Zuckerberg and Schmidt warn on over-regulation of web

From the BBC:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Eric Schmidt have warned governments worldwide not to over-regulate the internet.

Mr Zuckerberg said governments cannot cherry pick which aspects of the web to control and which not to.

*snip*

"People tell me on the one hand 'It's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring [uprisings], but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," said Facebook's founder.

"But it's hard to have one without the other. You can't isolate some things you like about the internet and control other things that you don't."

Although I mostly agree with Zuckerberg and Schmidt that attempting to over-regulate the Internet is probably a bad idea, hearing them talk about it brings to mind Hitler and Stalin warning about the over-regulation of Poland.

I can see the August 1939 BBC headlines even now, "Hitler and Stalin warn on over-regulation of Poland."

Sorry for the Godwin moment, BTW.

More like this

Facebook's face recognition strategy may be just the ticket Is e-learning the food-bank of education? My "must have" apps after 1 academic year on the iPad Teaching Them How to Think The (Revised) Case Study Why I Decided to Start a Blog When Social Networks Become Tools of Oppression: Jillian C…
As I mentioned the other day, September 1 marked the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the "official" start of World War II. I say "official' because the invasion of Poland marked the beginning of a true shooting war in Europe after a long period of escalating tensions and…
I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C)…
I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll…