Last year, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee called on governments, citizens, and industry to create a set of guiding principles to face the worst abuses of web—manipulation, election hacking, disinformation, fomenting violence—and restore the promise of the web as a global force for good. This week, his Contract for the Web was unveiled. The contract documents nine core principles for a better internet future, including affordable internet access, privacy enforcement, and freedom from censorship.
- I Invented the World Wide Web. Here’s How We Can Fix It [New York Times] “The Contract for the Web is a global plan of action created over the past year by activists, academics, companies, governments and citizens from across the world to make sure our online world is safe, empowering and genuinely for everyone.”
- This is Tim Berners-Lee’s grand plan to save the web from digital dystopia [ZDNet] “The contract says, for example, that governments should ensure everyone can connect to the internet, and should keep all of the internet available all the time, while tech companies are urged to make the internet affordable and accessible to everyone, and respect consumers’ privacy and personal data.”
- Tim Berners-Lee unveils global plan to save the web [Guardian] “We could end up with a digital dystopia if we don’t turn things around. It’s not that we need a 10-year plan for the web, we need to turn the web around now.”
- What’s a Digital Bill of Rights Without Enforcement? [Wired] “It can be hard to take the commitments of companies like Facebook and Google to respect user privacy at face value given the companies’ zeal for slurping up enormous amounts of user data.”
From the Ohio Web Library:
- Gaines, Ann Graham. “Tim Berners-Lee & the Development of the World Wide Web.” Tim Berners-Lee & the Development of the World Wide Web, Jan. 2002, p. 4.
- Brooker, Katrina. “‘I Was Devastated’: The Man Who Invented the World Wide Web Has Some Regrets.” Vanity Fair, vol. 60, no. 8, Aug. 2018, p. 62.
- Deibert, Ronald, and Rafal Rohozinski. “International Organization and Cybergovernance.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. November 30, 2017. Oxford University Press.
