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Comment by nzmsv | Hacker News Reader

Typical sensationalist journalism. This murky dark web, the only use of which is kiddie porn, is thousands of times bigger than the "good" Internet. The same journalists think "hacker" is a dirty word.

See Ian Clarke's response: http://blog.locut.us/main/2009/11/25/the-guardian-writes-abo...

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The article doesn't take that tack; the subtitle does. I'd blame the sub-editor (probably also responsible for the [sic] next to the US spelling of pedophile) rather than the author.

That's true. The article is more of an overview of the stuff online most people aren't aware of.

It just seems unfair to dump private intranets along with projects like Freenet and Tor together with RBN botnets, under the "dark web" designation.

What's wrong with marking a mis-spelling?

It's not a misspelling in American English. It's like saying "No hablo[sic] espanol[sic]".

However, as its an UK English newspaper, it's likely appropraite. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

No, because the source language isn't in UK English. If it was, then sure.

Except you would say "no hablo espanol" with italics to indicate use of a foreign language (and you'd use the correct accents!).

Also how do you know which English variant that copy of the work is in? Emphasising the apparent mis-spelling may also be a way of highlighting that the source material is North American.

I thought by the "dark web that is 500 times bigger than the internet" he was really referring to all the data the search engines can't get to. That would include most normal web sites with passwords. Just because he called it "dark" does not imply that all of it is supposed to be criminal stuff. I might have read it wrong, though.

The quote is "deep web" not "dark web".

The article is a confusing mish-mash of several completely different things.

It probably includes the petabytes of data CERN generates too. You can get them over JANET via FTP, does that count?

I had never heard of JANET: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JANET

"I know many of the best security people in the world, and none of them work for the British police." - Ian Clarke

Nevertheless he seems to think that - all things considered - it was a pretty good article.

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