The Web inventor Berners-Lee creates a new way to address Internet privacy



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We live our lives on the internet. Indeed, when Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web, it was made easy for everyone to use and share information. 28 years later, your personal information is largely controlled by large companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. Already enough. Berners-Lee wants to put our data in our hands.

Berners-Lee wants to do it with a new open source project: Solid. He is not the first. People are tired of having their personal data in the hands of giant corporations. Adding insults to injury, such as a privacy scandal and a security issue like Apple, Facebook and Google in recent weeks, it's clear that you can not trust them to protect your data.

What to do? Well, with a lot of work, you can protect your data. But, these methods leave the fundamental problem of your data in the hands of untrustworthy third parties. Berners-Lee, who has been "devastated" by recent attacks on privacy, has deemed that enough.

Berners-Lee wrote:

I've always believed that the Web was for everyone. That is why me and others fight hard to protect it. The changes we have made have created a better and more connected world. Despite all the benefits we have gained, the Web has become a driver of inequity and division. influenced by powerful forces that use it for their own agendas.

Today, I think we have reached a critical point, and that a powerful change for the better is possible – and necessary.

Solid is supposed to change "the current pattern that users must pass on personal data to digital giants in return for their perceived value.As we all discovered, this was not in our best interest. Balance – by giving each of us total control over the data, personally or otherwise, in a revolutionary way. "

Solid is not a new radical program. Instead, "Solid is a set of modular specifications that build on and extend the core Web technology (HTTP, REST, HTML). They are 100% compatible with the existing Web. Each specification, taken in isolation, provides additional functionality to an existing system. However, when combined, they offer exciting new possibilities for websites and applications. "

The main improvement of the Solid specification is that the Web becomes a collaborative read-write space, shifting the control of Internet service owners to users. With it, you can write, read and control access to your personal data or anything else you post on the Web. Confidentiality is managed by using the Web Access Control List specification.

The Web Access Control List is a decentralized system, which allows users and groups to access resources where users and groups are identified by HTTP URIs. Users are identified by WebID. User groups are identified by the URI of a class of users. That said, a person hosted on any site can be a member of a group hosted on any other site.

Berners-Lee said that Solid is "guided by the principle of" personal empowerment through data ", which, in our opinion, is fundamental to the success of the next era of the Web. you will have a lot more personal agency on the data – you decide which applications can access it. "

Although you can join Solid now, you can not do anything … for the moment.

Today, Solid is a cadre. Tomorrow, Berners-Lee believes that "it will give individuals, developers, and businesses entirely new ways to design, develop, and find innovative, reliable, and beneficial applications and services."

This is not an idealistic open source project, which hopes to change the internet. John Bruce, former CEO of Resilient Systems, is now the CEO of Inrupt, the company that supports Solid, wrote on his blog: "Solid as an open-source project had been facing normal challenges: looking for The solution was to create a company capable of providing the resources, processes and appropriate skills to make the promise of Solid a reality. "His goal is to make of Solid an integral part of the "fabric of the web"

Berners-Lee has transformed the world once. Maybe it will do it again.

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