Breaking News: Tim Berners-Lee threatens to confiscate Internet

"And this is why you're not allowed nice things", said Tim Berners-Lee.

In a shock announcement made today the Computer Scientist Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, has threatened to confiscate the internet until you can all behave like grown-ups.

"It hurts me as much as it hurts you", announced Berners-Lee in an open letter to news agencies around the world, "But I'm frankly a little disappointed in you all. I warned you and you didn't listen, so I'm taking the internet away. And you can maybe have it back at home time - if you're sorry. Failing that it'll be a letter home to your parents."

"I didn't use my genius brain to come up with the idea of the World Wide Web nearly a quarter of a century ago", he continues, "so you could mess about with it. It was designed as a repository for all human knowledge - a resource that would act to improve worldwide communication and benefit mankind as a whole. And for a little while it did."

"I can even cope with the fact that the internet is around 80% pornography", he states, "Because that still gave you plenty of space to play with. But what did you do with it? emailing your friends with jokes that they'd heard 15 years ago, warnings about computer viruses that didn't even make any sense, let alone be able to exist. And don't get me started on Social-fucking-networking. A potentially incredible tool which you fill with pages of utter tosh - telling any fucker who'll listen that you don't like war or cancer, warning people about things that don't even bloody exist, page after bastard page after bastard page of pictures of fucking snow. Jesus wept."

"And in the name of all that is holy, stop typing "1" in the comments of pictures that ask you to do so. It's not going to do anything - and I should know, I invented the fucking internet."

"And I've sat here, and I've watched. And today of all days - President Barack Obama being inaugurated for a second term on Martin Luther King Day - there are fuckers posting that he swore his oath of allegiance on the Qur'an. And these are the self-same fuckers who have such poor skills of reasoning and literacy that they couldn't distinguish between the Qur'an and a copy of Spot goes to the fucking vet, for Sport Billys Cocks sake."

"So, that's it. I'm switching the whole bloody thing off until you say you're sorry. And sound like you mean it. I've been on bloody telly with Dizzee Rascal you know. I don't have to take this kind of shit."

"Bastards."