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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

#101

Post by auvrw »

in the absence of a relevant plug for a library that i've written (shame), here's one for a library that someone else wrote

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/private-backend

tl;dw: next time you build a webservice, let your users use private drive, dropbox, or whatever accounts to host their data (or at least the data that doesn't get JOINed to other tables all over the place). one has to pay for data ownership, but it's not per-service charge.

the article's kind of a tease. it's easy to say things like "open" and "decentralized," but i guess if i want to know what specific implementations were discussed, i'd have to buy the magazine.

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

#102

Post by soperj »

desireco42 wrote: post #100
fafner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't share completely your assertions. In order for commercial companies to be able to use html5, they need some form of drm. This is just enabling them to do business. I believe that free and open, given some semblance of equal playing field will always win. Just to be clear, if they came and say, no drm in html, I would stand behind that as well. I just accept their judgement that this was necessary at the momen…

They don't really. Any stream can be captured. So if I can play the audio or video, I can capture it in a format that I can share, drm just makes it a little harder.

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

#103

Post by fiatjaf »

doctoboggan wrote: post #78

Perfect timing, I just released a tool that enabled a more decentralized web. It used BitTorrent Sync to distribute files and I plan on implementing namecoin or colored coins for name resolution. As soon as an open source, stable btsync clone is released I plan on swapping it in. The biggest drawback is that you can only serve static content, although I think many websites today would be fine with this restriction. Y…

This is awesome.

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

#104

Post by dllthomas »

icebraining wrote: post #93
dllthomas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with browser-as-server is that users typically want to power off their browsing devices, while they typically want servers to be always-on. Tying it through a cloud-hosted VPS or some local dedicated device (those wall-wart computers, or something else lightweight and low power but sufficiently capable), but then having the browser talk to it smartly (potentially from several devices simultaneously),…

People interested in privacy and Free Software are already working on it: https://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn/

Right, certainly related - the vision may or may not be precisely what I described (I'm not sure one way or the other about browser integration) but certainly a great starting point to build off of if not entirely what we want.

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

#105

Post by dllthomas »

abvdasker wrote: post #85
dllthomas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with browser-as-server is that users typically want to power off their browsing devices, while they typically want servers to be always-on. Tying it through a cloud-hosted VPS or some local dedicated device (those wall-wart computers, or something else lightweight and low power but sufficiently capable), but then having the browser talk to it smartly (potentially from several devices simultaneously),…

One possible solution is to distribute the hosted content to peers, so that when one person's browser is offline, hopefully someone else's is online to act as a server instead. That doesn't serve as a guarantee, but with a centralized fallback it could work. There are some very clever people already doing this with WebRTC.

Right, that works great assuming static content.

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

#107

Post by shmerl »

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.

There is no reason for DRM whatsoever. At least no valid reason.

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

#108

Post by shmerl »

desireco42 wrote: post #100
fafner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't share completely your assertions. In order for commercial companies to be able to use html5, they need some form of drm. This is just enabling them to do business. I believe that free and open, given some semblance of equal playing field will always win. Just to be clear, if they came and say, no drm in html, I would stand behind that as well. I just accept their judgement that this was necessary at the momen…

> In order for commercial companies to be able to use html5, they need some form of drm

This is false. Those companies can use the HTML without DRM with the same success. No company ever needs any DRM.

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

#109

Post by MichaelGG »

admax88q wrote: post #59
taway2012 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The "on your system" part is what prevents this from happening. However, with features like remote attestation, a DRM platform could be built. If users start accepting PCs locked down like tablets, then this might be an issue.

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

#110

Post by amirmc »

zackmorris wrote: post #43
nawitus wrote: post #13

The internet is decentralized, the web has never been. HTTP protocol doesn't support it. But it's time to do that. What we need is the possibility of peer-to-peer connections between browsers.

While I agree that TCP/IP is decentralized, unfortunately due to NAT and corporate firewalls, vast swaths of users have been relegated to second class citizens who can only act as data consumers. Unfortunately this same misguided approach to security, or as I call it suckerity, has been carried forward into IPv6. There is some hope that WebRTC and other p2p technologies might alleviate the problem but then the task o…

Or a bunch of University research. This is exactly the kind of complex problem that research groups work on but they tend not to get much attention until they're fully baked. The group I'm working with is considering what kind toolstack we need for a distributed future and then building it from the ground up. If you're interested, you can find out more from the link below. One of the pieces hit 1.0 late last year and we're working on the other components too.

http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/

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