The British computer scientist who invented the world wide web called for an internet bill of rights on Saturday, claiming that internet freedom is being threatened by governments and corporations who wish to control the web.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web 25 years ago, gave it away for free, and now he's speaking out in an effort to save the very same invention that he says he never expected would become so big.
"If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites you go to, then they have tremendous control over your life," Berners-Lee said at the Web We Want festival on the future of the internet in London, as reported by the Guardian.
Berners-Lee went on to describe how a government could conceivably block someone from going to the opposition's political pages as a method of maintaining power. "Suddenly the power to abuse the open internet has become so tempting both for government and big companies," he said.
As founder and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an organization that works to craft guidelines for the development of the internet, Berners-Lee took it upon himself to call for an "internet version of the Magna Carta," which was the English charter credited with guaranteeing basic rights and freedoms, reported the Guardian.
"There have been lots of times that it has been abused, so now the Magna Carta is about saying...I want a web where I'm not spied on, where there's no censorship," said Berners-Lee.
After Snowden revealed the scope of mass government spying of internet activity, privacy and security movements were launched back into the public spotlight, promoting individuals like Berners-Lee to call for drastic changes in the rules of the net.
As the Guardian reported, a recent ruling by the European Union could be setting precedence for internet censorship. The ruling, referred to as the "right to be forgotten," allows individuals to ask search engines like Google to remove personal information about them from their search results.
