Paris Call: A Missed Call or a Great Opportunity?

Recently, the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, has launched a global campaign to save the web from the destructive effects of abuse and discrimination, political manipulation, and other threats that plague the online world.

In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon, he called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to protect people’s rights and freedoms on the internet.

“Humanity connected by technology on the web is functioning in a dystopian way. We have online abuse, prejudice, bias, polarisation, fake news, there are lots of ways in which it is broken. This is a contract to make the web one which serves humanity, science, knowledge and democracy,” he said.

Under the principles laid out in the document, which Berners-Lee calls a “Magna Carta for the web,” governments must ensure that its citizens have access to all of the internet, all of the time, and that their privacy is respected so they can be online “freely, safely and without fear.”

This call by Tim Berners-Lee for an “Internet of Trust” comes in line with The Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace released by President Macron on November 12th, 2018, at the UNESCO Internet Governance Forum in Paris. The Paris Call, as it became known, outlines a commitment to end “malicious cyber activities in peacetime.” As it is stated in the document:

“Cyberspace, which is becoming increasingly central to our lives, is a place of opportunity, but also of new threats. The growth in cybercrime and malicious activity can also endanger both our private data and certain critical infrastructures. In order to respect people’s rights and protect them online as they do in the physical world, States must work together, but (Read more...)