License to Surf

Bogatyr writes "Robert Cailliau, who designed the Web with Briton Tim Berners-Lee in late 1990, says all Internet users should be licensed so surfers on the information highway are as accountable as drivers on the road. " W3C has been working on such systems for years - unforgeable certificates which users must present to gain access to content, and which incidentally identify them uniquely and provide assorted marketing information. The end of anonymity, coming soon to a Web near you.

Accountability?

Accountable for what, I'd like to know. Should we get insurance in case our packets collide with somebody elses?

Hell no.

That's just bizarre. What's up with that analogy between surfing and driving? When you drive a car you're controlling a heavy object that moves at a high velocity. Such a thing has great potential damage associated with it, so a good case can be made for licensing. Surfing the web? How would that endanger anyone? I think a better analogy would be reading books... But then you couldn't say "you should need a license to surf the web, much like you need one to read a book" because you don't need a license to read a book. That would be silly. And so is this idea.

Re:Accountability?

Yeah... the whole idea of having a drivers license is that you are held accountable for damages you cause... but unless someone is deliberately attempting to crack into other computers, its hard to accidentally cause damage on the net. I mean, when was the last time you were surfing down the information superhighway, took your eyes off the monitor to do something, and your packets suddenly began colliding into others, damaging them irreversably? ;-)
Besides, data is physically worthless - bits and bytes are effectively free, so all you'd be doing in that case would be interrupting communications, or changing records of someone's intellectual property, or something...
Licenses to use the internet are dumb.

What a shame

Licensing surfers would change the internet from a sort of cafe, where ideas are exchanged freely into a kind of mega-mall, where faceless corporations separate you from your money in exchange for junk that you don't really need.

Maybe BBSes will make a comeback after all.

-Peter

Touchier than it might seem

I can see both sides of this issue. On the one hand, as society starts having more and more of its business online, it will be more and more important for people who commit online crimes to be held accountable- in real life, "I just shot him to demonstrate what poor security against bullets he had!" doesn't hold up in many courts. Which is not to say that I think pranks like defacing a web site are as serious as murder, of course, but what about the guy who discovers an exploit for those new digital iToasters that will let him burn people's houses down, and uses it? Or who subtly hacks into an e-commerce site so that when you submit your credit card number, it records it in a plaintext file on the server before passing it along so he can come back and read it at his convenience?

From that standpoint, we want to make it as hard to be truly anonymous as possible, so that we can catch people who are doing things that we ought to punish. On the other hand, anonymity on a more casual level is very important. I am doing a sociology study on homosexuality and the internet, for example, and am finding that it's pretty common for people who are just discovering that they are gay to turn to the anonymity of the Internet to get information because they don't want people to know that they're gay. Destroying their anonymity would be very bad for them, perhaps even physically dangerous. And of course there are the more common reasons: I certainly don't want people knowing about my surfing habit just because it's none of their business, dammit, and I *certainly* don't want to start getting e-mails about sites that I'll just *love* considering the sites that I visit now...

I'm not sure how to reconcile those two competing interests. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Changing behavior...

But the system is open, neutral and non-proprietary, and must remain so, according to Cailliau. ``One has to be extremely careful what it is that one regulates. We should not regulate the content but the behavior of people.

Let see... Humans have tried to change the behavior of others for years -- they're called laws. Even though humans have had laws against prostitution for thousands of years, you can still find prostitutes (if you know where to look :-> ). The US has had laws against the importation of drugs like cannibis for years, but all that those laws resulted in was 1) higher quality and 2) better availability of ganja!

What I don't understand is how they intend to separate content from behavior. If I smoked weed regularly (my behavior) I would probably want to put up some pro-legalization webpages (my content). If my webpages advocated mass consumpution of marijuana, could the powers that be still ban my website by saying that they are targeting my behavior, not my content?
--

Driving Analogy Fails

It sounds like he's trying to assure some level of accountability with the net to combat certain evils like spam, but he's using the wrong analogy. Surfing the Internet is not like driving a car.

A better analogy would be visiting a library. You make a request for some information (either by looking it up in a card catalog, or asking the reference librarian), and you receive it. We would never suggest that a librarian demand ID before allowing access to the book racks. However, we might expect them to politely stop the six-year-old from wandering into the art section where are kept the books of human figure photography. It's easy, after all, for a human to spot a six-year-old.

