Web inventor says governments stifling net freedom (Update)

The inventor of the World Wide Web warned Friday that government control is limiting the possibilities of the Internet, as dozens of countries and businesses signed a cybersecurity deal at the Davos forum.

The comments by Tim Berners-Lee at the World Economic Forum plugged into a wider debate among the delegates on the future of the Internet, particularly how to balance openness with privacy and security.

While Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer told the forum there was a “trade off” between privacy and the benefits of increasingly personalised services offered by Internet giants, the network’s founding father took up the ethical issues at stake.

“The dream is of a more open web,” Berners-Lee told the gathering in the Swiss ski resort, citing social media as a way of breaking down barriers.
But he said the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old US Internet activist who faced charges of illegally copying and distributing millions of academic articles, highlighted government efforts to police the Internet.

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