by Matt Behnken

Created on: December 10, 2010   Last Updated: December 12, 2010

What makes the Internet great? Answering this question may seem difficult at first but after careful consideration one may have a few ideas. It could be the billions of dollars in revenue that stimulate countless economies that would otherwise be non-existent if it weren't for the internet. Also, it could be the vast pornography industry that has emerged through the internet. Maybe before considering what is so great, the downsides might make things clearer.

Now that the world is tuned-in to an interconnected network, news travels fast, especially bad news. Not only bad news but terrorist groups looking to take credit for bad news. All made possible by the ever growing internet. Possibly the pornography industry should be placed in the downsides column. The internet has also created a new type of criminal, a cyber criminal. With the jails already full, there probably isn't much room for new types of criminals. All this talk isn't bringing us any closer to deregulating the internet. 

The most important thing to consider is the internet is too vast to regulate. Governments teamed up with ISPs may try but ultimately they cannot. Sure they may shut down wikileaks but within a week a new "mirror" site is up and running. The internet has too many stakeholders and cannot be successfully regulated. The only thing regulation is going to do is make the internet worse. For example, VISA was recently attacked by hackers who claim to be fighting for wikileaks to be allowed to broadcast on their original web address www.wikileaks.com instead of the ever changing sites to keep the website up and running.

Finally, it's about free speech. If it is what we truly believe then we must be the example for the world. If you regulate the internet then you are regulating free speech and that is a violation of the first amendment. As an American citizen you can say whatever you want barring slander and lies. The internet however allows truths to surface. The belief that the internet will save the world is no longer a far off dream. Imagine twitter-vision (actual app), an online application that shows the most recent tweets (new messages) around the world in a bubble over the country of the person who wrote it. Imagine a person in Afghanistan tweeting "bombs are dropping all around me, my sister was just killed." While the rest of the world can no longer view this death as a statistic. No more government secrets. The less things the government regulates the better. Like helium the truth rises to the top. Keep the internet free!

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