Net Ctrl, Or Ctrl Freak?

Back in 1997, Eli Noam, a professor of communications at Columbia University, rightly observed that a free internet - an internet without barriers of any sort, where governments cannot erect barriers to protect their citizens against practices and services that they deem illegal - is not what the American public wants, so Americans should stop being in denial. 'For all the rhetoric of an internet 'free trade zone,' will the United States readily accept an internet that includes Thai child pornography, Albanian tele-doctors, Cayman Island tax dodges, Monaco gambling, Nigerian blue sky stock schemes, Cuban mail order catalogues?' asked Noam... The answer was no in 1997, and it's a much more resounding no today.

And the conversation gets even weirder when we...look at other Western democracies. When South Korean lawmakers want their government to be more effective in banning any South Koreans from visiting any North Korean websites, it's hard to imagine how a common Western position on internet freedom may ever emerge. Such cacophony is not lost upon authoritarian governments, who take every opportunity to introduce their own internet controls and justify them based on greater regulation of the Web by their peers in the West.

From 'The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World'