What I think we will see are publishers which offer “permanent” archives for documents, which serve two purposes: 1) A long-lived URL for future reference, no matter what happens to the adminstrative and/or logistical infrastructure surrounding the original author/publisher. 2) A legal asset which is validated by its datestamp and submitter and thus stands as proof of exsistence for copyright and contractual reasons.
Predictor: Behlendorf, Brian
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 discussion group exchange, Brian Behlendorf responds to a question from Jon Wallis about the Internet becoming a “copyright library.” He suggests that Web authors would be able to supply a URL address and then they would have a classified and catalogued page.”Actually what I think we will see are publishers which offer ‘permanent’ archives for documents, which serve two purposes: 1) A long-lived URL for future reference, no matter what happens to the adminstrative and/or logistical infrastructure surrounding the original author/publisher. 2) A legal asset which is validated by its datestamp and submitter and thus stands as proof of exsistence for copyright and contractual reasons. ‘Permanent’ as in [for instance,] its archive is protected by a trust fund of some sort or government-backed insurance policy, sort of like the FDIC insurance for banks. In other words, this database will survive, much like how graveyards survive even in urban areas because a sufficiently large trust fund was able to provide rent and sustenance through interest earned. There are other non-html issues surrounding this like public-key crypto, URN’s, URC’s, etc., so I don’t expect too much conversation about this on this list … I think a lot more success would [be] had using simple keywords.”
Biography:Brian Behlendorf was a key innovator in the development of Web commerce. At the outset of the 1990s, he was chief engineer at Wired magazine’s inception and later helped start up HotWired, one of the first large-scale publishing Web sites. He spent 1993-98 as co-founder and CTO at Organic Online, one of the first Web design and engineering consulting firms. While there, he co-founded and contributed heavily to the Apache Web Server Project, co-founded and supported the VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling language) effort, and assisted several IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) working groups, particularly the HTTP standardization effort. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: November 17, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: Meta-Tag
Title, headline, chapter name: Meta-Tag
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/1995Nov/0060.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Bradshaw, Lindsay