W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee Participates at White House Administration's Electronic Commerce Initiative

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President Clinton Announces Framework for Global Electronic Commerce

 

WASHINGTON, DC, USA -- July 1, 1997 -- Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C and inventor of the World Wide Web, was invited to meet with President Clinton, government officials and other technology leaders at the White House for the Administration's announcement of a nine-point framework to spur electronic commerce around the world.

Principles of the framework include the recognition of the uniqueness of the Internet, minimal government restrictions, and the promotion of a predictable and consistent legal environment for electronic commerce. Berners-Lee stated that, "these principles are akin to our own philosophy in promoting the growth of the Web across the world." Issues addressed in the framework include online payment, intellectual property protection, security, privacy, content control and standards development. While there is not complete agreement from the participant's on all of the framework's proposals there was a definite synergy between issues raised by the framework and W3C activity. "Our activities reflect the importance of trust and user confidence on the Web," said Jim Miller, W3C Technology and Society Domain Leader.

The W3C DSig project enables one to make statements online in a way that is verifiable and tamper-proof. The long standing PICS activity was an alternative model to the Communication Decency Act (recently struck down by the US Supreme Court) and encouraged decentralized parental empowerment when addressing children's access to potentially offensive material. Recently, the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3) project was demonstrated before the FTC as a way to allow users to be easily and automatically informed of a site's practices. "We are working towards a global, interoperable, and user empowered vision of the Web and are glad to see the US administration on the same path," said Berners-Lee.

More information regarding W3C's activities can be found at http://www.w3.org/

 

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