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(CNN Business) - Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the global web, warned of a "digital dystopia" if the world does not address threats such as misinformation and invasion of privacy.
Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist who submitted his first proposal for an "information management system" in 1989, reiterated his call for a Web Contract, urging governments, businesses and individuals to safeguard it by implementing of nine key principles.
These proposals, made by the Berners-Lee World Wide Web Foundation, aim to stop the rise of online threats.
Before a conference in Berlin on Monday, Berners-Lee tweeted a warning about the risks to face.
He wrote: "If we do not defend the free and open web, we run the risk of a digital dystopia of entrenched inequality and abuse of rights."
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In a previous statement on the website of its foundation, he called the web “one of the determining opportunities of our time”, and added that collaboration measures must be taken “to prevent the web from being misused by those who want to exploit , divide and undermine. ”
By Sunday, the Web Contract had received support from more than 160 companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and Google, according to the press release.
In addition to thousands of people, the governments of France, Germany and Ghana were also signatories of their founding principles.
The contract establishes three sets of principles that governments, companies and individuals must comply with, respectively.
Among other suggestions, governments should ensure that everyone has access to the Internet and that people's fundamental rights to privacy and data online must be respected and protected, while companies must respect and support human rights.
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On an individual level, people must have the power to be accountable and build strong online communities and defend excluded groups when they are being attacked or mistreated.
Earlier this year, Berners-Lee published an open letter to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the web, asking the world to “fight” for a website that drives quality, opportunity and creativity.
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