At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, nobody should own the Internet. Some legislative bodies (either government or non-profit standards based organization) decide what and how services are offered. But for the most part, the Internet is freedom. Nobody controls what you can or cannot post. Nobody charges you based on the content accessed. The Internet was built on a foundation of freedom, openness and sharing. This is how it should stay.

Attempts to regulate content or access almost always lead to preferential treatment. One of the early internet censorship activist sites, Peacefire, was blocked by most censorware programs as “pornography,” “hate literature,” and “adult content.” This is a flagship example of great power being used for evil. But a completely unregulated internet leads to chaos. With no regulating body, nobody can control popups or trojan downloads. Nobody can censure a site for distributing programs that compromise a user’s system. There are consequences to having a free and open internet.

The true responsibility lies in the users. We can talk about the government’s responsibility to protect us from cybercrime, but until the population as a whole becomes educated enough to protect themselves from phishing attacks, there will still be phishers. Until everyone understands the flaws of Internet Explorer and ditches it in favor of a more secure browser, there will still be popups and browser hijack attempts. It’s nobody’s fault but ours if we get a virus because our system is unprotected. It’s our own fault if we download a trojan horse because we clicked on an attachment in a spam email. It’s our own fault if we give away our MySpace password to any webpage that pretends to be a MySpace login form. Regulation will not save us from ourselves. That’s our responsibility. We should leave the government to catch the big bad guys, and take personal responsibility for everything else.