What a tangled web we are weaving - the internet a 'place where untruths start to spread more than truths'
Cristina Odone
Sunday November 5, 2006 The Observer I was born in Nairobi. But not according to my Wikipedia entry which, until last month, stated categorically that I was born in Rome. Another line said I am anti-semitic. Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute to any entry and operates on the premise of cumulative knowledge. With so many people reading each entry, mistakes are quickly corrected. The anti-semitism slur was soon deleted ('unsourced information').
But when I wanted to correct the other entry, the contributor responsible stuck to his guns. How did he know that the person complaining was really Cristina Odone? he asked. Only when I sent him a photocopy of my passport, birthplace prominently displayed, did he reluctantly accept my version of my life. |
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Friday November 3, 2006 The Guardian The creator of the world wide web told the Guardian last night that the internet is in danger of being corrupted by fraudsters, liars and cheats. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who founded the web in the early 1990s, says that if the internet is left to develop unchecked, "bad phenomena" will erode its usefulness.
His creation has transformed the way millions of people work, do business, and entertain themselves. But he warns that "there is a great danger that it becomes a place where untruths start to spread more than truths, or it becomes a place which becomes increasingly unfair in some way". He singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information. |
Paul Marks
NewScientist 11 November 2006 IMAGINE a computer criminal is threatening to mount a damaging attack on your company unless you pay thousands of dollars. The threat, which is becoming increasingly common, comes from "denial of service" (DoS) attacks, in which a hacker takes down an organisation's website by flooding it with page requests from a network of "zombie" PCs infected with "bot" viruses.
Can such attacks be stopped? Easily, say some, who argue that an internet service provider should be held legally liable if it allows a DoS attack to take place via its network. |
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