UKC

Following on from a long car trip with the kids .....if Tim Berners lee had come up with a way of charging  a very very small amount  for each time somebody accessed the internet  ( say a thousandth of a penny ) how rich would he be ?

As rich as Google I'd imagine. Well actually CERN would be as he was working there when he invented it. 

Actually it's an interesting question because the internet wouldn't be the internet as it turned out had he attempted this. It'd be much more controlled and fragmented for a start.

It was built into the web protocol but nobody worked out how to implement it 

402 Payment Required status 

But Tim Berners Lee didn't invent the Internet, some of us were using it years before he invented the World Wide Web. But even if his payment was restricted to accessing the WWW, I suspect he or Cern would be extremely wealthy, especially if it was a payment per page visited

Not very rich. Somebody would have reproduced something similar without the charge and that would have taken off. The way to try and profit would have been to patent the technology they developed, but CERN and TBL made a conscious decision not to.

I pay for all my internet access one way or another. I expect it was always envisaged that it would be the ISPs that make some money, as they invest in the infrastructure.

The thing that people have always shouted for is not it being free (of charge) but more about net neutrality - specifically, that 1GB sent to/from Google costs the same as BBC News which also costs the same as Bob's independent website of whatever kind.

There is a big danger of losing that, and the effect on small business (for which the Internet opens up great opportunity) is potentially terrible.

Perhaps this should be broken down into the Advert Web (Clear Net (5% of users)) and the Real Web (Dark Net (95% of users)).

At least the Dark Net isn’t beholding to advertising revenue, and is more aligned to the real philosophy of free exchange of information (for better or worse).

Maybe the Dark Net should be free but the Advert Web should have a cost as it’s fundamentally a commercial tool. It’s like the difference between the BBC and ITV.