Web inventor has an ambitious plan to take back the net

The inventor of the World Wide Web is releasing an ambitious rule book for online governance — a bill of rights and obligations for the internet.

It is designed to counteract the spread of such anti-democratic ills as misinformation, mass surveillance and censorship.

Called “Contract for the Web,” the charter that Tim Berners-Lee unveiled Monday, represents a year’s work by the World Wide Web Foundation where Berners-Lee is a founding director. It seeks commitments from governments and industry to make and keep knowledge freely available — a digital policy agenda true to the design vision of the 30-year-old web.

The contract is non-binding, however. Partners in the endeavour include Google and Facebook, whose data-collecting business models and sensation-rewarding algorithms have been blamed for exacerbating online toxicity.