/Big Question/ Eviction time
19/09/2007 | Filed under Discover > Big Question
If you could remove one thing from the internet, what would it be?
Hosting specialist
Neil Barton
Hostway UK
E-crime. There was a time when a hacker was a spotty teenager trying to prove he was “the 1337” and hacking would be more of an annoyance than an actual risk. Although many “grey hat” hackers are involved in helping to strengthen corporate defences against malevolent influences, there are increasing numbers of organised criminals attempting to extract money and financial details from unwary consumers. Businesses have also come under threat from hacking, phishing and fraudulent activities, such as the Sumitomo bank incident, where hackers attempted to steal £220million via keylogging devices.
While in real life we have the police to protect us from such deviants, the internet seems to be either devoid of such policing or reliant on businesses and consumers using things like firewalls, antivirus and content filtering devices, most of which require a financial investment. With the UK’s National High-Tech Crime Unit being incorporated into the Serious Crime Unit during 2006, it seems that the ability of British businesses to not only report electronic crime, but also to collaborate and cooperate in fighting it, has been impaired. What’s more worrying is that, if this is the case locally, tackling the global problem is likely to be significantly harder.
One of the main problems is that the ICT revolution has happened incredibly quickly. 10 years ago, the things we’re able to do with computers right now would have been unthinkable. We must move faster to keep up, integrate ICT security into our educational schedule and, to some degree, change our legislative and security forces to include, not diminish, IT’s importance. Otherwise, the vision of a “dark age of the web” may not be so far-fetched.
Neil is the director of Hostway UK, which provides hosting services in the UK and abroad
Activist
Oxblood Ruffin
Hacktivismo
I’d remove two things: dot gov and dot mil. And then I’d appoint myself King of the World™.
Oxblood Ruffin is the founder of Hacktivismo, and is an active campaigner against web censorship
Media & PR expert
Tim Gibbon
Elemental Communications
Barriers and exclusion from using the internet would be thing that I would remove. The web is such a powerful tool for learning, growth and sharing, and everyone should have access to it. Using IMs a lot at Elemental means that we often receive requests from individuals from other parts of the world where they’re barred access from search engines, search results, websites and so on.
You don’t appreciate how good you (seem to) have it until you speak to someone like this, requesting that you look at a page/s for them, simply because they cannot access it. Even more concerning is when they need to verify facts and information, because they cannot do research. Therefore, they can’t make more informed decisions for themselves.
However, even in countries that purport to champion freedom of speech and individualism, it appears they also impose restrictions. One example being the US government, that blocked access to the White House from other countries, which, in my view, only served to demonstrate the hypocracy of such intentions.
If you have a web page in the public domain that serves individuals in such a way, and is so vocal in how it strives to make the world a just place for everyone, then it should be available to all. And then there are the reports of the CIA and the Vatican editing details on Wikipedia.
The removal of such boundaries is unlikely to happen any time soon. This is one issue that takes precedent over so many other things that are more than irritating.
On a lighter note, to make my simple life happier, removing broken links or dud sites would satisfy me. It’s annoying heading to a destination and thinking that a resource will have all that you need, and doesn’t because they’re out of date and should be assigned to the broken link graveyard for sites that serve no purpose.
I can’t bare “half an effort” sites that don’t reference the source of the information, and are there only to fuel advertising revenues. Spam and sites that are painfully slow to load would be my things that follow shortly after the aforementioned.
Tim is founder and director of Elemental Communications, a media communications consultancy that caters for traditional and digital media
Project manager
Ane-Marie Peter
on-IDLE
Facebook and MySpace. Facebook because it’s full of random stuff without relevance - and mountains of it. It was interesting at the start, but is now repetitive and boring. MySpace because it’s just become a bit sad. A friend changed her profile to “single” and her entire network received an email. She’s utterly mortified!
Also, online ads that roll out over content, obscuring it. They’ve become the next level of intrusion since multiple pop-ups.
Ane-Marie Peter is the co-founder of on-IDLE and has a background in business management, communication strategies and technology
Business developer
Steve Burnard
Adobe
I would remove blogs, for the following reasons ... They’re personal opinions, usually by people who are unqualified to have an objective opinion. They can be out of date, yet will still be referenced as valid. There’s no real way of accrediting the source content. They’re a plagiarist’s dream come true!
Steve is a business development manager for Adobe, and is responsible for creating and driving the technical sales and positioning of Adobe’s products for web, video and e-Learning in the UK & Eire
Accessibility expert
Julie Howell
Fortune Cookie
That’s easy. Spam and spyware! (Is that two things? They’re part of the same evil, in my opinion.) I want my online experience to be as free of harassment as my offline life. Why do I have to put up with in excess of 5,000 spam emails a day? Imagine if I got that much junk mail through my letterbox! I hate any notion of being watched while I’m surfing the web. If I can add another thing (it’s part of the same problem), then it’s the highly topical misplacement of online ads. While I accept that much online advertising is accurately and appropriately targeted, a lot of it isn’t. For example, some of the sites that I use display ads that purport to be of interest to people with multiple sclerosis (such as myself). However, many of the companies that advertise are extremely dubious and clearly not vetted. I’ve got the experience to recognise “vitamins disguised as cures” when I see them, but it troubles and annoys me that many less experienced people may not, and that these brands are getting kudos from being linked with me (a legitimate provider of information for people with MS). One recent instance: an ad popped up with details of a company that will remove mercury fillings from people with MS, a practice that has been generally derided by the medical community. This form of targeted advertising isn’t ethical and I’d like to see it wiped off the web.
