WebRTC data channels can start tearing these walls down by making it as simple as opening a web app.

> Part of the difficulty of bringing this about is making p2p easy for users.

As a general concept, P2P is easy for users - using bittorrent clients, TPB, etc. is essentially mainstream.

The one thing that would be nice is browser support - I would love it if Chrome had the option to download .torrent files using the Chrome download manager.

Thanks to web seeds[0], this would allow providers to convert any download to a torrent instead, both increasing use of P2P and decreasing their own server load.

Users wouldn't even need to know that they're using Bittorrent to download files - all they'd see are faster download speeds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#52

Post by stompin »

gress wrote: post #8

Given the support Google has from the tech community, I don't see much movement on this in the near future.

given the years of covert actions slowly coming to light, this is changing. I'm not just talking about relationships with 3-letter agencies but also actions like colluding to push down developer salaries, black-boxing their search algorithms, suddenly blacklisting competitors in their search rankings (e.g. Rap Genius), WiFi and Streeview privacy invasion, etc... How many times have they already faced Antitrust accusations?

Add to that the fact that Google is THE face of the recent tech backlash. Others don't like the whole idea that they employ a tiny fraction of someone like GM yet "hoovering up public subsidies and then avoiding taxes"[1]. If the public backlash continues or increases, we'll all start to face (some) repercussions - so how long will the tech community support Google en masse?

[1]http://www.economist.com/news/21588893-tech-elite-will-join-...

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#53

Post by fafner »

desireco42 wrote: post #35
MikeTaylor wrote: post #27

It's great that Berners-Lee is saying this, but he'd have retained a lot more of his authority to pronounce on the future of the Web had he not thrown his weight behind the W3C's horrible plan to put DRM into HTML.

Let's crucify his for that :) I hear what you are saying, but there is also reason for drm. Or we will have flash forever. What I am saying, I at least can understand why he did it.

Flash and Silverlight are dying anyway. So it's up to the movie industry and not up to us to bend over. And you know at least Flash was separated from the browser and ported to several systems. DRM in HTML5 will mean that Google, Apple, Microsoft will simply bundle their DRM modules and the free software world can fuck off. DRM in HTML5 is far worse than the status quo.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#54

Post by thirsteh »

coldtea wrote: post #22
aaronpk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"reclaim" vs "re-decentralise" The actual article never mentions the term "re-decentralise" at all.

Still it's standard practice. I've done it often for a few news sites I've managed content for. A word doesn't even have to be in TFA, just needs to sum it well enough.

It's done all the time to get search engines to rank the page higher for the keywords mentioned and listed.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#55

Post by dbingham »

Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree, the internet looks like a graph. With each building forming a node that connects to its neighbors.

Of course, the amount of work it would take to build such a web and move to it likely rules out the possibility of it ever happening. I mean, how do we go about forming a movement to build this? It only works, really, if everyone's on board.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#56

Post by pekk »

GrinningFool wrote: post #49
donpdonp wrote: post #36

The IndieWeb movement is pushing the constructs built on top of the web into a decentralized form using self hosted content and webhook notifications. Example: Comments on a blog post. Given a blog post at URL A, comments are created by posting a note on your own site at URL B, then using a webhook to notify the blog that such a comment exists. Your content cannot go away as long as you host it, and its not dependent…

Doesn't that introduce the reverse problem though? That makes someone else's content depend on the availability of your content - in the example of comments, the context and any intermediate replies can be lost if you stop hosting them. Leaving not a record of a conversation behind, but only indecipherable fragments. A quick scan through the page at the link posted also seems to indicate the protocol depends a lot on…

Why can't your blog periodically verify its links? It seems obvious that you can't depend on notifications that something is no longer available

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#57

Post by pekk »

fafner wrote: post #53
desireco42 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's crucify his for that :) I hear what you are saying, but there is also reason for drm. Or we will have flash forever. What I am saying, I at least can understand why he did it.

Flash and Silverlight are dying anyway. So it's up to the movie industry and not up to us to bend over. And you know at least Flash was separated from the browser and ported to several systems. DRM in HTML5 will mean that Google, Apple, Microsoft will simply bundle their DRM modules and the free software world can fuck off. DRM in HTML5 is far worse than the status quo.

Whatever we may WISH, Flash is still everywhere. And still necessary, for example, to play sounds across browsers

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#58

Post by edoloughlin »

GrinningFool wrote: post #49
donpdonp wrote: post #36

The IndieWeb movement is pushing the constructs built on top of the web into a decentralized form using self hosted content and webhook notifications. Example: Comments on a blog post. Given a blog post at URL A, comments are created by posting a note on your own site at URL B, then using a webhook to notify the blog that such a comment exists. Your content cannot go away as long as you host it, and its not dependent…

Doesn't that introduce the reverse problem though? That makes someone else's content depend on the availability of your content - in the example of comments, the context and any intermediate replies can be lost if you stop hosting them. Leaving not a record of a conversation behind, but only indecipherable fragments. A quick scan through the page at the link posted also seems to indicate the protocol depends a lot on…

the protocol depends a lot on content providers being well behaved

I think this is true of existing content, except there are much fewer content providers and there's no protocol.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#59

Post by admax88q »

taway2012 wrote: post #48
Create wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital Restrictions Management will take care of that. Not only mandatory flashing, but also tracking.

How? How can DRM force me to display the iframe containing an ad.

DRM can force you to do whatever you want. It's proprietary code running on your system.

If you want to view the content, it will ensure that you've seen the ad before it renders the content.

Re: Tim Berners-Lee: We need to re-decentralise the web

#60

Post by m_mueller »

dbingham wrote: post #55

Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree,…

Just throwing an idea a the wall here: Maybe it could be combined with the decentralization of the power grid, i.e. smartgrids? This would (a) give additional incentives to home owners (subsidizing their investment) and power companies (going after the broadband market) and (b) it would solve the question on where to get the bandwidth from.
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