Sean Breheny <shb7 <at> cornell.edu> writes:
> What about just having w3c or some other group trademark some name
> (say CertifiedHTML ) so that they could sue anyone who used that term

I think that they can already sort of do that, since html is their 'trademark'
or the well-known public domain name of their standard, and 'misappropriating'
well-known names for other purposes is a no-no that can actually be enforced, I
think. But I am not lawyer. 

In any case, it is pretty clear that a web page can kill. The prevailing
standards for html rendering require 'unrecognized tags to be ignored by the
browser'. Now it would take about 3 minutes to code a page for, say, some
medication for an online pharmacy, with the best of intentions (but using a
'mainstream' HTML generator from a certain software and operating systems firm,
and without checking for compatibility with other browsers or with the standards
proper, the one from w3c) and mark up a stern warning about the deadly effect of
using that medication with something else using a bright red flashing popup
non-standard DHTML markup, perhaps requiring a proprietary platform-specific
plug-in, like ActiveSomething or another. It would look great when looked at
with a non-standard browser. But any browser not supporting the
non-standards-compliant extensions WOULD NOT SHOW THE WARNING, since it would
represent an 'unknown tag', and at best show a small warning about a popup or
something like that. A couple of days later a certain percentage of customers
who would buy the medication from that outlet and also use the other item that
was warned against could start ending up in hospital or worse. and this is just
a lame example I made up for the occasion, it could be potentially much worse.

Similar things can be said about user manuals available only in certain closed
document formats, building and installation code as above, safety instructions
for chemicals and products as above, etc etc. The accuracy and accessibility of
information on the internet has simply become too important to be left to be
'regulated' by whichever 800 billion dollar gorilla happens to be 'ruling' the
field this week, or month or whatever. </rant>

Peter


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