The British inventor of the World Wide Web wants a digital bill of rights to protect Internet users from surveillance.
Speaking on the 25th anniversary of his creation, Tim Berners-Lee says he hopes to spark a global conversation about the need to defend principles that have made the Web successful.
He told the Guardian newspaper that the Web was under increasing attack by governments and corporate interests. He said the system needed an online Magna Carta, or foundation of rules, to protect its openness and neutrality.
Berners-Lee said in a statement Wednesday he believes the Web should be “accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans.”
(AP)
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One Response
1. Al Gore didn’t invent the web???
2. The WWW was developed by many people. Berners-Lee was involved as an employee of CERN. If a single player on a baseball team claims to have won the world series, ignoring the rest of the team, we would judge him poorly for making or such claim, and believing it to be true.
3. A “charter” of rights can only be granted by someone in control. There is no “king” who owns the web. Presumably all the nation states could agree to refrain from an act, but it would be as enforceable as all the other treaties going back over a century by which all the nations promised to play nice with each other.