WWW creator speaks against usage tracking

by Tim Conneally

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World-Wide Web (the concept of hypertext documents being readable through a browser) recently spoke to the BBC voicing his opposition to ISPs tracking user habits.

Berners-Lee thinks each user's browser history is property of the user, and if a company wants to use that information in the creation of, for example, customized advertisements, that needs to be negotiated with the user directly. The user needs to understand how others can benefit from his information.

His views on the state of the Web have long had an air of educated apprehension. In 2006, he told BBC News radio program Today, that the international community was coming closer to "certain undemocratic things" emerging and "misinformation will start spreading over the Web."

A growing source of misinformation, he said, are blogs. "You're taking suggestions of what you read from people who you've probably never met, but whom you trust."

Though Sir Tim is infinitely quotable on Web-related subjects, his insight into the transparency of the everyday user's browsing should hit particularly close to home for many.

In England, controversy has arisen over major ISP's potential adoption of a service called Phorm, which creates user-customized ads based upon their browsing history. This technique was the same that raised the ire of advocacy groups when the DoubleClick-Google merger was in its initial stages.

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