I think what worries Cailliau is the fact that the medium of information exchange is now entirely mechanized; that there's no longer a human gatekeeper to make sure that neither the six-year-old nor the neighborhood Fundamentalist doesn't accidentally wander off with Mapplethorpe.

Unfortunately, such wisdom requires adult human intelligence and life experience, which we aren't about to get in machines for some time. And the alternative suggested by Cailliau of checking IDs is unworkable and ethically repugnant.

For the time being, it seems we must rely on the honesty and honor of humans to not foul the well water. Even given Talin's Third Law ("Politeness doesn't scale."), this approach has worked remarkably well on the Internet so far. As long as we keep developing honesty and honor in our children, I believe we should be, for the most part, just fine.

Schwab

This isn't the answer

I really don't think eliminating anonymity is the answer. In Real Life(tm) for example, in order to prevent crime, shops have cameras, security guards, and so on - basically the equivalents of various security tools available for servers on the Internet, such as firewalls, proxy servers, and so on.

Licensing surfers seems, IMHO, tantamount to forcing everyone to have little credit card-like things with their social security number (or whatever). Card readers would be posted on the door of every house, shop, mall, etc. and in order to enter a building, you'd need to insert your card. That way, there would be records of where everyone was and when, so if something got stolen, they (the government, police, storeowner, or whomever) would theoretically know who it was; and, incidentally, there would be reams of information on every single person in the country who ever left their home, detailing where they went and when. So law enforcement would have a very powerful new tool to combat crime, and marketers would be able to target the right people for their bulk mailings - everybody wins! ...right?

As I think most people can tell, a system like that would never, ever, ever be brought into existence, at least in a "free" country - it would be held as a massive violation of rights. So why on Earth should such a system exist on the Internet? It's hardly the only way to combat crime.

In the article, the Internet is compared to a highway, where all drivers are licensed, and so on. I have to disagree with this; I think an analogy of people in a massive city might be a little more appropriate, although even that is flawed. But perhaps one of the most glaring flaws in the drivers-on-the-road analogy is the potential for damage: someone in a car can easily kill themselves or others through a lack of skill in handling a car - either by hitting another car, or running into a tree, or whatever. That is why drivers and cars are licensed - if someone tries to drive a car without adequate training, then nine times out of ten they'll get into some sort of accident, and quite possibly seriously hurt. Now, if you put someone in front of a computer with no prior training, they'll just get confused, nothing more. No one gets hurt or killed. On the Internet, the people with potential to cause damage are the ones who know what they're doing (or, in some cases, script kiddies who just think they know what they're doing - but I don't think most of them are capable of serious damage). And I think that the truly dangerous people will figure out how to get around the licensing anyway.

And of course, there's the problem of who you get to oversee the licensing. A government wouldn't really work, since the Internet has no geographical boundaries; W3C wouldn't be able to do it, since IIRC no one is actually *forced* to listen to them. In fact, I wouldn't be amazingly surprised if an attempt at licensing surfers like this just resulted in fracturing the Internet into parts that require licenses, and parts that don't. I personally think that part of the beauty (for lack of a better word) of the Internet is the fact that it's pseudo-anonymous, and unregulated. There isn't really anyone with the power to say what you can or can't do. Naturally, this does get abused, but that hasn't ruined the Internet. It's a place where anyone can say what they want, and have an equal opportunity to be heard, without having to be afraid of anyone coming after them for it; that's something that should always be protected. A licensing and identification scheme would be a large step towards destroying that.

Re:Touchier than it might seem

In the real world, you do not need to present identification before being able to commit violent crimes. That is, take your 'iToaster' example. Mapping it to the real world -- I can buy a gallon of gasoline and a book of matches without presenting ID. I can make this purchase in California and burn down a house in Texas, making it quite hard for the police to find the stoned store clerk who might dimly remember selling me the supplies. Is our solution to record all transactions? No.

To a very real extent, crime is a tax we all pay on freedom. There are societies with very little crime -- these are invariably societies no one sane would want to live in, where the most common crime is trying to escape.

