Two Internet Policy Groups Strengthen Ties

Two organizations that help set technical policy for the Internet are strengthening their ties. The Internet Society, known as ISOC, plans to donate $2.5 million over three years to the World Wide Web Consortium, known as W3C, to aid its development efforts, the groups said. The groups also plan to work more closely together. Both organizations promote what they call open technical standards, which are free for use by anyone, as opposed to technology developed and controlled by individual companies. For example, the W3C—which oversees the programming language used by Web sites—says its efforts help prevent sites from working on only one Web browser. The W3C is also working now to develop standards for sharing video files over the Web.