On November 25, 2019, Berners-Lee launched the Contract for the Web - a global action plan with 76 clauses and 9 core principles for how governments, companies, and citizens should protect the open web. Over 160 organizations signed including Microsoft, Google, EFF, DuckDuckGo, and Reddit, as well as governments of Germany, France, and Ghana. It has been compared to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the digital age.
In 2018, Berners-Lee took a sabbatical from MIT to co-found Inrupt and commercialize the Solid Protocol - a technical architecture giving individuals control over their data through decentralized 'Pods'. The project directly addresses surveillance capitalism by providing an alternative where users, not platforms, own their data. Partners now include NHS, BBC, NatWest, and governments of Flanders, Sweden, and others.
Berners-Lee has been a consistent critic of Big Tech's business models. In 2018, he suggested Facebook and Google 'may have to be broken up' due to their market dominance. In 2025, he criticized the attention economy: 'The web is being hijacked from an intention economy to an attention economy. The user has been reduced to a consumable product for the advertiser.' He has also stated: 'When you make an addictive algorithm you know what you're doing.'
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On July 7, 2017, as W3C Director, Berners-Lee approved the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) standard enabling DRM in web browsers despite unprecedented opposition from the EFF, Free Software Foundation, security researchers, and a UN official. Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and the MPAA supported the standard. The EFF resigned from W3C in September 2017 - the first member resignation in protest - calling it a betrayal of open web principles that creates 'legally unauditable attack-surface' in browsers.
Berners-Lee was a leading voice against the FCC's 2017 net neutrality repeal. He testified before the US House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, signed open letters to Congress with Vint Cerf and Steve Wozniak, and met with FCC leadership. He argued net neutrality enabled him to invent the web without permission and that its repeal would force innovators to ask ISPs for permission.
Following the Snowden revelations in 2013, Berners-Lee publicly condemned mass surveillance programs by the NSA and GCHQ, calling them 'appalling and foolish.' He called for a 'full and frank debate' about government surveillance and the balance between security and privacy.
In May 2003, W3C adopted a formal Patent Policy ensuring that web standards could be implemented on a royalty-free basis. Berners-Lee stated: 'W3C Members who joined in building the Web in its first decade made the business decision that they, and the entire world, would benefit most by contributing to standards that could be implemented ubiquitously, without royalty payments.'
In October 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT to develop and maintain open web standards. The organization's royalty-free patent policy ensures all W3C standards (HTML, CSS, accessibility guidelines) can be freely implemented by anyone, preventing fragmentation of the web.
On April 30, 1993, CERN released the World Wide Web software into the public domain, with Berners-Lee's advocacy ensuring no patents or royalties would restrict its use. This decision enabled the web's explosive growth - today half the world's population is online with nearly 2 billion websites. Berners-Lee could have made billions licensing the technology but chose to give it away freely.
On December 20, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee published the first website from CERN, making it available to the Internet. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990, and refined his specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML as Web technology spread.
On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted a memorandum titled 'Information Management: A Proposal' to CERN management. His manager Mike Sendall called it 'vague, but exciting' and approved further development. This proposal outlined the vision for what would become the World Wide Web.