Freedom of speech on the Internet?
15/09/08 17:06
Every day here in France, my news comes from mainly the BBC website or BBC radio. Sometimes I supplement it with the electronic versions of daily British newspapers like “The Guardian” or “The Independent.”
Today, a news piece on the BBC caught my eye. It was by Sir Tim Berners-Lee who is credited with the creation of the World Wide Web. He expressed concern about whether the Internet could be relied upon to promulgate scientific truth. He cited the large amounts of false scientific information that has been put out here about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the connections between the MMR vaccine and autism as examples of disinformation. He was advocating a branding or grading policy for websites based on their being trustworthy or reliable sources of information.
It seems he was advocating a role for his own new organisation, The Web Foundation.
The one thing I love about the web is its permission of freedom of speech. I respect that as a basic human freedom too. I can make up my own mind about what I believe to be true. I don’t need “Sir Tim” or some government agency to tell me what is true. I am capable of deciding for myself.
It does seem like Sir Tim is different, however. He comes here not only to buy his shoes but he says, “It's where I go to decide who I'm going to trust to vote…
"It's where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion I'm going to belong to or not belong to.”
How naive is that? The Internet is not the new "Ministry of Truth", neither is it the thought police.
Tim Berners-Lee is a distinguished physicist and computer scientist who just happens to work for, inter alia, CERN, the developers of the LHC. I may or may not respect his scientific judgment. I would be happy to listen to him as I would to people who argue against him.
But I’m deeply unhappy about scientists deciding about what they serve me up here as their version of truth as I am with anyone else telling me what to think.
So what did we do before the Internet, Tim? Maybe we read newspapers and watched television. Would you attach your trust and reliability labels to “Fox News” and the UK newspaper, “Daily Sport”? I love the fun and stupidity of Daily Sport headlines like, “Woman pregnant for 65 years gives birth to pensioner”… But fun apart, what Tim is proposing amounts to censorship to which I’m vehemently opposed.
Tim also works for a state-backed organisation that invests in innovation as did I (the same one). He’s picking on some of the right issues in my view. The BBC article goes on:
“The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests.
"I think that question is very important and may be settled in the next few years," said Sir Tim.”
My message to him is not to suppress freedom of speech, but to allow it.
If he needs a cause celebre, then how about focussing on the 12% of the internet that is dedicated to pornography and the denigration of human relationships and women. How about promoting democracy and freedom of speech rather than suppressing it in favour of “large corporations” and “vested interests”?
Now I must go and look out his email address…
Today, a news piece on the BBC caught my eye. It was by Sir Tim Berners-Lee who is credited with the creation of the World Wide Web. He expressed concern about whether the Internet could be relied upon to promulgate scientific truth. He cited the large amounts of false scientific information that has been put out here about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the connections between the MMR vaccine and autism as examples of disinformation. He was advocating a branding or grading policy for websites based on their being trustworthy or reliable sources of information.
It seems he was advocating a role for his own new organisation, The Web Foundation.
The one thing I love about the web is its permission of freedom of speech. I respect that as a basic human freedom too. I can make up my own mind about what I believe to be true. I don’t need “Sir Tim” or some government agency to tell me what is true. I am capable of deciding for myself.
It does seem like Sir Tim is different, however. He comes here not only to buy his shoes but he says, “It's where I go to decide who I'm going to trust to vote…
"It's where I go maybe to decide what sort of religion I'm going to belong to or not belong to.”
How naive is that? The Internet is not the new "Ministry of Truth", neither is it the thought police.
Tim Berners-Lee is a distinguished physicist and computer scientist who just happens to work for, inter alia, CERN, the developers of the LHC. I may or may not respect his scientific judgment. I would be happy to listen to him as I would to people who argue against him.
But I’m deeply unhappy about scientists deciding about what they serve me up here as their version of truth as I am with anyone else telling me what to think.
So what did we do before the Internet, Tim? Maybe we read newspapers and watched television. Would you attach your trust and reliability labels to “Fox News” and the UK newspaper, “Daily Sport”? I love the fun and stupidity of Daily Sport headlines like, “Woman pregnant for 65 years gives birth to pensioner”… But fun apart, what Tim is proposing amounts to censorship to which I’m vehemently opposed.
Tim also works for a state-backed organisation that invests in innovation as did I (the same one). He’s picking on some of the right issues in my view. The BBC article goes on:
“The Foundation will also look at concerns that the web has become less democratic, and its use influenced too much by large corporations and vested interests.
"I think that question is very important and may be settled in the next few years," said Sir Tim.”
My message to him is not to suppress freedom of speech, but to allow it.
If he needs a cause celebre, then how about focussing on the 12% of the internet that is dedicated to pornography and the denigration of human relationships and women. How about promoting democracy and freedom of speech rather than suppressing it in favour of “large corporations” and “vested interests”?
Now I must go and look out his email address…
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