Julie Howell is director of accessibility at Fortune Cookie, a UK-based web design agency
Legal expert
Raj Mahapatra
vLegal
I could say something like child pornography. That’s really nasty, and both awareness and access to it has risen massively as a result of the internet. But I would like to go further than this and remove the “laws don’t apply” personality trait from the internet.
When websites took off in the mid-to-late 90s, people thought that the internet was a lawless territory. OK, so it took lawyers a while to get their heads around it (some things are unlikely to change, as long as people get paid by the hour!), but when they did, they realised that most of the old rules still applied (maybe with a little adjustment).
Sadly, in those few short years, something got engrained in the internet which has meant that law-abiding users now spend their lives firefighting attacks of one sort or another, be they assaults on laws, morals or simply the equipment we use. Other people find themselves victims of crime without even using the internet; my mind can’t help thinking of the children exploited and abused for the purposes of child pornography. Taking away this personality trait would be a real bonus!
Raj Mahapatra is MD of vLegal, a company with an aim to redefine the legal services industry
Comments
Erwin Heiser / 20/09/2007 / 14:50
Internet Explorer 6. Nuff said.
Zanesmurf / 23/09/2007 / 21:34
Domain name squatting is one of the most annoying blights of the Internet. It stifles growth and innovation, while providing one of the worst online business practices that should have been eradicated with the '00 dot-com bust. As far as the train of thought "Intellectual Foresight"; it's not investing, it is impinging. If a domain name is ever going to get used, allow the utilization of the name for those that actually use the name, rather than wasting money by forcing funds away from the real Internet investors: designers, developers, and content creators.
I realize that enforcement would one of the most difficult things ICANN does, since there is so much gray area between obvious squatters and legitimate, long-term static pages. Clearly, however, if Google can detect sites dedicated to sucking in traffic from search results, it is possible.
An enforcing body, complete with an intelligent appeal process is part of the solution. Once a corporation or entity has three appeals denied, all future appeals would be ineligible.
Parking pages that remain undeveloped should be returned to the wild.
Increase the price of registration to a point. The revenue flow of the squatters will eventually break. Contrastively, the cost of legitimate registration will rise, an unfortunate necessity.
Alistair McLeod / 24/09/2007 / 10:02
Spam - why do people think it's OK to bombard our mailboxes with so much crap so we have to spend time and money filtering out all the rubbish to get at the legitimate emails
Anton VS / 27/09/2007 / 18:50
Wikipedia!! It's filling up with disinformation every day.. sadly.. But some users start modifying the content to suit their views and interests, and as far as I've heard, even government agencies have started doing that!!! It's simply becoming very hard to trust.
Marc / 29/09/2007 / 19:26 / http://sitdown.org.uk
Spyware - fake Windows Dialogues that try and fool users into installing malware. Its very easy for your average user to fool for these and end up having their privacy breached and their computer slowed down.
Tom G / 01/10/2007 / 18:02 / http://www.thatguyontheweb.com
There are so many things that need to follow the trend of the dodo, but I'd have to agree with Anton VS. Wikipedia is a wonderful idea put into terrible practice. It respresents itself as a respectable source of information with limited checks and balances. And when some companies have hired people to perform their own checks and balances, like Microsoft, they are blasted with disgust. (That will be my only defense of Microsoft... I promise).
I have even abused it, unfortunately. I had to write a paper for college, a class I had no respect for, where we could use Wikipedia as a source. Rather than do actually research, I thought it would be more interesting to instead write an article on Wikipedia under a pseudonym and reference myself in the paper with a ridiculous argument. I later removed the posting, but the point is the same.
Adrian / 03/10/2007 / 05:06 / http://www.pctd.co.uk
Those bloody Pop ups!! i hate them even more i hate the ones that when you wait for the page to load and then go to click on a link the damn pop up gets in the way!
Sure you can get a pop up blocker but some do not get all of them!
Colin / 04/10/2007 / 13:30 / http://www.unfunked.org/
Steve Burnard of Adobe's comment about blogs seems like a bit of an outdated standpoint considering his job. The <a href="http://www.cluetrain.com/">Cluetrain Manifesto</a> would like a word with you Steve.
I'd get rid of Adwords, it fuels far too much black hat SEO.
elmore / 09/10/2007 / 00:12
The pop-up which says you are the 1,000,000 visitor etc. It's impossible to get rid of, so to those sites which promote it for income - I immediately close it down and delete it.
Richard Morton / 09/10/2007 / 16:44 / http://www.qm-consulting.co.uk/
I would remove the zero. One is far more positive!
Seriously though, I'd probably remove the .tv domain (it is just so naff), or at least give it back to the people of Tuvalu so they can have a proper prescence on the internet (whatever money they made from the sale of the TLD is theirs to keep, it shows brilliant enterprise on their part).
Julie / 28/10/2007 / 10:33
Corporate take overs of community websites.
Example. YouTube...... I joined YouTube because it was a site where you me and any member of the public could post up their own contributions for the world to see. Now that it's become a corporate the communty is hounded by fat cats for copyright infringement and then they flood the whole site with the exact material they sued over and we can't find any original material. I dumped my television to get away from this glaobal corporatism and now it's invading the whole community social network which was brought about by folk trying to get away from the rubbish.
