Question

Discuss your response to these questions.

• Do you think the Internet should be regulated?

• If so why and by whom?

• What aspect of the Internet should be regulated?

• What are the implications of regulating / not regulating?

For the first time, organizations can apply for an Internet address all their own, marking the start of a new era in the growth of the Internet.

For example, .com and .org could be replaced by .starbucks or .newyork.

The expansion was planned by the one organization empowered to regulate the global Internet — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

Debate over the new policy has highlighted the key issue of who, if anyone, should control the Internet.

Anyone who wants his own Internet suffix — his own domain name — will have to pay $185,000 for it. This development could be costly even for those who just want to prevent someone else from grabbing their name. Not surprisingly, ICANN has been criticized for pushing the change.

Some members of Congress actually wanted the Department of Commerce to order ICANN to delay the domain name expansion. The Internet was a U.S. creation, and ICANN was chartered by the Commerce Department.

But there is now a big international pushback over U.S. domination of the Internet, and a growing move to diminish the U.S. role.

By urging the Commerce Department to give ICANN orders, members of Congress may inadvertently highlight that effort. Kieren McCarthy, an analyst of Internet governance issues, sums up the concern about the congressional pressure this way: "It's making the Internet look exactly like the rest of the world fears that it is, which is a U.S.-controlled entity," he says.

In fact, nearly half of all Internet users today are in Asia.

This week, Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's chief executive officer, said the domain expansion will reflect the way the Internet is destined to change in the coming years.

"You're going to see more different languages in domain names, I would predict. And so it's going to look more like the world and less like one individual country. And I think that's a good thing," he said.

But ICANN's increasingly international focus may not be enough to satisfy governments that resent the U.S. role in Internet governance.

Those complaints are likely to come to a head this December, when the International Telecommunication Union — a U.N. agency — holds a meeting in Dubai to rewrite legally binding global treaties in such a way as to radically change how the Internet would be governed worldwide.

"It's extremely serious. It's fundamental," McCarthy says. "It's to the point where everyone knows that changes will be made at this U.N. meeting in December in Dubai, and now the effort is to limit the impact that those changes will have."

The move is led by China, Russia and India, all of which in one form or another favor putting the Internet under the supervision of the United Nations.

David Gross, who has represented the United States at other international telecommunications meetings, says U.N. supervision could jeopardize ICANN's current approach, under which a variety of groups oversee the Internet. It's the multistakeholder principle at work.

"Governments, the private sector, technical groups, nongovernmental organizations and others should all have a say in how the Internet should develop," Gross says.

That's how ICANN functions now. But if the Internet were brought under U.N. control, governments alone could control the Internet. Some would want to keep it free and open — but not all of them, Gross says.

"Other governments would like to see increased governmental control as a way of suppressing the free flow of information or innovation and changes that the Internet would bring," he says.

China and Russia, in particular, are proposing new restrictions on Internet activity, and those governments are big movers behind next December's U.N. conference on the Internet. They will be opposed by the United States.

Answer 1

• Internet regulation consists of mainly two categories: Censorship of data, and controlling aspects of the Internet. Most of the Internet regulation is imposed by the Government in an effort to protect the best interest of the general public and is concerned with some form of censorship.
• Internet is a major part of our lives and it has its positive and negative effects on people.Regulating the interet is debatable.If the government regulated the Internet, then it will cause major problems with wanting freedom. What I mean is that in order to get on websites that you frequently visit, you'll have to pay the government extra money in order to do so. Probably even more than once.So essentially, they'll put a tax on major websites like YouTube and Facebook.
• But to control cyber bullying expecially on these social media sites certain regulations are needed to control what people post and write on the interet and they harass people.This definitely requires controlling and the owners of these sites need to provide those regulations to reduce cyber crime.
• Having said that,governments can and should have laws that prescribe the bounds of acceptable behavior for their citizens, but these need not be specific to the Internet.
• Fraud is fraud, over the Internet, the phone, or physical mail. Asking people to respect the privacy of others is definitely reasonable. However, trying to control people outside of their authority will be futile.
• The Internet is collectively owned. Different people and organizations own different parts. If we all cooperate, then things work to global benefit.
• If people choose not to participate, that's up to them. Yes, technologically, it's trivial for a government to limit most Internet access: simply cut all fibers and cables coming into the country. Preventing satellite access is harder. But that's only at the physical layer. Being able to permit some traffic and not allow all traffic is very hard.  
• Bottom line is, if a government wants to serve its people then it should work to ensure that its citizens are being good citizens, and not just on the Internet.
• Due to time limit,any remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation