Should the interent be regulated?

As you have clearly specified, Internet should be regulated, but to some extent. The regulation should be in such a way that the individual should be protected against criminal and illegal activities, at the same time... the basic freedom should be granted to all... Thats it.. Simply, If everyone is good, then no-one needs to go for protection... But this is hard to achieve...

The net should have been regulated from the very beginning.From political,safety,social points of view,the net has done a lot of harm.Too much of anything is bad,more so FREEDOM to people,specially for those above !3(!),who cannot even think properly,and have to be guided,in almost everythig.The only thing is that girls get matured,at that age(but lack the capacity to think and take decisions) and hence this age limit should be raised,first. Also many cultures access the net,and their views are diferent.This has and will result them to be shattered. The net along with IT and satellite cable TV,in short speedy communication, has indeed turned the wolrd topsy turvy.

No, it is not needed to be regulated, it is all up to you how to use it, whether in a good way or in a bad way. There are many profits with internet and one of them is " Online Earnings " which is very excellent. Some countries ban the internet as they don't want anything bad of their country, but there has to be " freedom of expression " to all of their own feelings.

For your information... The Internet is already very regulated and the governments are slowly taking it over. It was totally free when I first went on it in 1997. Today, every forum and every website has to abide by regulations enforced by the law of the country. The government put the responsability on the shoulders of the hosting service. The hosting service put it on the shoulders of the guy owning the website. So, if you are running a forum or a site like myLot... you have to monitor your users and be very strict with them about what they can say and not say. There are not such thing as innocent people. There are only stupid un-educated people who refuse to learn and blame everyone else for their mistakes. As for the bullies... simply ignore them and they will go away. Why should you let some idiot upset you? If you want to come on the Internet to be part of the world... you better learn to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly... Or do you want the Internet for all the nice people only? That would not be very democratic... What do you think?

the internet should NOT be regulated in my opinion it should be upto the user to regulate it themselves by using the correct internet security settings. It would be impossible to regulate the entire internet its not just as simple as saying "right lets put some rules on here" for example if you let your children use the internet you should adjust your internet settings so that they are not likely to access something they shouldnt see or something you dont want them to see. people have computers and an internet connection its down to the user to learn how to use it correctly, your internet provider isnt going to teach you how to use a computer nor is the shop where you bought it this would cost a lot of money and resources. there are many sinple computer courses people can do in order to control internet usage and content that goes to your computer theyre not hard most computer usage is common sense, you shouldnt be scared to fail you should put your mind to it and you can achieve anything.

No, I don't believe that it should be regulated. We all need to be responsible for ourselves in deciding what information we should come into contact with (and what our children come into contact with). My biggest worry with regulation is where would you draw the line? Who would make the decisions as to what it acceptable viewing? Politicians? I'm sorry... I don't trust them enough to be in control of what we can and cannot read.

the internet has pros and cons, only we can try and reduce the cons so that small kids are protected from the virtual world

Please at least on net let us be global, if regulations come up then for reaching one website to another we will need visa. Yes protection from hackers is required, for that something should be thought.

I think that we are the web and what we want to write we can write. The web is free and i like it because it's free. And, who should control it?

regulation might help in some extent to pretty up the net but the bigger problem is how would the regulation be implemented. the internet covers a virtual territory that encompasses the whole world so policing any violation would be very hard. it would require international cooperation and what makes it even harder is the virtual nature of the internet

I remember a couple years ago when rumors were flying that the US post office wanted to regulate the internet some by demanding a federal tax be put on emails because it was costing them business and people had to pay for stamps...Post office denied it, I think. Anyway it never came to anything. The most intelligent case I've ever seen made is for not regulating the internet at all and it is John Pery Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". You can read it at "http://www.eff.org/~barlow" (Sorry, not sure if I'm allowed to put in a link yet)...It's probably still considered the final word and definitely worth reading if you haven't already.

I do not like the idea of the internet being regulated by the government at all. It just seems like there would be so many laws that would be to the detriment of free speech and it would limit what is out there to experience. I do believe in regulating what children do on the internet, but that is up to each individual parent and not for the government to decide, either.

It is impossible to limit the internet and to bring in the censorship. To do so there should be a very strict law made by all the countries of the world which would be really take care of. It would be also the end of the era of free web hosting, free blogs etc. cause until you are able to do as amny blog as you wish or webpages you can post anything you want on them. And tracing users who violoate rules is sometimes very difficult since there are internet cafe , proxies etc. So i dont think that in the future there will be any aprticular limitation of the internet :)

society has its fair share of both good and bad elements...u cant stop anyone from viewing nasty sites but ya by certain laws we can only control the situation a bit,but cant put a full stop it.

I don't think it should be regulated. No matter what new invention or innovation they come up with, there will always be people who will want to corrupt it, abuse it, and use it for negative purposes. With that in mind, the most that should be done is to do what is done for any other thing. Strive to prevent criminal activities by putting in safeguards. I think the real motivation for governments to want to regulate something is so they can control it and make tax dollars. That makes them sort of "legal" thieves, doesn't it?

all new inventions have plus and minus...we should first increase the plus and at the same time should not forget about the minus... it is in the hands of govt as you said to do the above process

Yes you are right the internet has great advantages to it but also the internet should be regulated as there are too many scams out there with other people trying to rip money off people and the same applies to hackers there should be no way that any hackers in the world should be able to get into anybodies computers this is just outrageous.

Well China has a regulated internet so i think it is possible to regulate the internet. if the government will dictate the regulation it is possible. In saudi arabia they have a system of regulation. anyway it is a matter of engineering system etc... I would like to react on the term freedom. Someone told about the freedom. Please don't speak of freedom if you dont know the meaning of it. What is freedom if you are abusing it? we all know that teh internet has so much abuse.

everyting in this world has a good and bad effect. internet is not out of them. internet has bad effects as well as it also has good effects. i think it is very much helpful for education purpose. a lot of good reference you can get from the web.

i found this discussion very useful.