THE FUTURE of the World Wide Web relies on its regulation, its inventor told business people at the Yorkshire International Business Convention today.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web while working as a physicist at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989, warned that new institutions were needed to prevent spying and blocking of the web and to regulate illegal activity shielded by the anonymity of the web.

"When things get bigger, you have to introduce rules you wouldn't have thought of before," he said.

"It's just the law, common or garden law. If something is illegal, it's illegal if you do it on the Internet.

"We have to build a society which will decide and which will draw a line, and a court that will decide where that line is and occasionally adjust that line."

The web must also remain open to all of humanity, he said, and large computer companies have had to change their mindsets about charging royalties for the greater good.

He said that if CERN had tried to charge royalties for the web, it would not be here and there would not be just one web, with access to everything.

The event, which took place simultaneously in Harrogate and Bridlington, with speakers helicoptered between the venues, also raised almost £10,000 for Henshaws College for the Blind.

Mike Firth, organiser of the event, said they hoped to get Arnold Schwarzenegger as a speaker at next year's event.