“Twenty years ago this week, researchers renounced the right to patent the World Wide Web. Officials at CERN, the European research center where the Web was invented, wrote: ‘CERN relinquishes all intellectual property to this code, both source and binary form and permission is granted for anyone to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it.’ It’s a dull sentence from a dull document. But that document marks the moment when the World Wide Web entered the public domain — a moment that was central to creating the Web as we know it today. Could the Web have been patented? And how would the world have been different if it had?”
Related posts:
Meredith Whitney on the Very Scary Municipal Bond Market
Former Tulsa cop convicted of robbing Hispanic drivers while on duty
Amazon, Overstock Lose Challenge to N.Y. Web Sales Tax
Chinese regulator vows share support after markets tumble 8.5% in a day
H.K. issues Vietnam travel warning after mobs torch Chinese factories
Trade war bailout: $12 billion in emergency aid for farmers hurt by tariffs
Silver Fixing Company to Stop Running London Benchmark
NSA promises transparency by launching new Tumblr blog
US Army vet charged with fighting alongside al-Qaida against Syrian government
30,000 California inmates launch hunger strike against ‘state-sanctioned torture’
IMF sees no end to French jobless crisis this decade
Goldman Has a New Product to Bet on the Next Banking Crisis
Hundreds of thousands march against austerity in Portugal
Manufacturing of Zeppelins temporarily shut down sausage makers in World War I
Syria asks United Nations to 'prevent Western aggression'