Web inventor says governments stifling net freedom

[zio_donnie]

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.

"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. "He downloaded a lot and so the secret service in the US decided that he was a hacker. For them that isn't the term of great praise that it is when I use it. For me a hacker is someone who is creative and does wonderful things," he said.

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-web-inventor-stifling-net-freedom.html