Who said internets

He was and is a strong proponent of extending access to the network to schools and libraries. Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation. No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large.

The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world.

In May , the organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements honored Al Gore with a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet. Fact Checks. Questionable Quotes. Vice-President Al Gore claimed during a news interview that he "invented" the Internet. False About this rating. Top Fact Checks. Monitor Movie Guide. Monitor Daily. Photos of the Week.

Here is how the exchange went: Blitzer: "Why should Democrats , looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley? You've read of free articles. Subscribe to continue. Mark Sappenfield. Our work isn't possible without your support. Digital subscription includes: Unlimited access to CSMonitor.

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We logged you out. Log in again Return to the free version of the site. Subscribe now Return to the free version of the site. The flow of information over this system would be largely uncontrolled, with no distinction between true or false, good or evil. That ideology grew into a set of business practices, codified by Section of the Communications Decency Act. There were still crimes you could commit with just information particularly content piracy , but meant you could only blame the source of the information, not the networks that delivered it.

Operators eventually developed authentication and filtering methods to deal with basic problems like spam , but it was an uphill fight, and fighting speech with speech was always the preferred option. Persistent, targeted harassment has made that logic harder to defend, and the move to closed platforms like Facebook has scrambled the conversation even further. Abuse is everywhere, and left to their own devices, malicious users can easily make platforms unusable.

Even committed speech advocates like Jillian C. York see the end goal as consistent principles and accountable systems on platforms, rather than a lack of moderation itself.

And while there are lots of complaints about moderation on Facebook and Twitter, almost no one seems to think the companies should be taking a lighter touch. The internet is still catching up to that logic. After white nationalists rallied in Charlottesville this August, web providers realized they, too, were in the moderation business, dropping neo-Nazi sites in response to widespread public pressure.

With new legislation poised to chip away even more at Section , the problem is only getting more complex. In the early days, it seemed like online anonymity had opened the door to a new kind of identity. Not only could you be a different person online, but you could be more than one person at once, exploring your own personhood from multiple angles. In a TED Talk , 4chan founder Christopher Poole said the key was to think of identity as a diamond, not a mirror. For a long time, hardly anyone knew who you were online.

Handles replaced real names, and though your service provider certainly knew who you were, massive swaths of the internet Facebook, e-commerce, etc. Prosecutions for online crime were still relatively rare, stymied by inexperience and jurisdictional issues. There was simply nothing tying you to a single, persistent identity. Now, nearly everything you do online happens under your name.

It started with Facebook, the most popular single product on the internet, which has enforced its real-name policy since the beginning.

Today, your Google searches, Netflix history, and any cloud-stored photos and text messages are all only a single link removed from your legal identity. As I type this, my browser is carrying auto-login tokens for at least five web services, each registered under my real name. If I were trying to maintain a secret identity online, any one of those tokens could give me away. Real names have helped close the gap between online and offline space, clearing space for new kinds of personal branding and online commerce that would have been impossible before.

At the same time, you can see the old system withering. Using web anonymity for any sustained purpose, like criticizing government officials or organizing political dissent, has become a losing bet. Four days after the rally in Charlottesville, the content distribution network Cloudflare publicly discontinued service to the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. The move came after months of escalating pressure from anti-racist activists, and after finally giving in, CEO Matthew Prince wrote a post explaining what made him so reluctant to drop the site.

An online presence has always required lots of partners a host, a domain registrar, a caching network , but for most of the history of the internet, no single player was powerful enough to pose a threat. Even if they did, most functions could be brought in-house without any significant reduction in service.