The World Wide Web Consortium is to develop standards to enable direct peer-to-peer communications between browsers, without the need to go through centralised servers.

The standards could make it more difficult for repressive government action against web communications, according to members of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working group assigned to developing the standards. The group aims to define APIs that will allow browsers to communicate using audio, video and “supplementary” real-time communications, W3C said on Thursday.

“W3C today launched a new Web Real-Time Communications Working Group to define client-side APIs to enable real-time communications in web browsers,” the W3C said.

The APIs should allow applications that can be run inside a browser without extra downloads or plug-ins. The APIs will be programming-language agnostic, a W3C spokesman told ZDNet UK on Friday.

Browser company Opera is a member of the working group, Opera chief standards officer Charles McCathieNevile told ZDNet UK on Friday. Opera platform architect Rich Tibbett is the main contact with the group.