Copyright 1998 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse

April 15, 1998 Australia-internet 09:12 GMT

SECTION: International news

HEADLINE:
World Wide Web inventor concerned at privacy implications
DATELINE: BRISBANE, Australia, April 15

BODY: The man who invented the World Wide Web warned Wednesday that the growing power of the internet posed a serious threat to personal privacy.

"I am very concerned about the privacy aspects of the use of the Web at the moment," Tim Berners-Lee told the seventh international World Wide Web

conference here. "We should always be aware as information tools become more powerful, then we have to be extra careful about how they are used."

Lee who founded the Web in 1989 as a medium for global information sharing, said the international World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was devoting its energies to the topic.

W3C was currently working on a Platform for Privacy Preference (P3P) which would allow Web users to dictate how much, if any, information was collected by Internet providers about what sites they visited, what purchases they made and other Web habits.

With more than one billion people now using the Net, the conference was told its growth also posed significant international questions relating to copyright, censorship and taxation.

Australian Governor-General Sir William Deane said the issues would need to be addressed either by the industry or by governments.

"It is undoubtedly the case that the borderless electronic and universal nature of the Internet is not only beginning to change the nature of our transactions and delivery of services, it has many national and international legal implications," he said.

"Questions, for example, of contract, of defamation, of harassment, of copyright protection and of where responsibility lies in cases such as where an employer provides staff with e-mail and Internet facilities, are assuming some importance."

Deane also cited examples of "cyber-terrorism", the ready availability of information on how to manufacture weapons, and widespread pornography as other issues that needed to be addressed.

"While national and international legislation is needed to deal with criminal content on the Internet, a degree of consensus is emerging in many parts of the world through industry self-regulation, using codes of conduct, hotlines and labeling schemes," he said.

But Berners-Lee said he frowned on people or governments who sought to regulate or censor the Internet, saying Web technology tried not to force a particular policy or view on its users.

He said however he did not want to dictate its future direction.

"The fundamental thing about the Web is that it's supposed to be a universal medium. So anything you can think of doing on the Web you should be able to do."

Despite privacy concerns, he said the Web would become a much more creative and usable tool over the next few years.

He predicted the development of Web browsers that would apply human-style reasoning to search for and provide more relevant information to users.

Berners-Lee was Wednesday awarded an honorary doctorate by a Queensland university for "his work in opening up computer-based communications and bringing the world into education centres in regional Australia."

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LOAD-DATE: April 15, 1998