What about just having w3c or some other group trademark some name
(say CertifiedHTML ) so that they could sue anyone who used that term
to describe their web page if it wasn't compliant with the standard?
People could then look for that mark (similar to looking for the
Verisign logo or similar when doing business over the web). No new
government regulation needed, with all its attendant corruption,
slowness, and heavy-handedness.

Sean


On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 11:26 PM, Peter <plpeter2006@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Vitaliy <spam <at> maksimov.org> writes:
>> I have plenty of experience with government-mandated standards (I was born,
>> and grew up in the former USSR). I prefer the chaotic capitalist way, where
>
> Ibidem, except I was born and raised in another (ex) Communist country in
> Eastern Europe as you know from offlist messages. And I also prefer the
> 'capitalist' way, but WITH technical standards everyone abides by in areas that
> affect the well-being and physical and financial health of the population,
> please. You have regulated car safety features, regulated house and installation
> codes, regulated power and appliances to go with it, regulated health
> practitioners, regulated medical drug, procedure and remedy testing and
> regulated roads and bridges, as well as regulated food quality and hygiene. Now
> the web affects all of the above, since it is used to access said standards and
> regulations, as well as for commerce with any and all of the items above, and it
> has a set of standards which are well-known, public and most honest developers
> respect.
>
> Why must the ones who deliberately do not respect the prevailing de facto public
> standard be encouraged to keep doing that ? Same thing for file formats and the
> like (and this goes back to why a college student can be frustrated enough to
> drop out because of her 'different' operating system).
>
> Common file and web formats SHOULD be governed by PUBLIC standards since they
> serve the PUBLIC, as in voters, democracy and all that. Non-public standard
> compliant materials MUST NOT be marked using marks that are reserved for public
> standards. For the same reason that calling chalk and sugar pills 'Aspirin' is
> illegal and dangerous, calling something that is not w3c compliant in a
> dangerous way 'html' and marking it 'text/html' should be illegal. Same for an
> 'accounting course' that is actually an 'm$ software only accounting course'
> should not be called an 'accounting course' only, because that is misleading for
> the student, imho (ok, this is a little far fetched, but, after all, I am just
> ranting). </rant>
>
> Peter
>
>
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