We manage to maintain an acceptable (hell, plunging rapidly!) rate of crime in the 'real world' without mandatory identification and tracking of all citizen-units. If anything, hunting down crooks in cyberspace, anonymity or no, is generally easier because it's much easier to leave footprints, and because, let's face it, most hackers aren't the cunning criminal geniuses you see in movies. Most of them are script kiddies who have learned one or two k00l trix, and use them incessantly. Modus operandi is the first step to capture.

What we need is not new laws. What we need is for those charged with enforcing the existing laws to get off their doughnut-fattened butts and haul their corpulant forms into classes where they can learn about the new technology they need to master.

Well now...

I guess I've just about heard it all now. Somewhere, somehow, somebody is going to figure out how to completely destroy the things that have made the internet great. We will be telling our grandkids about the good old days when the net was like the wild west. Yep... if it's not the politicians or the save-the-whales crowd, it'll be someone. It's just a matter of time.

I say we just fork the whole thing off right now. How hard could it be to do that. All we need are phone lines... maybe some new protocols.. it could be done. We could call it "The Undernet" The slashdot community has the knowledge and resources to get it started too.

Re:Driving Analogy Fails

I'm not an anonymous person and I don't want to be. I also don't want other anonymous people because they can do things without being held accountable for them. People on the Internet need to grow up and realize that the Internet isn't an infant anymore. It's evolved into a real-world machine and in the real-world, people aren't anonymous. You don't always get what you want, nor even what you ask for.

Put analogies aside for a minute, and stop and think for a minute what it would mean if an unforgable 1-1 link to your True Name were attached to every packet you sent. Your every action would be analyzed (Don't buy the "just because the data is there doesn't mean it would be used" story - it has value, so someone will mine it) and used to build a model of how you behave on line. Increasingly, everything is becoming more online. In ten years, this will be a detailed map of practically everything you do, including physically where you were at what time (cell phones), with whom you converse, what you buy.

What is really needed is nearly the opposite - strong anonymous identites with selective, voluntary disclosure. There's no inherent need for a porno site to get your credit card number just to verify you're of age (although that's a very convenient excuse to do so, for a variety of reasons). A certificate that states you're 27 years old with nothing else identifiable could get you to thier gallery or whatever. If you wanted the "premium services", you'd use micropayments, or perhaps create a contract with a different certificate used to create a three way relationship between the site operator, your credit institution and you. The site never has any reason to know who you are.

For different sites (Like Ingram, as someone exampled) where there is a compelling reason to know who you are, you can choose to disclose who you are.

This might sound very science fiction like, but it is just how the real world tries (and often fails) to operate. You buy booze and present your driver's license. The cashier isn't writing down your name or DL number; just checking the DOB. If they did start writing it down, I believe you'd be understandably pretty creeped out. Why should web site operators get that data (in an automated fashion ripe for data mining)?

I'm truly afraid we're headed to a Brave New World simply because people don't realize what they're asking for.

Re:Colors

The colors look great in lynx.

Humor - Drunk Driving on the Info Superhighway

I'm surprised no-one has posted John Dvorak's classic humor column on this topic (PC Computing, April 1994, page 88).

Excerpt:

The moniker--Information Highway--itself seems to be responsible for SB #040194. Introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy, it's designed to prohibit anyone from using a public computer network (Information Highway) while the computer user is intoxicated. I know how silly this sounds, but Congress apparently thinks that being drunk on a highway is bad no matter what kind of highway it is. The bill is expected to pass this month.

There already are rampant arguments as to how this proposed law can possibly be enforced. The FBI hopes to use it as an excuse to do routine wiretaps on any computer if there is any evidence that the owner "uses or abuses alcohol and has access to a modem." Note how it slips in the word 'uses'. This means if you've been seen drinking one lone beer, you can have your line tapped.

Full version at http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/humor/drunk-on- infohighway [mit.edu]

The Slashdot Surfing School

I can see it now ... before being allowed out on the Information Superhighway (TM) proper, it will be compulsory for all newbies to learn on Slashdot first (right now it just seems that way.) They'll have to be good citizens, make their contributions, avoid being a potty mouth, etc. Once they've developed a Karma of, say, 25 they'll be allowed out on their own. Another fine product of CmdrTaco's Academy!

Regards, Ralph.