Inventor of the Internet warns U.S. about tactics
Today, the inventor of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, has come forward cautioning the U.S. over its push to topple Net Neutrality.
From The BBC ...
Web inventor warns of 'dark' netNow that you know, you should sign the Save the Internet petition. While you're there, tell your Federal Representatives what you expect. We must not allow the telecoms to dominate the people's lines of communication.
The web should remain neutral and resist attempts to fragment it into different services, web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has said.
Tim Berners-Lee was knighted in the UK for his inventionRecent attempts in the US to try to charge for different levels of online access web were not "part of the internet model," he said in Edinburgh.
He warned that if the US decided to go ahead with a two-tier internet, the network would enter "a dark period".
Sir Tim was speaking at the start of a conference on the future of the web.
"What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web," he said.
"Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring."
An equal net
The British scientist developed the web in 1989 as an academic tool to allow scientists to share data. Since then it has exploded into every area of life.
However, as it has grown, there have been increasingly diverse opinions on how it should evolve.
The World Wide Web Consortium, of which Sir Tim is the director, believes in an open model.
This is based on the concept of network neutrality, where everyone has the same level of access to the web and that all data moving around the web is treated equally.
This view is backed by companies like Microsoft and Google, who have called for legislation to be introduced to guarantee net neutrality.
The first steps towards this were taken last week when members of the US House of Representatives introduced a net neutrality bill.
It is an affront to our very democracy, and they know it.
