Inventor of Web calls for digital bill of rights

March 14, 2014 - The British inventor of the World Wide Web wants a digital bill of rights to protect the civil rights of Internet users. Speaking on Wednesday, March 12, the 25th anniversary of his creation, Tim Berners-Lee said he hopes to spark a global conversation about the need to defend principles that have made the Web successful. He told the Guardian newspaper that the Web was under increasing attack by governments and corporate interests. He said the system needed an online Magna Carta, or foundation of rules, to protect its openness and neutrality. Berners-Lee said in a statement Wednesday he believes the Web should be ``accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans.''

March 12, 1989 is regarded as the birth of the World Wide Web or internet, when Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist and former employee of European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) wrote a proposal for an Internet-based hypertext system. Turning that idea into working reality didn’t happen until October 1990. Then, by using Steve Jobs' NeXT machines, he created the first Web server: info.cern.ch. A version of this lives on to this very day.