On March 12th, 2014, Sir Tim Berners Lee used the 25th anniversary of his proposal for the World Wide Web as a call for an open internet. Sir Berners Lee created the the World Wide Web in 1990 and it went online in 1991. The Internet, which the World Wide Web is a part of, was created in 1962, although most sources lists it's creation in 1969.
Sir Berners Lee's message seemed to go in two different directions as he called for both "net neutrality," and DRM or Digital Rights Management. He also sees a need for government monitoring in an effort to prevent crime. He wants the Web to stay a decentralized, global network as opposed to different countries pulling away and creating their own intranets.
Sir Berners Lee wants the US to give up it's control of IANA (internet assigned numbers authority), which is the database for international domain names. He also wants the the US to revise the role of copyright laws and software patents. His view is that such laws only serve to protect the rights of movie producers as opposed to those of intellectual property holders.
Sir Berners Lee also expressed several needs that he feels should be addressed as part of the future of the Web. He believes that we need to find a way to connect the nearly 2/3 of the population that can not yet connect to the internet. He believes that there should be rules in place to govern the collection of personal data. And finally, he believes that a high performance architecture that can run on any device should be created.
I guess, and this is only my opinion, that the World Wide Web is very much a work in progress. As Sir Berners Lee himself states the Web has the potential to become a reflection of the real world. The question in my mind, as we go forward, is whether it is really possible to strike that very delicate balance of openness and monitoring that Sir Berners Lee is suggesting
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